Okay, you replace the roads with farms. Now how the fuck do people get around in the city? Sure, people aren't using cars. But now they're using horses or bikes. And they'll still want roads to get around by.
If you don't believe me, take a look at pictures like those below of Shanghai, China. Notice that the bikes take up basically the entire road. And some people are using cars. Get rid of them and the number of bikes will increase.
You're looking at this situation with far too simple of a mindset. This isn't about providing everyone with cheap TV. This is nothing less than a massive investment into the future of their community. If they are able to provide cheap, reliable Internet access to many locations within the city, then they are setting themselves up for an amazing tech boom.
Besides the obvious influx of hosting companies, opportunities are also opened for other online businesses. And remember, when there's an influx of techology-related businesses they need employees, and such employees are often amongst the most well-educated people. That leads to lower crime rates, and a general improvement of the city's well-being.
The ecomomic benefits of investing in such a broadband system will be widely felt throughout the community. You speak of higher taxes; the taxes themselves may actually be lower due to the crime drop resulting from the influx of highly-educated tech workers. There is a very good chance that the broadband costs are far less than the costs of a police officer. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!
.. the government is the one to step in. In this case it is the city-level goverment. Indeed, that is what the government is there to do: provide what the free market cannot. The free market has been obstructed in this instance due to the monopolistic practices of the cable and phone companies. So it's more than acceptable for the people to unite, in the form of the city government, against the monopolistic forces that are obstructing the free market.
Some simple-minded individuals like to cry "communism" or "socialism" at this point. But anyone with any economic knowledge knows that you sometimes need the government to intervene in order to maximize the benefit and potential of the capitalistic free market for all of society (not just a few cable and phone companies).
So why did you install Windows ME again, knowing full well that it isn't a suitable operating system for doing anything serious (ie. term papers) with? Don't blame HP for the fact that you chose the shittiest of the shittiest software to run on her computer. I'm sure you could have obtained at least Windows 2000 during that timeperiod. That would have been a far more sensible choice.
Of course the interview process helps with that. But in order to make the interviewing process itself effective and efficient it is often useful to know who to scratch off the list of candidates immediately.
Yes. Very often. And they're usually quite insightful. I struggle these days with the young engineers who have grown up using their instant messegers and typing like fools. Their typed documents are often more difficult to read than any handwritten documents from older engineers.
On small devices such as these it is no doubt that unintelligble shorthand will be used. Your typical "OmG i b l8 4 wrk cuz caR brk dn" malarky.
Remind me never to move to Tennessee (not that I ever would, mind you). I'd much rather live in a city or township where inspections of homeowner (ie. non-professional) renovations, especially to potentially hazardous systems like the electrical system, are mandatory. I don't trust redneck cowboys to properly wire anything safely, let alone a house. It isn't a matter of "freedom" to get your wiring inspected; it's a matter of common sense dictating that any avoidable disaster should be avoided.
It's not your right as an American to burn your house down, at the same time possibly killing your wife, your housekeeper, your children and potentially others (ie. neighbors, guests).
That is sickening what you encountered in your sister's home. Indeed, I hope the future owners of this particular fellow's home do not fall victim to his electrical hackery.
Can you elaborate more on what is being done? I mean, I'd like to see a point-by-point analysis of what exactly went wrong, who failed to act, and what exact steps have been done to remedy the situation.
Will the administrators actually put together such a report once they get everything back on line? Will they be able to show us exactly what they have done to protect our personal information?
This incident reflects very poorly on the entire open source community. The very least those responsible for this fiasco could do is give us an extremely detailed report about the situation.
A second set of eyes never hurts. That goes for electrical wiring just as much as it goes for peer programming or unit testing.
People make errors. That is why it is helpful to have other people check over your work, to make sure it was done correctly. In a case like this, that person could be the difference between a safe and useful modification to the existing power system and a house that burns down.
In your particular case the inspector did the right thing. He noticed a discrepancy, and he brought it up. You showed him that the situation was not problematic, and everything was fine. That is the system working. Much like you making a modification to a piece of Java software, and then running your JUnit testcases just to ensure that everything is working fine.
People who worry about their financial situation do not waste money on luxuries like housecleaners. Especially housecleaners who do their laundry for them.
Sure he has the right to rewire his own house. In case you failed to notice, that is exactly what he did.
Indeed, the safety codes are there to protect people from substandard or faulty wiring. That is why he should have gotten the local inspector in to check on it, and to verify that the modifications he has made are safe. It's not only the financially prduent thing to do (ie. in terms of insurance and preventing the loss of his hard-earned property), it is also the socially responsible thing to do. Not only for his own safety, but for the safety of his wife, housekeeper, children, guests, and others.
His house burning down because of faulty wiring could have devastating effects on his neighbors. His neighbors should demand that his house be checked by the local inspector for the safety of their own homes, family and other property. Fires can spread between houses rather quickly, you know.
Nobody is taking away this fellow's right to wire his house, or your right to brew your own beer, or Torvald's right to develop his own software. Inspections of his wiring would be to help guarantee that his modifications do not lead to the untimely death or injury of himself and others.
From the article: "About nine months ago the motor overheated on our dryer while the house cleaner was here. I asked her how many loads of landry she had done that morning and she said three. I took her back to my office and fired up the software and told her she had done four and wow, there was a significant current surge when the motor gave out. She was also not particularly impressed and she now asks me every time she wants to use something in the house (not a good thing)."www.kondra.com
If he can afford to hire a housecleaner (one who does his laundry, not just clean the floors and bathrooms), then some wiring is the least of his financial worries.
An engineer who disregards the law will be in for one hell of a surprise when his disregard of the law kills someone (if not himself, as is possible in this case, God forbid).
While his site is now completely slashdotted and I thus cannot double check it now, I do not recall seeing any mention of such inspections while reading it. That is a pretty integral part of the plan, or at least would be if performed by somebody who is alert to such safety codes.
I would have expected him to brag about how the local safety inspector was impressed by his system, or perhaps even how the safety inspector pointed out potential flaws that needed to be fixed. Indeed, I recall reading about neither possibility.
I would love to see screenshots from the program he is using showing the power consumption of his web servers during this slashdotting. Indeed, it would be beneficial to know more about his hardware setup, too. It would be very interesting to correlate the number of hits/minute with the minute-by-minute power usage of his server(s).
Just because it is working now does not mean that it will be in several weeks, months or years. Such codes are in place to prevent home hackery like this, especially in the case of electrical wiring. The potential for his modifications to fail are astronomical. And if he did such modifications without proper inspections, then the situation could get very hairy were things to go wrong.
Perhaps his insurance company would not pay him if it was found that his uninspected electrical modifications were the cause of his house burning down, for instance.
A week in the Internet world is equivalent to centuries offline. A week is far more than enough time for this problem to be known about, and then fixed. One would expect that these individuals would be capable of fixing the situation themselves, even if a patch wasn't immediately available. But expecting them to show some degree of systems administration competency is obviously far too much to expect from them.
Even if they did have to disable the comments temporarily as a last resort, that would be far better than compromizing such a massive amount of private data.
And why do you consider the fact that they publicized the attack a mitigating factor in any way? That is what they should have done regardless. It doesn't make them any better because they fucked up severely and told us about it. It just means they were doing exactly what they should have done: admitting their guilt in this matter.
Are you serious? Keeping patches "almost always" up to date is a sign of competency? Tell me this is a big motherfucking joke.
It is no wonder this incident happened. You people put yourself in a position with great responsibility, and truth be told, you have failed the entire open source community.
"while I had to rewire all my electrical to do it"
Most areas have municipal safety codes when it comes to stuff such as wiring. Are you sure your wiring is compliant with such standards? Has it been approved by your local building inspector?
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, you replace the roads with farms. Now how the fuck do people get around in the city? Sure, people aren't using cars. But now they're using horses or bikes. And they'll still want roads to get around by.
0 2004/shanghai/DSC04216.jpg / China_Apr02/images/4785_Shanghai_Street.jpg
If you don't believe me, take a look at pictures like those below of Shanghai, China. Notice that the bikes take up basically the entire road. And some people are using cars. Get rid of them and the number of bikes will increase.
http://www.wimpkiller.com/howdy/photoblog/china%2
http://www.signite.com/photography/archives/trips
You're looking at this situation with far too simple of a mindset. This isn't about providing everyone with cheap TV. This is nothing less than a massive investment into the future of their community. If they are able to provide cheap, reliable Internet access to many locations within the city, then they are setting themselves up for an amazing tech boom.
Besides the obvious influx of hosting companies, opportunities are also opened for other online businesses. And remember, when there's an influx of techology-related businesses they need employees, and such employees are often amongst the most well-educated people. That leads to lower crime rates, and a general improvement of the city's well-being.
The ecomomic benefits of investing in such a broadband system will be widely felt throughout the community. You speak of higher taxes; the taxes themselves may actually be lower due to the crime drop resulting from the influx of highly-educated tech workers. There is a very good chance that the broadband costs are far less than the costs of a police officer. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!
.. the government is the one to step in. In this case it is the city-level goverment. Indeed, that is what the government is there to do: provide what the free market cannot. The free market has been obstructed in this instance due to the monopolistic practices of the cable and phone companies. So it's more than acceptable for the people to unite, in the form of the city government, against the monopolistic forces that are obstructing the free market.
Some simple-minded individuals like to cry "communism" or "socialism" at this point. But anyone with any economic knowledge knows that you sometimes need the government to intervene in order to maximize the benefit and potential of the capitalistic free market for all of society (not just a few cable and phone companies).
So why did you install Windows ME again, knowing full well that it isn't a suitable operating system for doing anything serious (ie. term papers) with? Don't blame HP for the fact that you chose the shittiest of the shittiest software to run on her computer. I'm sure you could have obtained at least Windows 2000 during that timeperiod. That would have been a far more sensible choice.
Of course the interview process helps with that. But in order to make the interviewing process itself effective and efficient it is often useful to know who to scratch off the list of candidates immediately.
Could you provide us with the name of this web developer, so we can make sure we all avoid him in the future?
What is the name of this "website design bureau"? Please let us know their exact name so we can all avoid them in the future.
Yes. Very often. And they're usually quite insightful. I struggle these days with the young engineers who have grown up using their instant messegers and typing like fools. Their typed documents are often more difficult to read than any handwritten documents from older engineers.
On small devices such as these it is no doubt that unintelligble shorthand will be used. Your typical "OmG i b l8 4 wrk cuz caR brk dn" malarky.
I'd take a written document any day.
What's wrong with taking notes in class using a pen and paper? If anything, it is probably quicker than trying to use one of these little doodads.
Remind me never to move to Tennessee (not that I ever would, mind you). I'd much rather live in a city or township where inspections of homeowner (ie. non-professional) renovations, especially to potentially hazardous systems like the electrical system, are mandatory. I don't trust redneck cowboys to properly wire anything safely, let alone a house. It isn't a matter of "freedom" to get your wiring inspected; it's a matter of common sense dictating that any avoidable disaster should be avoided.
It's not your right as an American to burn your house down, at the same time possibly killing your wife, your housekeeper, your children and potentially others (ie. neighbors, guests).
That is sickening what you encountered in your sister's home. Indeed, I hope the future owners of this particular fellow's home do not fall victim to his electrical hackery.
Can you elaborate more on what is being done? I mean, I'd like to see a point-by-point analysis of what exactly went wrong, who failed to act, and what exact steps have been done to remedy the situation.
Will the administrators actually put together such a report once they get everything back on line? Will they be able to show us exactly what they have done to protect our personal information?
This incident reflects very poorly on the entire open source community. The very least those responsible for this fiasco could do is give us an extremely detailed report about the situation.
A second set of eyes never hurts. That goes for electrical wiring just as much as it goes for peer programming or unit testing.
People make errors. That is why it is helpful to have other people check over your work, to make sure it was done correctly. In a case like this, that person could be the difference between a safe and useful modification to the existing power system and a house that burns down.
In your particular case the inspector did the right thing. He noticed a discrepancy, and he brought it up. You showed him that the situation was not problematic, and everything was fine. That is the system working. Much like you making a modification to a piece of Java software, and then running your JUnit testcases just to ensure that everything is working fine.
People who worry about their financial situation do not waste money on luxuries like housecleaners. Especially housecleaners who do their laundry for them.
Sure he has the right to rewire his own house. In case you failed to notice, that is exactly what he did.
Indeed, the safety codes are there to protect people from substandard or faulty wiring. That is why he should have gotten the local inspector in to check on it, and to verify that the modifications he has made are safe. It's not only the financially prduent thing to do (ie. in terms of insurance and preventing the loss of his hard-earned property), it is also the socially responsible thing to do. Not only for his own safety, but for the safety of his wife, housekeeper, children, guests, and others.
His house burning down because of faulty wiring could have devastating effects on his neighbors. His neighbors should demand that his house be checked by the local inspector for the safety of their own homes, family and other property. Fires can spread between houses rather quickly, you know.
Nobody is taking away this fellow's right to wire his house, or your right to brew your own beer, or Torvald's right to develop his own software. Inspections of his wiring would be to help guarantee that his modifications do not lead to the untimely death or injury of himself and others.
It doesn't look like money matters much to him.
From the article:
"About nine months ago the motor overheated on our dryer while the house cleaner was here. I asked her how many loads of landry she had done that morning and she said three. I took her back to my office and fired up the software and told her she had done four and wow, there was a significant current surge when the motor gave out. She was also not particularly impressed and she now asks me every time she wants to use something in the house (not a good thing)."www.kondra.com
If he can afford to hire a housecleaner (one who does his laundry, not just clean the floors and bathrooms), then some wiring is the least of his financial worries.
An engineer who disregards the law will be in for one hell of a surprise when his disregard of the law kills someone (if not himself, as is possible in this case, God forbid).
I wonder if his modifications had anything to do with his dryer motor getting fried. It's a real possibility.
While his site is now completely slashdotted and I thus cannot double check it now, I do not recall seeing any mention of such inspections while reading it. That is a pretty integral part of the plan, or at least would be if performed by somebody who is alert to such safety codes.
I would have expected him to brag about how the local safety inspector was impressed by his system, or perhaps even how the safety inspector pointed out potential flaws that needed to be fixed. Indeed, I recall reading about neither possibility.
I would love to see screenshots from the program he is using showing the power consumption of his web servers during this slashdotting. Indeed, it would be beneficial to know more about his hardware setup, too. It would be very interesting to correlate the number of hits/minute with the minute-by-minute power usage of his server(s).
Just because it is working now does not mean that it will be in several weeks, months or years. Such codes are in place to prevent home hackery like this, especially in the case of electrical wiring. The potential for his modifications to fail are astronomical. And if he did such modifications without proper inspections, then the situation could get very hairy were things to go wrong.
Perhaps his insurance company would not pay him if it was found that his uninspected electrical modifications were the cause of his house burning down, for instance.
A week in the Internet world is equivalent to centuries offline. A week is far more than enough time for this problem to be known about, and then fixed. One would expect that these individuals would be capable of fixing the situation themselves, even if a patch wasn't immediately available. But expecting them to show some degree of systems administration competency is obviously far too much to expect from them.
Even if they did have to disable the comments temporarily as a last resort, that would be far better than compromizing such a massive amount of private data.
And why do you consider the fact that they publicized the attack a mitigating factor in any way? That is what they should have done regardless. It doesn't make them any better because they fucked up severely and told us about it. It just means they were doing exactly what they should have done: admitting their guilt in this matter.
Are you serious? Keeping patches "almost always" up to date is a sign of competency? Tell me this is a big motherfucking joke.
It is no wonder this incident happened. You people put yourself in a position with great responsibility, and truth be told, you have failed the entire open source community.
"while I had to rewire all my electrical to do it"
Most areas have municipal safety codes when it comes to stuff such as wiring. Are you sure your wiring is compliant with such standards? Has it been approved by your local building inspector?