Having lived in some very dodgy neighbourhoods I'd have welcomed that bobby escorting me out of my home and into work (the joys of being a student and walking/cycling everywhere).
Now before anyone cries 1984, the problem I see is not what I believe most people seem to think - I see 3 problems: 1) Abuse of power Now one problem we see is that if this information is only available to law officers, then corruption is possible and officers can be selective. This makes an existing problem worse, but people seem to be slightly happy with being let off for profuse apologies, or for being a celebrity. Corruption and abuse of power is there, this just makes the law enforcers more powerful. Suggestions on this groud strike me of arguments that cars above a certain power rating/weight should be banned because they are more dangerous to others.
2) Change of un-just law An effective form of protest is to publicly break an unjust law with the intention of being caught. This sort of technology may make such a protest harder.
3) Publicly/corporatly available data making this information more publicly available may help reduce problem 1, but how would you like your (potential) boss to know that you were taking a stroll around the red light distrit over the weekend - noting unlawful there, but the technology for such a search could soon be feasable.
I often imagine that the average Babylonian citizen would be shocked and dismayed at the level of government intrusion into our lives, and they would have the same reaction that a lot of people on slashdot have. I'd still rather live in England now with all its cameras than ancient Babylon with its limited law and order. Instead of seeing the problems with surveylence and asking how we stop surverylance, why not ask what really are the problems of surveylance and how do we get the benefits without the problems.
That said I still refuse to visit the US because of their insistance on fingerprinting all visitors - I sense some inconsistency here in my views...
My housemate is from South Africa and I was having a debate with her about this recently:
Long story short: The tech jobs are already comming to South Africa. They have a massive immigrant problem from people in neighbouring poorer countries comming in - so it has started in the south and is spreading through Africa from there. This means no social security, and LOTS of competition and motivation - no-one dares be out of a job, or slacking on the job or they'll be out of a job and on the street This also means lots of crime There's a lot of money to be made there for anyone who's willing to move There's massive competition for jobs both tech and service. Only the best get them.
I have a few workmates who are from India Long story short: * The career ladder is, work for local company, work for small international company based over there, work for multi-national, try and get re-located to a 1st world country. The aim is to do one move at least every 2 years * This means there is no real effective on the job training or continuity. * This appears to be a bell curve which is now settling down * There are lots more uneducated people in India who are willing to work for peanuts - if you leave the cities. * This means there is massive competition for the best jobs and only the best get them.
It's supply and demand, but the bright side for 1st world tech workers seems to be that supply and demand works for them too - that because we're not trying to be the cheapest monkey possible, that we can concentrate on quality - and when it comes to most tech work (for example my field of asics) the wage bill is the smallest of your expenses - you might as well get the best quality you can.
Whether you be in India, South Africa, US, England or wherever you are only going to have a job if you are one of the best - everywhere has competition. Repeat after me, I am not owed a job, I earn a job. Be in the top 10% and you'll always have a job. the top 50% and you'll usually have a job, the bottom 50% and you might want to consider other career options...
A lot of people are saying 'great a a tax, now I can download for free and not worry about being sued'
Not going to argue with that, but what I will say is I can't but think of the precident in the UK with the BBC. Theoretically I have already paid for all the content the BBC produces. Therefore I should own the copyright to it? Then why the hell are the BBC DVDs I buy copyright BBC Worldwide? Why don't I own the copyright to the BBC DVDs I bought? Is anyone aware of a case of the BBC suing someone for copyright infringement who has a TV license*?
Times like this I try to forget what the law says and ask what is fair. I also remember that the copyright holder has the right to do whatever they like with their product** - I have no need to use it if I am not happy with their terms. i.e. am I actually that worse of because Joe Blogs has released XYZ piece of music under terms that I feel are unacceptable, than I would be if Joe Blogs had never produced that piece of music at all?
Can we have the next slashdot poll as what encourages you to buy music - be it hearing a song on the radio, from an mp3 copied from a friend, from a CD borrowed from a collegue etc. I know I have never bought Music without listening to it via some free method first. To shut down all avenues of free music would stop me dead.
* Yes there were a few cases a while ago, but this was before the BBC had the whole lost Dr Who episode debacle. ** Your own definition of Fair rights of course must stand up in court.
Exactly! A conspiracy by the voters against the politicians, a secret society hiding on the internet to undermine their duly elected officials by giving their opinions and findings.
"ike it will cost you an average of $500,000 to get a seat" And there is your problem - ask why it takes $500,000 to get a seat.
Because people vote for a face they're familiar with, regardless of how well they know them; and because $500,000 is how much buisnesses are prepared to pay for the ammount of power they can get from this person.
Not an easy problem to fix, but the best one I see is either make publicity cheaper with the internet, and/or remove the ammount of power those people have and spread it around a bit more. Unless someone has a better idea?
can we not fight our own FUD campain back - above and beyond the whinging on slashdot I mean.
Maybe the linux users/evangelists need to learn some of MS' tricks:
* Have big homogenous release shcedules to create a buzz around it - instead of "vista" I propose a linux equivalent - How about lots of buildup to the Iceberg release of Linux? Glacial linux also springs to mind and would also describe a release schedule to mirror vista. * Point out all the things that still aren't in vista that are in Linux - complain that they are stealing the community's ideas. * Put in DRM that prevents anyone with the email address @microsoft.com from working * Develop lots of new protocols for the things MS claims compatibility with so that anything they say about compatability with Linux will be very difficult to justify - and if they try to merge in the source code to keep up, then you have them for infringement. * Hit them with a lawcase saying that XYZ feature in vista is copied from GPL'd code. Demand they prove that they don't infringe it.
Ok I know for the most part these things are either currently done, or it is a matter of pride that they aren't done. However some fire with fire would be fun!
Humm Time to hit the pub to get some more ideas i feel!
I like to compare patents to WMDs. The small boys often don't have many, or at least just enough to look after their immediate interests. The big boys have WMDs for every situation.
Should MS & IBM start to fight over Linux infinging on patents, be prepared for an IP equivalent of WWIII.
This could be the best thing to ever to happen to open source - I hope MS try and sue as many as possible - they don't have a leg to stand on - any action they take apart from spreading FUD harms them. Yet not attacking someone and carrying on making vague claims will (hopefully) hurt them in the future, because should in this future this come to court, the court will/should ask - why didn't you do something about it earlier?
And when I worked at nortel they had lab kit downstairs that was 4Tbit down a single fibre - the joys of DWDM - used for long distance links so you got the most out of your optical amplifiers/transatlantic links.
Last i heard this stuff was in the field, but it wasn't ethernet (If i remember correctly, a concatonation of a number of STM-64 streams). For me the news here is that they're using Ethernet (a lan protocol from the 80s) for serious MAN deployments; Not to be sneezed at, but WDM is hardly new technology!
Not quite: Such a wide guage had a number of problems; namly its ability to turn corners fast (not much use for the north of england which is reasonably hilly and used for much of the frieght at the time because of the industry around there) and the difficulty of operating points on such a system. Not that these problems weren't solvable, but like all things in enginerring it's a compromise to best fit your current problem.
So yes I agree this is all very interesting and a I'd love to investigate all these things in more detail- but to state as fact that that is where oil came from when there is no such proof is bad science at the very least! For example if we could swap keeping hubble up for a detailed misson to these moons to find out more about them, then would that be a worthy trade? I think so - but maybe it's a good job I don;t crntol the budget. I'm just sorry JIMO got canned! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus
I was discussing this with a workmate who used to work for an Australian Chip and Pin reader manufacturer.
The bank does know if it is a standard swipe & signature or swipe and pin or chip and pin transaction. It is safe to assume this new system of RFID will show up as a different authentication process. Likewise the ammount charged by the credit card provider to the store is proporional to the security of the transaction - over telephone/net is the most expensive - chip and pin in person is the cheapest. There are also limits to the ammount they will allow unverified by each method also dependng on security. So yes the bank can tell the difference, they have to to charge the correct ammount - and to serve out the correct authentication protocol. In fact the Chip and Pin card readers are uniquely serial coded - so while it is possible to breach them, as soon as the fraud is recognised and individual terminal can be blocked and all the transactions it recorded traced.
Therefore I'd expect to see RFID limited to smaller transactions - i.e. if I walk out of tesco with a sandwich, this is all automatically detected and charged to my RFID credit card - if I walk out with a TV, I'd hope they asked me to enter in my pin number.
I doubt the banks want to lose money or have lots of people challenging transactions any more than you do - calls to the call centre aren't free yet:-)
Weren't the russian worried about the shuttle as a prelude to militarising space? As in a cheap way to shift lots of hubble like devices up there for spy satellites? Soon to be followed by a few space stations/weapons platforms. I wonder is space had been militarised sooner (early 80s) the shuttle's history would have been very different...
/me puts on his "I'm an englishman hat" England - known for being small, lots of houses close together. The economy seems these days to be mostly driven by credit gained from house prices. By this logic we'd have lots of home owners associations dictating what I can do with my house. Yet we don't. I don;t understand why. Cookie* to anyone who can come up with a good reason
This is as far as i have seen the English default. With the second addition that meeting rooms and managers offices are in the middle of the room, cubicles around the outside. This way, those that are boxed in anyway, are boxed in, and the most people get the most benefit from natural light. Also the walls are much lower than those I've seen in America - mine are at the moment approx 3 1/2' high so you get lots of natural light and don't feel like you're boxed in. The only problem is when you have people on the telephone - but most of the time you just walk over to talk to someone rather than phone them, or in the cases when there is a need to have a long conversation with someone offsite, most people grab one of the huddle rooms.
How americans work in those cube farms as i saw them the one time I visited is beyond me! I need natural light, I need to be around people, and i hate being boxed in. Still each to their own...
Supercomputers are devices for turning Compute bound problems into I/O bound problems? if every desktop is bound by I/O, then that's an interesting place to be.
I guess you were going for funny here, but: Why have 8 Oxen doing speculative operations (and failing most of the time) when you could have 80 chickens doing only what you needed. i.e if you accept memory badwidth is your limit, then only do the instrucitons you have to. 200 processes across 80 cores doing only the things they have to vs a few cores doing branch prediction and guessin like hell, the chickens sounds like a better deal to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Having lived in some very dodgy neighbourhoods I'd have welcomed that bobby escorting me out of my home and into work (the joys of being a student and walking/cycling everywhere).
Now before anyone cries 1984, the problem I see is not what I believe most people seem to think - I see 3 problems:
1) Abuse of power
Now one problem we see is that if this information is only available to law officers, then corruption is possible and officers can be selective. This makes an existing problem worse, but people seem to be slightly happy with being let off for profuse apologies, or for being a celebrity. Corruption and abuse of power is there, this just makes the law enforcers more powerful.
Suggestions on this groud strike me of arguments that cars above a certain power rating/weight should be banned because they are more dangerous to others.
2) Change of un-just law
An effective form of protest is to publicly break an unjust law with the intention of being caught. This sort of technology may make such a protest harder.
3) Publicly/corporatly available data
making this information more publicly available may help reduce problem 1, but how would you like your (potential) boss to know that you were taking a stroll around the red light distrit over the weekend - noting unlawful there, but the technology for such a search could soon be feasable.
I often imagine that the average Babylonian citizen would be shocked and dismayed at the level of government intrusion into our lives, and they would have the same reaction that a lot of people on slashdot have. I'd still rather live in England now with all its cameras than ancient Babylon with its limited law and order.
Instead of seeing the problems with surveylence and asking how we stop surverylance, why not ask what really are the problems of surveylance and how do we get the benefits without the problems.
That said I still refuse to visit the US because of their insistance on fingerprinting all visitors - I sense some inconsistency here in my views...
Yet Lawyers are well paid throughout the world.
My housemate is from South Africa and I was having a debate with her about this recently:
Long story short:
The tech jobs are already comming to South Africa.
They have a massive immigrant problem from people in neighbouring poorer countries comming in - so it has started in the south and is spreading through Africa from there.
This means no social security, and LOTS of competition and motivation - no-one dares be out of a job, or slacking on the job or they'll be out of a job and on the street
This also means lots of crime
There's a lot of money to be made there for anyone who's willing to move
There's massive competition for jobs both tech and service. Only the best get them.
I have a few workmates who are from India
Long story short:
* The career ladder is, work for local company, work for small international company based over there, work for multi-national, try and get re-located to a 1st world country. The aim is to do one move at least every 2 years
* This means there is no real effective on the job training or continuity.
* This appears to be a bell curve which is now settling down
* There are lots more uneducated people in India who are willing to work for peanuts - if you leave the cities.
* This means there is massive competition for the best jobs and only the best get them.
It's supply and demand, but the bright side for 1st world tech workers seems to be that supply and demand works for them too - that because we're not trying to be the cheapest monkey possible, that we can concentrate on quality - and when it comes to most tech work (for example my field of asics) the wage bill is the smallest of your expenses - you might as well get the best quality you can.
Whether you be in India, South Africa, US, England or wherever you are only going to have a job if you are one of the best - everywhere has competition. Repeat after me, I am not owed a job, I earn a job.
Be in the top 10% and you'll always have a job. the top 50% and you'll usually have a job, the bottom 50% and you might want to consider other career options...
A lot of people are saying 'great a a tax, now I can download for free and not worry about being sued'
Not going to argue with that, but what I will say is I can't but think of the precident in the UK with the BBC. Theoretically I have already paid for all the content the BBC produces. Therefore I should own the copyright to it? Then why the hell are the BBC DVDs I buy copyright BBC Worldwide? Why don't I own the copyright to the BBC DVDs I bought? Is anyone aware of a case of the BBC suing someone for copyright infringement who has a TV license*?
Times like this I try to forget what the law says and ask what is fair. I also remember that the copyright holder has the right to do whatever they like with their product** - I have no need to use it if I am not happy with their terms. i.e. am I actually that worse of because Joe Blogs has released XYZ piece of music under terms that I feel are unacceptable, than I would be if Joe Blogs had never produced that piece of music at all?
Can we have the next slashdot poll as what encourages you to buy music - be it hearing a song on the radio, from an mp3 copied from a friend, from a CD borrowed from a collegue etc. I know I have never bought Music without listening to it via some free method first. To shut down all avenues of free music would stop me dead.
* Yes there were a few cases a while ago, but this was before the BBC had the whole lost Dr Who episode debacle.
** Your own definition of Fair rights of course must stand up in court.
Exactly! A conspiracy by the voters against the politicians, a secret society hiding on the internet to undermine their duly elected officials by giving their opinions and findings.
Shocking!
"ike it will cost you an average of $500,000 to get a seat"
And there is your problem - ask why it takes $500,000 to get a seat.
Because people vote for a face they're familiar with, regardless of how well they know them; and because $500,000 is how much buisnesses are prepared to pay for the ammount of power they can get from this person.
Not an easy problem to fix, but the best one I see is either make publicity cheaper with the internet, and/or remove the ammount of power those people have and spread it around a bit more.
Unless someone has a better idea?
If by "bought" you mean 'follow the terms of the BSD license and use for whatever the hell you want at no cost whatsoever' then yes they bought it
can we not fight our own FUD campain back - above and beyond the whinging on slashdot I mean.
Maybe the linux users/evangelists need to learn some of MS' tricks:
* Have big homogenous release shcedules to create a buzz around it - instead of "vista" I propose a linux equivalent - How about lots of buildup to the Iceberg release of Linux? Glacial linux also springs to mind and would also describe a release schedule to mirror vista.
* Point out all the things that still aren't in vista that are in Linux - complain that they are stealing the community's ideas.
* Put in DRM that prevents anyone with the email address @microsoft.com from working
* Develop lots of new protocols for the things MS claims compatibility with so that anything they say about compatability with Linux will be very difficult to justify - and if they try to merge in the source code to keep up, then you have them for infringement.
* Hit them with a lawcase saying that XYZ feature in vista is copied from GPL'd code. Demand they prove that they don't infringe it.
Ok I know for the most part these things are either currently done, or it is a matter of pride that they aren't done. However some fire with fire would be fun!
Humm Time to hit the pub to get some more ideas i feel!
I like to compare patents to WMDs.
The small boys often don't have many, or at least just enough to look after their immediate interests.
The big boys have WMDs for every situation.
Should MS & IBM start to fight over Linux infinging on patents, be prepared for an IP equivalent of WWIII.
This could be the best thing to ever to happen to open source - I hope MS try and sue as many as possible - they don't have a leg to stand on - any action they take apart from spreading FUD harms them.
Yet not attacking someone and carrying on making vague claims will (hopefully) hurt them in the future, because should in this future this come to court, the court will/should ask - why didn't you do something about it earlier?
And when I worked at nortel they had lab kit downstairs that was 4Tbit down a single fibre - the joys of DWDM - used for long distance links so you got the most out of your optical amplifiers/transatlantic links.
Last i heard this stuff was in the field, but it wasn't ethernet (If i remember correctly, a concatonation of a number of STM-64 streams).
For me the news here is that they're using Ethernet (a lan protocol from the 80s) for serious MAN deployments; Not to be sneezed at, but WDM is hardly new technology!
Not quite:
Such a wide guage had a number of problems; namly its ability to turn corners fast (not much use for the north of england which is reasonably hilly and used for much of the frieght at the time because of the industry around there) and the difficulty of operating points on such a system. Not that these problems weren't solvable, but like all things in enginerring it's a compromise to best fit your current problem.
You just need a really long bit of bungie rope
Note your link itself admits it's a theory, there are alternte theories about where oil came from, from your own link:o rigin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_
Also do all complex hydrocarbons require bio-mass?
what about the methane on various moons of the solar system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)
So yes I agree this is all very interesting and a I'd love to investigate all these things in more detail- but to state as fact that that is where oil came from when there is no such proof is bad science at the very least!
For example if we could swap keeping hubble up for a detailed misson to these moons to find out more about them, then would that be a worthy trade? I think so - but maybe it's a good job I don;t crntol the budget. I'm just sorry JIMO got canned!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus
I was discussing this with a workmate who used to work for an Australian Chip and Pin reader manufacturer.
:-)
The bank does know if it is a standard swipe & signature or swipe and pin or chip and pin transaction. It is safe to assume this new system of RFID will show up as a different authentication process.
Likewise the ammount charged by the credit card provider to the store is proporional to the security of the transaction - over telephone/net is the most expensive - chip and pin in person is the cheapest. There are also limits to the ammount they will allow unverified by each method also dependng on security.
So yes the bank can tell the difference, they have to to charge the correct ammount - and to serve out the correct authentication protocol. In fact the Chip and Pin card readers are uniquely serial coded - so while it is possible to breach them, as soon as the fraud is recognised and individual terminal can be blocked and all the transactions it recorded traced.
Therefore I'd expect to see RFID limited to smaller transactions - i.e. if I walk out of tesco with a sandwich, this is all automatically detected and charged to my RFID credit card - if I walk out with a TV, I'd hope they asked me to enter in my pin number.
I doubt the banks want to lose money or have lots of people challenging transactions any more than you do - calls to the call centre aren't free yet
So does that mean we shgould charge slashdot for the time wasted on here then?
Save the environment, save electricity - shut down slashdot!
Weren't the russian worried about the shuttle as a prelude to militarising space? As in a cheap way to shift lots of hubble like devices up there for spy satellites?
Soon to be followed by a few space stations/weapons platforms.
I wonder is space had been militarised sooner (early 80s) the shuttle's history would have been very different...
Well there's lots of methand in/on Uranus and Neptune.
Let's all head there!
We'll need nuke power ships to get there and back with the cargo, but hey! Let's keep those pumps flowing
Bush's response:
"Right then civilians, you want to bear arms in space, go ahead, simply head in that direction at mach 25"
Now the question of if they could be doing more/less to help that aim is another question...
/me puts on his "I'm an englishman hat"
England - known for being small, lots of houses close together. The economy seems these days to be mostly driven by credit gained from house prices.
By this logic we'd have lots of home owners associations dictating what I can do with my house.
Yet we don't.
I don;t understand why.
Cookie* to anyone who can come up with a good reason
*postage not included
This is as far as i have seen the English default.
With the second addition that meeting rooms and managers offices are in the middle of the room, cubicles around the outside. This way, those that are boxed in anyway, are boxed in, and the most people get the most benefit from natural light.
Also the walls are much lower than those I've seen in America - mine are at the moment approx 3 1/2' high so you get lots of natural light and don't feel like you're boxed in.
The only problem is when you have people on the telephone - but most of the time you just walk over to talk to someone rather than phone them, or in the cases when there is a need to have a long conversation with someone offsite, most people grab one of the huddle rooms.
How americans work in those cube farms as i saw them the one time I visited is beyond me! I need natural light, I need to be around people, and i hate being boxed in. Still each to their own...
Supercomputers are devices for turning Compute bound problems into I/O bound problems?
if every desktop is bound by I/O, then that's an interesting place to be.
I guess you were going for funny here, but:
Why have 8 Oxen doing speculative operations (and failing most of the time) when you could have 80 chickens doing only what you needed.
i.e if you accept memory badwidth is your limit, then only do the instrucitons you have to. 200 processes across 80 cores doing only the things they have to vs a few cores doing branch prediction and guessin like hell, the chickens sounds like a better deal to me.
Hey we all have our personal problems - she's depressed enough already without you making it worse!
Did anyone else think of the solaris?_ gold
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_cities_of
I can't wait until they work on the giant condor - all that gold could cost a little more than this $1/2 Million though...
Maybe we found our first Mega Structure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_Cassus
Would explain a few things...