So why are you still here? Shouldn't you already be hiding out in the hills somewhere?
If I had the means, I'd consider it.
I don't claim to know what's going to happen. I only happen to think that people who dismiss it out of hand from a position of complete and blinding ignorance are fools. I happen to think that being prepared for possible problems is a smart thing to do -- like health insurance.
But I don't expect to convince anyone who is happy wearing blinders. Maybe you should think about actually addressing the issue instead of dismissing me. I've actually read thousands of documents relating to private and governmental work on y2k. Have you? I don't care if you disagree with me as long as you've actually studied the problem.
I've been in Britain for the last 35 years and as yet I haven't noticed anyone whose more than mildly concerned. Most of us just look at those of you stockpiling dried bean in the US and give a knowing smile;-)
My error. I should not have said "banks". I should have said "financial institutions". Visit this (Slashdot won't accept the full URL correctly, so I can't make it a link): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000647321007942&r tmo=kJL7JLbp&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/99/7/1 3/nbug13.html
Here you can read what I'm talking about, including: EIGHT financial institutions, including one classified as a "high-impact" household name, may have left it too late to avert severe disruption to their computers from the Millennium bug.
Maybe you should think about some dried beans. At least get your money out of the bank.
The action the banks, etc, are taking is precautionary. They don't, by and large, know the full extent of the problem in their software, and to maintain the confidence of their customers they have be seen to examine all their own code and contact all their suppliers and get them to promise theirs is OK too.
And when private citizens take "precautionary" action, they're nuts. They're paranoid. They're delusional. You don't see the disconnect here? Businesses and governments don't know (you suggest) the extent of their problem, so they make contingency plans. If you depend upon these organizations for anything, is it really foolish to make contingency plans yourself -- since they are doing it themselves?
The extent to which all this is actually necessary is basically a complete unknown. Noone has a clue how widespread the bug is, or which systems it is most likely to reside in. The point is that non-compliant organisations, for whatever reasons, may very well not have had a problem anyway of if they do it may not be severe. This means that while non-completion of Y2K projects poses some risk of inconvenience or worse, it does not mean that civilisation will grind to a halt.
Hunh? They don't know how big the problem is, or even *if* they have a problem, and this means that civilization won't collapse? Ignorance means "No Big Problem"??? This is a reckless thing to hope for. Not knowing how big the problem is does not mean "No Big Problem". It means they are unable to make any rational assessments about how serious the effects of failure might be. And this means that there is simply no way you can say on this basis that civilization won't collapse.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that civilization is going to collapse: I don't know. But you can't say it *isn't* going to collapse based upon ignorance of the extent of the problem. And this means that it's only wise to prepare for the unknown. Isn't it? You have health insurance, don't you? You hope you won't need it, don't you?
I would guess that the majority of systems either have no problem or only cosmetic problems. Nonetheless I will be spending my new year as far from civilisation as I can get, but mostly to avoid rampaging nuts, not exploding computers.
It's rather bold to guess that the problems will be minor when you say that they just don't know the extent of the problem.
I see no reason myself why the railroads can't roll the dates back as you suggest. Maybe they'll do just that; but that doesn't explain federal concern about their efforts. But I hope you're right (but I'm not depending upon that either).
Getting the money *to* IRS is one thing. The big question is what they're going to do with it once they've got it.
Calling me paranoid doesn't change the issues, which you have conveniently ignored.
Are Fortune 500 companies stupid to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on y2k fixes? Yes or no? Are they finished yet? Yes or no? Is the government finished yet? Yes or no? How much of our society is dependent (directly or indirectly) on government largesse?
Please show me where a non-y2k-related bug has resulted in 3-1/2 million gallons of sewage being dumped on the ground.
Please show me your average, run-of-the-mill bug that has corporations spending billions of dollars in an effort to correct it.
Being glib is very different from actually dealing with the issue. It has not ceased to amaze me that the Slashdot crowd is so astoundingly apathetic about this issue. I can only conclude that it is an apathy borne out of ignorance. I can't say I recall ever seeing an actual argument presented here as to why GM, Chevron, Citicorp, the FED, and all the rest are just wasting their time and billions of dollars. Instead, I see "chewing gum and kite string." I see someone else suggesting that banks do everything on paper. I see ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims of "of course they'll fix it." Maybe they will; but far too much of the evidence suggests otherwise.
believe it or not, everything is still done on paper.
This could be my candidate for clueless geek statement of the year. Do you honestly think that $multi-billion international banks do everything on paper???? Astonishing.
And -- sorry to burst your bubble -- hopelessly, pathetically incorrect. You really need to stop and pursue that little "wonder" wandering around in your head: why are these companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars? Is it to buy lots of paper to do their accounting when the "nuts" come to take their money out of the banks? Get a grip, man.
Don't you read newspapers? Didn't you ever hear before Greenspan insisting that 99% isn't good enough for banking? Do you think he was talking about paper?
Did you know Greenspan was a mainframe programmer himself? What *do* you know?
Railroads? hmmm.. steam/electrical engines that run on a straight track. Oh sure they need to keep on schedule, but it was done for a hundred years by watch, I doupt they will kill over anytime soon.
The trains *cannot* be run manually anymore in anything approaching their modern computerized speed and efficiency. First, they fired all the switchmen in the 60s when they went digital. They don't have the personnel. Second, they've removed the manual switching mechanisms everywhere. These aren't just assertions. They're facts. The system works on computers. If they don't get their systems fixed, either the trains don't run or they don't run at normal speeds.
Yes, the sewage spill really did happen, within the last month or so. Don't you ever read a newspaper? Y2K testing in California. "OOPS". 3-1/2 million gallons of raw sewage in a park.
You need to wake up, friend. Start paying attention to the world around you. Banks really do use computers. Sewage really did spill. We really do need those trains running, and we don't know if they're going to be ready.
Umm.. Mirror???
Yes, well, I did expect that the enlightened throng here at Slashdot would stoop to this. Try dealing with facts -- though I am really not sure you know any about the world around you; you seem surprisingly unaware of how things work.
The greatest danger of Y2K is derranged [sic] millenial [sic] nuts with too much fire-power, not any computer failure.
The real question is this: Is the code broken or not? Yes, the code is definitely broken (else, please explain how it is that Citicorp, Chase, et. al. are spending hundreds of millions each on a "non-problem").
If the code is broken then the code must be fixed. Is it getting fixed? Let's see, we have the FAA lying about their compliance every 2-3 months or so. We have federal deadlines for completion of the work being missed consistently. We have huge companies (Wal-Mart for instance) revising their repair estimates upward the longer they work on the problem (hmmm...shouldn't that be leveling off sometime soon if they're really almost done?). We have the IRS admitting in publicly published documents that "the risks inherent" in fixing their systems are "nearly incalculable." They awarded the contract for getting their repairs made last October. Do you *honestly* think they have a snowball's chance of finishing on time? With no source code for some of it? With lots of it in ancient assembler? Do you *really* think this is no small problem???
So the IRS rolls over and dies. No one will mourn its passing, to be sure (except maybe the yokels at H & R Block).
How is the government going to collect taxes if the IRS fails? If they don't collect taxes, how are they going to pay the welfare checks? Are they just going to print money???
John Koskinen, White House y2k flak, said earlier this year that they had no indication that the railroads were going to make it. So: earlier this year the federal government had no proof that the railroads were going to finish their repairs on time.
Does that not bother you? Where do you think the coal comes from that generates most of the electricity in this country (hint -- it's not coming in by one of those safe airplanes)?
You don't think this is a problem?
You don't think it's a problem when Alan Greenspan says that 99% is not good enough for the banks to avoid catastrophe? You don't think it's a problem when a park is flooded with 3-1/2 MILLION gallons of raw sewage thanks to a y2k test?
Let me be clear here -- I don't know what's going to happen in January. But it is the height of foolishness to say that panic will cause more problems than broken code.
Where are these "nuts" you speak of? If they're such a big danger, there surely must be a lot of them. Where are they?
Slashdotters need to wake up. The world doesn't revolve around time_t. The code's broken, boys. If it's not fixed in time, we could be in big trouble.
If it's really no big deal, why are the deadlines slipping? Why are the costs continuing to rise? Why'd the feds limit y2k lawsuits? There won't be any, right? No big problem?
Why is Britain terrified over rumors that some of its largest banks won't finish repairs on time? No big problem, right?
What Microsoft is doing has nothing whatsoever to do with Open Source, however. Their motives are painfully transparent. They are using Open Source as a bludgeon here in an effort to destroy a competitor's lock on a particular market (instant messaging software).
Microsoft deserves no credit here whatsoever. They've simply looked around for a weapon to use against an enemy, and picked up the most likely rock to throw.
I am no fan of AOL, but Microsoft can kiss my grits. I can't stand 'em.
In some states parents are obligated legally to give their teens all the freedom they want -- they aren't allowed to intrude into their children's lives, even though they are paying for their children's lifestyles.
But then at the same time those same parents are held liable for anything illegal that their children do.
Others hinted at it, but never explicitly said it:
The USPS is not going away because it is a government-sanctioned monopoly and they actually defend their turf.
As someone mentioned, the USPS does take legal action against companies who use alternative services -- like UPS and FedEx -- for regular mail. I think it is not too great a stretch to suppose that if/when all those unionized government employees start feeling the pinch of reduced mails thanks to email/digital transmission of data, they *will* act to protect their jobs.
I certainly don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, but let's not be naive: there are millions of jobs dependent upon the USPS. No government bureaucracy has ever been voluntarily closed down. They will protect their turf -- their jobs -- at all costs if the need should ever arise.
But in the end, I just don't think this is a likely scenario. The need for delivery of actual (non-digital) mail is far too great to simply evaporate.
I agree completely with those who have suggested that what we really need is the free market in the area of postal services. It is simply preposterous to even suggest that a monopoly is in any way essential for mail delivery.
These posts are called "flamebait." Big Whoop. The Entire Article by Katz is Flamebait. Practically anything the man submits here is flamebait (witness his use of feeble stereotypes and appeals to techno-elitism).
Why, in response to a flaming Katz article are these two posts considered "flamebait"? Why is the original article allowed to flame but responses to it are not?
Once again Katz has demonstrated for all the world to see that he is a whining elitist. "*That* is just an online *KMart* store (sniff)". Great, Katz. Go buy your books someplace else then and shut up. We grow weary (and I personally am past tired) of your techno-elitist narcissistic raving. Why not come back when you have a point other than that the world is so hard on you and your weird Gen-X friends?
Order book from B & N on June 12. Note promised shipping within 48 hours.
On July 13, book still has not arrived. Email B & N to find out why.
Receive email reply from B & N: book is out of stock and out of print.
Now, why didn't B & N bother to contact my friend and inform him of the problem? When he berated them for this "excellent service", he was promised "free shipping" on a future order. Terrific. Why would he want to use them ever again?
Interesting how stories about CTS and Interfaces get posted on Slashdot on the same day...
Interesting, too, how some people agree with me that mousing is much harder on the wrists/hands than typing.
I wonder how much thought was given to this issue in that "Designing Linux for the Masses" article posted earlier today? Probably none. The author was too busy condemning the CLI to death while praising the GUI as the One Truth Path.
I think I've discovered a new argument in defense of the command line: "GUIs are bad for your wrists!" Yeah!
Usually I'm not real sympathetic to "CTS", because I type all day 5 days a week and then some more on the weekends, and I have no problem whatsoever.
However, there have been two cases where I've began to develop wrist/hand pain which were due to mouse usage: in games (no, not action games either). When I quit the games, I quit having problems. So: I conclude that the problem has more to do with correct hand posture than anything.
The one woman I know with CTS problems has her chair practically lowered all the way down to the floor with the keyboard *way* too high. This is a horrible position for her hands, and her wrists of course suffer. Mine almost ache just thinking about it.
The moral of the story: ditch the games, and lift your chairs up so that your wrists aren't all torqued while you type!
Who claimed innovativeness for Linux?
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First: what makes you think I'm in the Linux community? Did I say *anything* pro-Linux? I did not. I pointed out that the M$ GUI is stolen from Apple, that the M$ CLI sucks in comparison to the Unix one (note: Unix, not Linux -- though that obviously would include Linux), that VC++ is a bloated pig with some nice features but not a whole lot of genuine innovation (hint: saying EMACS beat them to integration is neither a pro-Linux statement nor even a pro-EMACS statement), and that their administration tools are pretty poor.
So: unless you replied to my post simply in order to get up on your soapbox and complain, what exactly is your point in criticizing Linux in reply to my post which had nothing whatsoever to do with Linux?
For the record, I would tend to agree with you, but next time try replying to what the other guy actually says.
Lousy ones like Bob and that crappy paperclip. M$ has produced little to no "innovation" in interfaces. They stole most of it from Apple for the GUI, and their CLI was/is a pale and corrupt shadow of Unix.
IDE,
bloatware -- massively, hugely, grotesquely bloated (but I do like some aspects of VC++). The only innovation I can see -- aside, perhaps, from being able to visually generate graphical objects -- is in the integration. But that's not innovation; I suspect EMACS beat them there.
and administration innovations.
Like forcing you to log out, then log back in as admin, then log back in as a regular user to do administrative tasks -- either that, or running with the admin privileges full time. Very innovative, and a very bad idea.
Of course, I could be wrong -- so if you have examples of actual *good* innovations by M$, I'd look at them.
Re:The problem is more severe in Windows
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You don't have to reboot; you only have to logout.
Of course, this is no less inconvenient than a full reboot if you only want to tweak a setting for the sake of some application you're running to see how that app behaves with the change. It's idiotic, really.
Re:what's the fscking deal?
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(lots of people run NT everyday with Administator access)
Or, like me, they give themselves Administrator rights on their user accounts.
Why? Because I can't 'su' to Administrator to do administrative tasks. I would have to log myself out, log in as Admin., and then log back in as myself. That's idiotic, and it's the difference between being fully multi-user and Windows NoThanks.
And even if I did leave myself as a regular user, I would still need to have write access to the Windows\System (or is it System32? I forget, but it doesn't make much difference) directory in order to run M$ Office (note: RUN, not 'install')! This too is idiotic.
*I'm* the one who's tired now, so this may be even more incoherent.:-)
There's no such thing as an uninterpreted form of communication. Thus, I would have to acknowledge to that extent that the Court was right in Marbury v. Madison. The question has more to do with how we interpret it. I would, therefore, affirm that a strict construction of the Constitution is the only one that is both a) faithful to how we *must* treat any form of expression if communication is going to occur, and b) the only reasonable way to understand something like a Constitution. It's not meant as a list of tips or guidelines. It's meant to define the nature of our federal government.
If we don't like something in it, we have an actual form of recourse embedded within the Constitution: amend it.
I cannot possibly agree with you that I am "more free" now than my great-great-great-great grandfather was. When the Federal Register consists of over 10,000 pages of fine print every year, it is not conceivable (nor, in my opinion, honest to myself to believe) that I have more liberty than did Patrick Henry. It is no exaggeration what a police officer friend of mine told me: a cop could easily slap you in jail after any traffic stop because there are so *many* infractions of which we are all guilty on a daily basis.
I certainly won't claim that the Constitution was/is perfect. I definitely agree that it has some terrible flaws. And I do agree that the Supreme Court has certainly made some applications of constitutional law that are excellent -- the wiretapping you mention is one example.
But I am not more free. I can't dig a well in my yard myself, and not at all without permission from the state. I could not fill in a swampy area (if I had one) to convert it to agricultural use. I am told whether or not I must wear a seatbelt. We have ramp meters where I live; I'm not even allowed to merge onto a highway as I please. In some states you're not allowed to drive a car that is hazardous to *you* but no one else. You can't ride a bike without a helmet in Dallas. You can't ride a motorcycle without one in many states. I could not go to a gun shop and buy a gun on the spot if I wished to. If as a business owner I employ others, I have no right to manage my payroll taxes as *I* see fit prior to paying them. I can't own chickens where I live, or any other small livestock. I can't water my lawn except on certain specified days even though I'm paying for the water (and no, I don't live in an arid part of the country). I can't withdraw more than $10,000 from the bank in cash without filing papers with the IRS. I can't carry a gun even if I wanted to. In some places it's against the law to spank your own children. You can't go hunting when you want. You can't fish when you want. You can't rent your own property to whomever you want. You can't leave your business inaccessible to the handicapped -- even though the only person it hurts to do so is...yourself (because you lose their business). You can't become a barber without permission from the state. I can't accept what *I* want (and nothing else) in exchange for my goods and services; the government *requires* that I accept Federal Reserve Notes, if they are offered.
So how am I more free?
I could obviously go on and on for pages and pages (tens of thousands of pages of the Federal Register, just in my lifetime). I think you get the point: I'm NOT more free. You're not. NO American is.
There is only one legitimate way to interpret any document: that is, to interpret it as its author(s) intended. Anything else is NOT interpretation. It is fraudulent at worst, and disingenuous at best.
The authors of the Constitution meant something when they wrote it. It is illegitimate to pretend that that intent is "irrelevant", or that other so-called "interpretations" are "just as valid." To do this generally is to destroy communication. To do this with the Constitution is to destroy it as the law of the land, in favor of...something else (which is very likely to be less respectful of our rights).
So the real question is: what did the writers of the Constitution intend? What did they intend, for example, with the 2nd Amendment? Even minimal historical research on your part would reveal that Madison, Washington, and the rest were firm and unwavering advocates of Citizens having guns. Your concept of a militia (as the national guard or army) did not exist for quite some time after the ratification of the Constitution; the army that fought the Revolutionary War was not a standing army at all. It was the people. Citizens.
Secondly, the principle purpose of the amendment was to ensure that the people could protect themselves against tyrannical rulers. It was NOT for simple self-defense against criminals. Again, a little reading on your part could verify this.
With respect to the Supreme Court: their job is not -- nor has it ever been -- to interpret the Constitution however they wish. THEY have no more power than you, me, or Congress to just unilaterally decide that they are going to make the Constitution say whatever they wish. They are bound by it like all our rulers -- at least in theory. The sad fact is that the Court rarely acts as though it acknowledges this. It is not the Court's prerogative to "give" us rights! It has none to offer.
Lastly, I am "nitpicking" (as you put it) because the system we have is broken. I AM advocating a better system: the one we were originally given by the Constitution. It is this that we no longer have. It is this that we need to get back, or there is going to come a time when we will all wish we still had the right to own guns.
I imagine a fair number of them have read Locke. I suspect that many of them have even understood it.
Really, though, that has nothing at all to do with it. The problem is not with what they've read or understood; the problem is that they no longer care about what the Constitution says. They no longer think that it really is supposed to define the government's limits. I don't think the Constitution is a perfect document by any stretch, but it really is almost completely irrelevant to modern life. Neither the laws passed in Congress nor the decisions made by the courts seem to have been founded upon a careful consideration of the constitution. The document is as close to a dead letter as it can be without actually going on life support, and anyone who thinks differently need only consider the previous examples I've mentioned. It's only a matter of time before any liberty mentioned in the Bill of Rights -- never mind those which aren't mentioned -- will be the victim of unconstitutional violations, all in the name of things like "fairness", or "public safety", or "social justice", or whatever.
Here's another one to think about: Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the right to suspend the Constitution during times of emergency (i.e., under declaration of martial law, or in wartime, or in natural disaster)? Answer: NOWHERE. Why do they do it? Because they can, and because the people want it. They are perfectly happy to sacrifice their liberties for the sake of having Uncle Sugar take care of them.
It means that they can't, but if they try to then inevitably the Supreme Court will rule it unconstitutional and overturn it.
While this is certainly true, it hasn't worked out in practice in decades -- certainly not consistently.
A constitution is intended not to "grant" anything to the people (as if our liberties are the government's to give us), but rather to be a leash upon the state: it is intended to restrict and define what exactly the government may do. The 9th and 10th Amendments more than make clear what is already implicit in the fact that a constitution was made: namely, that nothing in the constitution should in any way be interpreted to suggest that the liberties of the people are defined by or restricted to what is mentioned in it.
Nevertheless, our liberties are constantly stolen by our tyrannical government. Witness: the Endangered Species Act and the various "wetlands" acts, all of which absurdly restrict private property owners' right to control their land. Witness: property taxes. Try not paying them and you'll see who really owns your property (hint: it ain't you). Witness: gun control laws, which explicitly violate the 2nd Amendment.
Yes, I know that usernetctl is suid. However, even this can be made irrelevant if one is really concerned about someone taking advantage of pppd (though honestly I'm not exactly sure what they'd do with it...). You can create a modem group and add/dev/modem and all appropriate users to it, and make it 770 or 660 or whatever you wish. PPP is not a massive security risk, despite this person's assertions to the contrary. And you don't have to have pppd suid root, despite his assertions to the contrary. Which takes me back to my main point: troll who doesn't know how to read.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had the means, I'd consider it.
I don't claim to know what's going to happen. I only happen to think that people who dismiss it out of hand from a position of complete and blinding ignorance are fools. I happen to think that being prepared for possible problems is a smart thing to do -- like health insurance.
But I don't expect to convince anyone who is happy wearing blinders. Maybe you should think about actually addressing the issue instead of dismissing me. I've actually read thousands of documents relating to private and governmental work on y2k. Have you? I don't care if you disagree with me as long as you've actually studied the problem.
My error. I should not have said "banks". I should have said "financial institutions". Visit this (Slashdot won't accept the full URL correctly, so I can't make it a link): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000647321007942&r tmo=kJL7JLbp&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/99/7/1 3/nbug13.html
Here you can read what I'm talking about, including: EIGHT financial institutions, including one classified as a "high-impact" household name, may have left it too late to avert severe disruption to their computers from the Millennium bug.
Maybe you should think about some dried beans. At least get your money out of the bank.
And when private citizens take "precautionary" action, they're nuts. They're paranoid. They're delusional. You don't see the disconnect here? Businesses and governments don't know (you suggest) the extent of their problem, so they make contingency plans. If you depend upon these organizations for anything, is it really foolish to make contingency plans yourself -- since they are doing it themselves?
The extent to which all this is actually necessary is basically a complete unknown. Noone has a clue how widespread the bug is, or which systems it is most likely to reside in. The point is that non-compliant organisations, for whatever reasons, may very well not have had a problem anyway of if they do it may not be severe. This means that while non-completion of Y2K projects poses some risk of inconvenience or worse, it does not mean that civilisation will grind to a halt.
Hunh? They don't know how big the problem is, or even *if* they have a problem, and this means that civilization won't collapse? Ignorance means "No Big Problem"??? This is a reckless thing to hope for. Not knowing how big the problem is does not mean "No Big Problem". It means they are unable to make any rational assessments about how serious the effects of failure might be. And this means that there is simply no way you can say on this basis that civilization won't collapse.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that civilization is going to collapse: I don't know. But you can't say it *isn't* going to collapse based upon ignorance of the extent of the problem. And this means that it's only wise to prepare for the unknown. Isn't it? You have health insurance, don't you? You hope you won't need it, don't you?
I would guess that the majority of systems either have no problem or only cosmetic problems. Nonetheless I will be spending my new year as far from civilisation as I can get, but mostly to avoid rampaging nuts, not exploding computers.
It's rather bold to guess that the problems will be minor when you say that they just don't know the extent of the problem.
I see no reason myself why the railroads can't roll the dates back as you suggest. Maybe they'll do just that; but that doesn't explain federal concern about their efforts. But I hope you're right (but I'm not depending upon that either).
Getting the money *to* IRS is one thing. The big question is what they're going to do with it once they've got it.
Are Fortune 500 companies stupid to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on y2k fixes? Yes or no? Are they finished yet? Yes or no? Is the government finished yet? Yes or no? How much of our society is dependent (directly or indirectly) on government largesse?
Please show me where a non-y2k-related bug has resulted in 3-1/2 million gallons of sewage being dumped on the ground.
Please show me your average, run-of-the-mill bug that has corporations spending billions of dollars in an effort to correct it.
Being glib is very different from actually dealing with the issue. It has not ceased to amaze me that the Slashdot crowd is so astoundingly apathetic about this issue. I can only conclude that it is an apathy borne out of ignorance. I can't say I recall ever seeing an actual argument presented here as to why GM, Chevron, Citicorp, the FED, and all the rest are just wasting their time and billions of dollars. Instead, I see "chewing gum and kite string." I see someone else suggesting that banks do everything on paper. I see ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims of "of course they'll fix it." Maybe they will; but far too much of the evidence suggests otherwise.
Not everything is hunky-dory.
This could be my candidate for clueless geek statement of the year. Do you honestly think that $multi-billion international banks do everything on paper???? Astonishing.
And -- sorry to burst your bubble -- hopelessly, pathetically incorrect. You really need to stop and pursue that little "wonder" wandering around in your head: why are these companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars? Is it to buy lots of paper to do their accounting when the "nuts" come to take their money out of the banks? Get a grip, man.
Don't you read newspapers? Didn't you ever hear before Greenspan insisting that 99% isn't good enough for banking? Do you think he was talking about paper?
Did you know Greenspan was a mainframe programmer himself? What *do* you know?
Railroads? hmmm.. steam/electrical engines that run on a straight track. Oh sure they need to keep on schedule, but it was done for a hundred years by watch, I doupt they will kill over anytime soon.
The trains *cannot* be run manually anymore in anything approaching their modern computerized speed and efficiency. First, they fired all the switchmen in the 60s when they went digital. They don't have the personnel. Second, they've removed the manual switching mechanisms everywhere. These aren't just assertions. They're facts. The system works on computers. If they don't get their systems fixed, either the trains don't run or they don't run at normal speeds.
Yes, the sewage spill really did happen, within the last month or so. Don't you ever read a newspaper? Y2K testing in California. "OOPS". 3-1/2 million gallons of raw sewage in a park.
You need to wake up, friend. Start paying attention to the world around you. Banks really do use computers. Sewage really did spill. We really do need those trains running, and we don't know if they're going to be ready.
Umm.. Mirror???
Yes, well, I did expect that the enlightened throng here at Slashdot would stoop to this. Try dealing with facts -- though I am really not sure you know any about the world around you; you seem surprisingly unaware of how things work.
The real question is this: Is the code broken or not? Yes, the code is definitely broken (else, please explain how it is that Citicorp, Chase, et. al. are spending hundreds of millions each on a "non-problem").
If the code is broken then the code must be fixed. Is it getting fixed? Let's see, we have the FAA lying about their compliance every 2-3 months or so. We have federal deadlines for completion of the work being missed consistently. We have huge companies (Wal-Mart for instance) revising their repair estimates upward the longer they work on the problem (hmmm...shouldn't that be leveling off sometime soon if they're really almost done?). We have the IRS admitting in publicly published documents that "the risks inherent" in fixing their systems are "nearly incalculable." They awarded the contract for getting their repairs made last October. Do you *honestly* think they have a snowball's chance of finishing on time? With no source code for some of it? With lots of it in ancient assembler? Do you *really* think this is no small problem???
So the IRS rolls over and dies. No one will mourn its passing, to be sure (except maybe the yokels at H & R Block).
How is the government going to collect taxes if the IRS fails? If they don't collect taxes, how are they going to pay the welfare checks? Are they just going to print money???
John Koskinen, White House y2k flak, said earlier this year that they had no indication that the railroads were going to make it. So: earlier this year the federal government had no proof that the railroads were going to finish their repairs on time.
Does that not bother you? Where do you think the coal comes from that generates most of the electricity in this country (hint -- it's not coming in by one of those safe airplanes)?
You don't think this is a problem?
You don't think it's a problem when Alan Greenspan says that 99% is not good enough for the banks to avoid catastrophe? You don't think it's a problem when a park is flooded with 3-1/2 MILLION gallons of raw sewage thanks to a y2k test?
Let me be clear here -- I don't know what's going to happen in January. But it is the height of foolishness to say that panic will cause more problems than broken code.
Where are these "nuts" you speak of? If they're such a big danger, there surely must be a lot of them. Where are they?
Slashdotters need to wake up. The world doesn't revolve around time_t. The code's broken, boys. If it's not fixed in time, we could be in big trouble.
If it's really no big deal, why are the deadlines slipping? Why are the costs continuing to rise? Why'd the feds limit y2k lawsuits? There won't be any, right? No big problem?
Why is Britain terrified over rumors that some of its largest banks won't finish repairs on time? No big problem, right?
Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
What Microsoft is doing has nothing whatsoever to do with Open Source, however. Their motives are painfully transparent. They are using Open Source as a bludgeon here in an effort to destroy a competitor's lock on a particular market (instant messaging software).
Microsoft deserves no credit here whatsoever. They've simply looked around for a weapon to use against an enemy, and picked up the most likely rock to throw.
I am no fan of AOL, but Microsoft can kiss my grits. I can't stand 'em.
But then at the same time those same parents are held liable for anything illegal that their children do.
This is a trap, and it's illegitimate.
The USPS is not going away because it is a government-sanctioned monopoly and they actually defend their turf.
As someone mentioned, the USPS does take legal action against companies who use alternative services -- like UPS and FedEx -- for regular mail. I think it is not too great a stretch to suppose that if/when all those unionized government employees start feeling the pinch of reduced mails thanks to email/digital transmission of data, they *will* act to protect their jobs.
I certainly don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, but let's not be naive: there are millions of jobs dependent upon the USPS. No government bureaucracy has ever been voluntarily closed down. They will protect their turf -- their jobs -- at all costs if the need should ever arise.
But in the end, I just don't think this is a likely scenario. The need for delivery of actual (non-digital) mail is far too great to simply evaporate.
I agree completely with those who have suggested that what we really need is the free market in the area of postal services. It is simply preposterous to even suggest that a monopoly is in any way essential for mail delivery.
These posts are called "flamebait." Big Whoop. The Entire Article by Katz is Flamebait. Practically anything the man submits here is flamebait (witness his use of feeble stereotypes and appeals to techno-elitism).
Why, in response to a flaming Katz article are these two posts considered "flamebait"? Why is the original article allowed to flame but responses to it are not?
Hmmmmm???
Get a life and grow up.
Now, why didn't B & N bother to contact my friend and inform him of the problem? When he berated them for this "excellent service", he was promised "free shipping" on a future order. Terrific. Why would he want to use them ever again?
Interesting, too, how some people agree with me that mousing is much harder on the wrists/hands than typing.
I wonder how much thought was given to this issue in that "Designing Linux for the Masses" article posted earlier today? Probably none. The author was too busy condemning the CLI to death while praising the GUI as the One Truth Path.
I think I've discovered a new argument in defense of the command line: "GUIs are bad for your wrists!" Yeah!
However, there have been two cases where I've began to develop wrist/hand pain which were due to mouse usage: in games (no, not action games either). When I quit the games, I quit having problems. So: I conclude that the problem has more to do with correct hand posture than anything.
The one woman I know with CTS problems has her chair practically lowered all the way down to the floor with the keyboard *way* too high. This is a horrible position for her hands, and her wrists of course suffer. Mine almost ache just thinking about it.
The moral of the story: ditch the games, and lift your chairs up so that your wrists aren't all torqued while you type!
So: unless you replied to my post simply in order to get up on your soapbox and complain, what exactly is your point in criticizing Linux in reply to my post which had nothing whatsoever to do with Linux?
For the record, I would tend to agree with you, but next time try replying to what the other guy actually says.
Lousy ones like Bob and that crappy paperclip. M$ has produced little to no "innovation" in interfaces. They stole most of it from Apple for the GUI, and their CLI was/is a pale and corrupt shadow of Unix.
IDE,
bloatware -- massively, hugely, grotesquely bloated (but I do like some aspects of VC++). The only innovation I can see -- aside, perhaps, from being able to visually generate graphical objects -- is in the integration. But that's not innovation; I suspect EMACS beat them there.
and administration innovations.
Like forcing you to log out, then log back in as admin, then log back in as a regular user to do administrative tasks -- either that, or running with the admin privileges full time. Very innovative, and a very bad idea.
Of course, I could be wrong -- so if you have examples of actual *good* innovations by M$, I'd look at them.
Of course, this is no less inconvenient than a full reboot if you only want to tweak a setting for the sake of some application you're running to see how that app behaves with the change. It's idiotic, really.
Or, like me, they give themselves Administrator rights on their user accounts.
Why? Because I can't 'su' to Administrator to do administrative tasks. I would have to log myself out, log in as Admin., and then log back in as myself. That's idiotic, and it's the difference between being fully multi-user and Windows NoThanks.
And even if I did leave myself as a regular user, I would still need to have write access to the Windows\System (or is it System32? I forget, but it doesn't make much difference) directory in order to run M$ Office (note: RUN, not 'install')! This too is idiotic.
There's no such thing as an uninterpreted form of communication. Thus, I would have to acknowledge to that extent that the Court was right in Marbury v. Madison. The question has more to do with how we interpret it. I would, therefore, affirm that a strict construction of the Constitution is the only one that is both a) faithful to how we *must* treat any form of expression if communication is going to occur, and b) the only reasonable way to understand something like a Constitution. It's not meant as a list of tips or guidelines. It's meant to define the nature of our federal government.
If we don't like something in it, we have an actual form of recourse embedded within the Constitution: amend it.
I cannot possibly agree with you that I am "more free" now than my great-great-great-great grandfather was. When the Federal Register consists of over 10,000 pages of fine print every year, it is not conceivable (nor, in my opinion, honest to myself to believe) that I have more liberty than did Patrick Henry. It is no exaggeration what a police officer friend of mine told me: a cop could easily slap you in jail after any traffic stop because there are so *many* infractions of which we are all guilty on a daily basis.
I certainly won't claim that the Constitution was/is perfect. I definitely agree that it has some terrible flaws. And I do agree that the Supreme Court has certainly made some applications of constitutional law that are excellent -- the wiretapping you mention is one example.
But I am not more free. I can't dig a well in my yard myself, and not at all without permission from the state. I could not fill in a swampy area (if I had one) to convert it to agricultural use. I am told whether or not I must wear a seatbelt. We have ramp meters where I live; I'm not even allowed to merge onto a highway as I please. In some states you're not allowed to drive a car that is hazardous to *you* but no one else. You can't ride a bike without a helmet in Dallas. You can't ride a motorcycle without one in many states. I could not go to a gun shop and buy a gun on the spot if I wished to. If as a business owner I employ others, I have no right to manage my payroll taxes as *I* see fit prior to paying them. I can't own chickens where I live, or any other small livestock. I can't water my lawn except on certain specified days even though I'm paying for the water (and no, I don't live in an arid part of the country). I can't withdraw more than $10,000 from the bank in cash without filing papers with the IRS. I can't carry a gun even if I wanted to. In some places it's against the law to spank your own children. You can't go hunting when you want. You can't fish when you want. You can't rent your own property to whomever you want. You can't leave your business inaccessible to the handicapped -- even though the only person it hurts to do so is...yourself (because you lose their business). You can't become a barber without permission from the state. I can't accept what *I* want (and nothing else) in exchange for my goods and services; the government *requires* that I accept Federal Reserve Notes, if they are offered.
So how am I more free?
I could obviously go on and on for pages and pages (tens of thousands of pages of the Federal Register, just in my lifetime). I think you get the point: I'm NOT more free. You're not. NO American is.
The authors of the Constitution meant something when they wrote it. It is illegitimate to pretend that that intent is "irrelevant", or that other so-called "interpretations" are "just as valid." To do this generally is to destroy communication. To do this with the Constitution is to destroy it as the law of the land, in favor of...something else (which is very likely to be less respectful of our rights).
So the real question is: what did the writers of the Constitution intend? What did they intend, for example, with the 2nd Amendment? Even minimal historical research on your part would reveal that Madison, Washington, and the rest were firm and unwavering advocates of Citizens having guns. Your concept of a militia (as the national guard or army) did not exist for quite some time after the ratification of the Constitution; the army that fought the Revolutionary War was not a standing army at all. It was the people. Citizens.
Secondly, the principle purpose of the amendment was to ensure that the people could protect themselves against tyrannical rulers. It was NOT for simple self-defense against criminals. Again, a little reading on your part could verify this.
With respect to the Supreme Court: their job is not -- nor has it ever been -- to interpret the Constitution however they wish. THEY have no more power than you, me, or Congress to just unilaterally decide that they are going to make the Constitution say whatever they wish. They are bound by it like all our rulers -- at least in theory. The sad fact is that the Court rarely acts as though it acknowledges this. It is not the Court's prerogative to "give" us rights! It has none to offer.
Lastly, I am "nitpicking" (as you put it) because the system we have is broken. I AM advocating a better system: the one we were originally given by the Constitution. It is this that we no longer have. It is this that we need to get back, or there is going to come a time when we will all wish we still had the right to own guns.
Really, though, that has nothing at all to do with it. The problem is not with what they've read or understood; the problem is that they no longer care about what the Constitution says. They no longer think that it really is supposed to define the government's limits. I don't think the Constitution is a perfect document by any stretch, but it really is almost completely irrelevant to modern life. Neither the laws passed in Congress nor the decisions made by the courts seem to have been founded upon a careful consideration of the constitution. The document is as close to a dead letter as it can be without actually going on life support, and anyone who thinks differently need only consider the previous examples I've mentioned. It's only a matter of time before any liberty mentioned in the Bill of Rights -- never mind those which aren't mentioned -- will be the victim of unconstitutional violations, all in the name of things like "fairness", or "public safety", or "social justice", or whatever.
Here's another one to think about: Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the right to suspend the Constitution during times of emergency (i.e., under declaration of martial law, or in wartime, or in natural disaster)? Answer: NOWHERE. Why do they do it? Because they can, and because the people want it. They are perfectly happy to sacrifice their liberties for the sake of having Uncle Sugar take care of them.
While this is certainly true, it hasn't worked out in practice in decades -- certainly not consistently.
A constitution is intended not to "grant" anything to the people (as if our liberties are the government's to give us), but rather to be a leash upon the state: it is intended to restrict and define what exactly the government may do. The 9th and 10th Amendments more than make clear what is already implicit in the fact that a constitution was made: namely, that nothing in the constitution should in any way be interpreted to suggest that the liberties of the people are defined by or restricted to what is mentioned in it.
Nevertheless, our liberties are constantly stolen by our tyrannical government. Witness: the Endangered Species Act and the various "wetlands" acts, all of which absurdly restrict private property owners' right to control their land. Witness: property taxes. Try not paying them and you'll see who really owns your property (hint: it ain't you). Witness: gun control laws, which explicitly violate the 2nd Amendment.
Yes, I know that usernetctl is suid. However, even this can be made irrelevant if one is really concerned about someone taking advantage of pppd (though honestly I'm not exactly sure what they'd do with it...). You can create a modem group and add /dev/modem and all appropriate users to it, and make it 770 or 660 or whatever you wish. PPP is not a massive security risk, despite this person's assertions to the contrary. And you don't have to have pppd suid root, despite his assertions to the contrary. Which takes me back to my main point: troll who doesn't know how to read.