I'm thinking the same thing. At some point, desktop developers the world over decided that buttons should look like radioactive throat lozenges, etc. I want small, distinctive, contrasty icons. I want one display, so I can keep everything the same between a laptop and a desktop. I use a very small panel, then add a second just above it, which contains my pager and taskbar. The total size is about the same as the panel alone on a default installation. The best icons I've seen for this purpose are KDE Classic.
I use 9 desktops, and keep things pretty rigidly sorted by habits I developed long ago. Kontact is always on 1, chat is on 2, etc., all the way up to music on 8, and Konsole (usually half a dozen named ssh sessions open) on 9. So going pretty much anywhere is just a CTRL-n away, and maybe an ALT-TAB or two. It happens by reflex.
My other quirk is the taskbar setup. I'm right handed, and scroll bars are on the right anyway. So I keep the KDE button, application buttons, and a couple of menu packages (editors and utils) on the right. I keep the clock in the center as a divider, and the system tray, which I use comparatively little, on the left. My mouse usage is predominantly lower right, or upper left, since you can't change that in apps. I'd reverse app toolbars if I could, and my pointer would very seldom leave the right side of the screen. As it is, I'm not darting the pointer all over the screen half as much as many users.
I'm not into beauty. I want to hammer work out. It's just as well, because things that some users seem to really appreciate, such as file previews, I've no use for. I use a detailed list view to get the details I need (mod times, etc.) on directory hierarchies that are often both deep and stuffed. Spacial file managers are obviously a complete non-starter for me. How pretty can you make previews of text files, anyway? 90% of the files I'm looking at are text.
I'm almost always either writing code, testing code, or documenting code. I want a desktop that stays out of my way, and lets me Get Stuff Done. End of story. To me, beauty is just a distraction, leads to larger icons for equal clarity, etc. Overall, less information density. To me, beauty on a computer is in the code, the algorithm, the data structure, the architecture--solving the current problem. When I want beauty of other sorts--well that's what that whole 'non-work' thing is for. No computer required or desired.
I know I'm a corner case, but I hope the authors of coming versions of KDE don't forget us worker bees. If so, I'd have to at least look into switching to one of the simpler desktops. And lose the benefits of a lot of really productive habits that I've spent several years consciously developing. I was bummed when KDE decided I had to have Documents, Pictures, Music, (including the caps) etc. directories, and apps that open file selectors into what it thinks are the correct locations, but aren't, and which setup won't let me change! I can lay out my own damn directory structure, thank you very much.
There again--the habits of years. I use directories like 'projects' and 'reference'. One directory named 'personal' contains a sub-directory for 'audio' (it's not all music--which is a sub-directory within 'audio'), etc. My home dir is kept pretty tidy, by choice, and I don't want KDE or anything else to clutter it up. What's next? 'Drawings' and 'Taxes'? Or full-on 'My Computer' and 'My Documents'?
I designed what, to me, was the perfect layout, better than ten years ago. I must have done a good job, because there have been almost no changes to rsync scripts, etc. It sane. It ain't broke. As I routinely develop on a couple of machines with no GUI, I don't like letting a GUI lay this stuff out for me. I wanted to scp, rsync, or whatever between them, without having to remember that this machine has no GUI, so it has no frapping ~/Documents/projects. Just ~/projects. So that damned ~/Documents folder never gets used, even on KDE. It's just something I'm always backing out of when I op
"If they say no, then publish their refusal online somewhere, and approach another bank. If they say no, add them to the list. Start sending the list to consumer groups and mainstream media publications. Then contact another bank."
The problem is that then banks that have refused will never work with you in future, if that list is traceable to you. It could be rather easy to trace--a media outlet might sell that bank a lot of advertising, or similar. Banks that you haven't called would probably see it as blackmail, if they knew of it. It's just not a good business practice, particularly for a security guy, where in my experience maintaining a solid trust relationship pays large dividends.
Also, a useful audit is an expensive thing to do [1], and it's still just a snapshot of a moment in time. While you're driving away from this several-day gig, someone could be forgetting to test a patch so that it could be installed on a production machine that night, etc. Random operational errors, even against written procedures, are a huge problem.
Lastly, there's the issue that a bank might well have valid but confidential reasons for declining your offer. They're intrusive, after all, and for all you know they may have a periodic audit scheduled for the following week. Unless you already have a business relationship, and a need to know, they aren't going to be telling you about a coming audit schedule. They shouldn't be, at any rate. That specific scenario could be enough to land you in legal difficulties, and I'm sure you can think of others, now that I've got you started.:)
[1] The IT environment can be complex, with a data flows from Web servers, ATM machines, check imaging systems, clearing houses, log hosts, CRM systems, etc., in and out of a large SMP machine running the OLTP db. You may not even be able to do an audit you'd be happy with, simply because the people you're working with may not know about some of the defenses built into the db itself. Must such systems have internal mechanisms to specifically guard against teller, branch manager, and manager fraud, but details are (quite rightly) hard to come by.
He's provided a lot of useful information to people who aren't security practitioners, exposes a lot of post-9/11 politics of fear, government security theater, etc. I've given away a couple of copies of _Secrets & Lies_ to friends, with good effect. I just don't see his writings as egotistical. He's a known-smart guy. I'm usually willing to read things written by known-smart people. Perhaps I'm just missing something.
Plus, it's hard for me to stay current (probably true for anyone in a technical field, these days), even though I'm in the business. He covers a broad range, which is helpful. For instance, I mostly missed breaking anonymity of data sets. I was too busy the couple of times it was really in the press, and wasn't doing anything related to it at the time. Keeping feeds from his blog and Wired in my aggregator jogs me to get back to things I had to ignore at the time, and usually provides links to the research papers, where that's appropriate.
If I had any complaint, it would probably be that he's biased toward outsourced security. I'm a recipient of outsourced security work, so stating that is probably acting against my own best interests. But I'm trying to be fair.
LOL. Figures that when I do a post that mentions Roving Bands of Managers, a CTO would be reading the thread. I've always been lucky that way...
OTOH, I wish CTOs who were also CS majors would post in a lot more places. For example http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/20/motoring_offences_clampdown/ has the math wrong. They forgot/2. A CTO/CS major might be able to write directly to an editor, and have some effect on editorial policy.
I guess I just wish CTOs would encourage their people to post in public fora as a Good Thing. You would, in general terms, encourage employee membership in USENIX/SAGE/ACM, right? What those orgs do is disseminate knowledge. I wonder if corporate officers couldn't have more an effect, with a minor bit of employee encouragement, than USENIX/SAGE/ACM combined.
I'll likely be wondering for some time, as I don't see any way to develop metrics via postings. You'd have to send talent to a college or something if you had to have metrics. So it's not likely to happen. OTOH, maybe just advertising that some percentage of time is devoted to edu would grab some Google-like good will, and good will can go on the balance sheet...
I'm dead-on with you for all of your first para. That's the better world, and not seen remotely often enough.
Re: the second para, using email as a message-passing interface. I've an example that backs up your first para.
I once created such a beast, horrible as it is, in concept. The data source was commercial software that couldn't emit anything but warning emails, and the demands upon the system I needed to create demonstrably wouldn't grow beyond a message count in the low hundreds in any 24-hour period.
Several years later, no scalability tweaks have had to be added, as it's still operating well within original constraints on message counts, and meeting the need. The admins have a firm handle on it, etc. A nasty concept, from a pure developer POV, that proved to be a solid win.
Here's the interesting bit--I wrote it as a developer who was then working in an admin group. More focus on clear commenting than clever code, etc. I knew the people that would have to maintain it after I left, wrote it for that maintainer audience, left an overview and design doc, etc. No way was I going to subject them to 3AM support calls--these were a group of people that had all helped me out, when I was the one getting the 3AM call as a newbie admin, and who I might be having a beer with after work. I'm funny about that--anyone who bales me out of a jam at 3AM, when they really didn't have to, is someone I'm likely to have a beer with. I couldn't care less if they're a Microsoft or Linux fan, from the developer or admin side of the fence, etc.
It's amazing how well even some bizarre (and using an MTA as a programmatic messaging interface certainly meets that description) concepts can work quite well, if everyone is actually on the same side, and talking.
I've other examples, such as convincing a developer of the Microsoft persuasion who was responsible for several internal Web apps that using IE-only extensions would hose some people that did Unix development, and rarely even looked at their Win machines. We ended up investing something like half a day's time swapping some ideas and code around, and that was sorted. Neither manager involved had a problem with it, when it went into our weekly reports. My boss just expected that sort of thing out of me, the LAN app developer got a kudo out of it, and another interdepartmental bridge was built. There was no downside anywhere; everything was either neutral or up. That's a win, by my definition.
Religious wars are tons of fun on Slashdot, where we can mod each other as trolls, etc. This is a voluntary playground where we can all happily fight amongst ourselves, and no harm done. Religious wars carried into the workplace tend to suck, with rare exceptions.
Users v Admins is yet another category of religious war, and has been for at least 30 years. It's further complicated by the fact that the role of IT can (and does) vary from org to org. Sometimes it follows a role somewhat like you'd find described in a college's curricula listing, but they sometimes absorb more MIS-like functions, etc.
One large factor that keeps the war burning brightly is that the relative skills between various user communities and an administration community is also all over the map. I've seen developer groups who were purely code-monkeys, and made some very bad calls on software that they would then have thrown over the fence for an admin group to support, no matter the (large) impact on that support group, if someone from an admin group hadn't been able to do some basic sanity checking. OTOH, I've seen groups of users thrashing about trying to accomplish even the simplest thing, because some bit of software they needed had been wedged in the IT approval loop for several months.
Another factor is that admins often have little concept of what the developer has to deal with on a daily basis, and vice-versa. In my experience, this one doesn't get enough attention, and it often leads to people from different groups talking past each other, instead of helping each other.
Better communications, and a bit of experience on both sides of the fence, often helps people find some commonality of experience. I know I've usually had buddies (and people I didn't were too clueful) in both broad groups, in any org I've worked with. If nothing else, you can always band together with admins in mutual hatred of Roving Bands of Managers, thereby moving the religious wars to a different level.
I don't mean to deprive anyone of the pleasures of a religious war. If the two groups could somehow band together, but somehow not against Roving Bands of Managers, all is not lost. Developers can always fight other developers in the language wars, etc. Well, actually *both* sides can do that, so never mind. But admins can always fight the MTA wars, or similar, amongst themselves, while developers can argue about the One True Way to do IPC, etc.
As far as I can tell, it's turtles all the way down.
Uh, no. Most of the species figured that out PDQ. There are also these things called search engines. One of the really choice things about them is that they can be used to find answers to questions that you can't quite puzzle out on your own.
If you think search engines are likely to simply remain beyond you, you might just look at some film sites. For instance, by 2002, The British Film Institute had it on their list of the top ten films of all time. http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics.html
Even the Internet Movie Database has a plot synopsis that should clear it all up for you. In an effort to be helpful, I'm leaving that URL as an exercise you might find useful in stretching your mind.
Some of it's on YouTube. Have a search for the third part of the Antikythera video. That was was what first brought home to me some hint of what a tremendous loss to humanity the destruction of the Library at Alexandria was. He makes a reasonable argument that it cost us 2,000 years of technological development.
The man impacted all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways.
His BBC obit is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2358011.stm Same text. Yes, he had an unconventional lifestyle. That's not the same as stating that he had an unconventional _sexual_ lifestyle.
Nor would it be any of my business, unless he was doing something heinous enough for me to boycott his work. While molesting children of either sex would definitely qualify, the story (in a UK paper that's little, if any, better than a US supermarket tabloid) was bogus. They were then forced to print a retraction, as mentioned above.
See: http://www.mirror.co.uk/ and judge for yourself. Title of the home page is "Celebrity, Football, and Today's News Headlines." Of course, it might be less likely that anyone will hold their feet to the fire if they were to publish something more, now that he's gone. It wouldn't surprise me if a rag like the Mirror were to quote Sir Arthur's bisexual martian lover in tomorrow's edition, and be repeated by similar publications. The Mirror is probably quite popular amongst those who are limited to slowly puzzling out the words.
Resolution increases linearly with aperture. The effective aperture for the LBT would then be the separation of the two telescopes plus twice the aperture (8.4 m) of either. You only get that increased resolution directly along only one axis--the one through both telescopes. So you take multiple images and do some math, and in many cases you should be able to arrive at the max resolution--which is equivalent to a single instrument of 22.8 m aperture.
See my post above, open the 'why build' link in another tab, and scroll down to the simulated infrared images of Io. Now see http://www.keckobservatory.org/article.php?id=54 which is another image of Io in infrared, from Keck, which is a very large, highly-capable system, at one of the best sites in the world. If the LBT reality is as good as the simulations--wow.
BTW, the light-gathering power varies as the square of aperture. So this pair of 8.4 m mirrors gives you the equivalent of a single 11.8 m instrument. So as a light-bucket, it's quite as much of a win as it is in resolution. But 11.8 m is still huge. The Keck telescopes are 10 m., for instance, and astronomers were stoked about them coming on line.
This stuff knocks me out. I remember seeing images of the Jovian moons in which you barely tell Io was a bit off-white.
Judging from the sig, the name of the band, mail address, and prodding various servers, I think we are indeed talking about the same library. If the main library is within, say, 500 yards of _the_ mall, the name of the street between the old and new locations begins with 'W' and ends with 'y', then I'd call the odds extremely high.
They can be low cost gateways to a *lot* of Internet material you'd have to pay for. I can hit my public library's Web site, and have access to full text articles from 11,000+ magazines, archives of the state's leading newspaper, the local paper (back to 1859), all sorts of databases, etc. The list goes on and on. Most of it, of course, I don't use. But what I do use, I have to spend several hundred dollars to get without that library card obtained at nominal expense, then renewed for free.
It's also a pleasant, relaxing space. I enjoy being there.
It also has *books*. I can scan through several physical books I lost faster than I can perform the equivalent operation over the Web, even if the books were there. Checkout period is three weeks, and I can renew on the Web site. I won't even go into the audio/video aspects.
It also has *librarians*. The ones I've asked for help have been great; knowledgeable, friendly, and available. You get that sense that you're dealing with someone who enjoys their job. They also get points from me for ruining former Attorney General John Ashcroft's day when they fought him over warrant-less searches of what citizens read, etc., due to some of the more despicable bits of the Patriot Act. So anyone who wants to think of librarians as a bunch of little old ladies might stop and conjure an image of little old ladies putting down their knitting, and picking up their war axes.
This is in a town of about 50,000 people. The main library is centrally enough located that I drive within 2-3 blocks of it at least once or twice a week, without fail, but parking is dead easy. It's a great local resource, well worth supporting, and many people do. In fact, it's getting a much larger building, with a new location within about two hundred yards of the current location.
I just don't see it going away. In the first what, 13-14 [1] years or so of mass Internet, my local library hasn't just survived, it's thrived.
[1] I don't know how most people judge the arrival of mass Internet. I know I was building Web sites in 1994, and at the time I had to explain to most people what a Web site was.
But if you could somehow double that headcount, Starbucks would open a shop. That would drive launch costs down, allowing further expansion, etc. A virtuous circle.
I wouldn't be too sure of that (casting a cunning, but somehow suave glance over shoulder), as some believe that the Illuminati have timed various peaks to coincide, causing massive disruption, and further their Shadow Government agenda.
So far, we're looking at Music and Oil peaks in the 1997-2000 time frame. Your 1988 claim is well outside. It's possible that you're correct, if other peaks are considered. For instance, there's a possible Mutant Humor Flick peak as early as '83, with the release of Strange Brew. http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=strange+brew&x=0&y=0&=go
That's somewhat scary, as it would seem to indicate a broad peak, and correspondingly poor usefulness as means of predicting future events. By your reasoning, the peak is so broad that we've yet to see the trailing edge. What would you have us do, invent bizarre new metrics? Peak of Brittney Lunacy? Peak of Ozzy's IQ? OK, ignore that last. But you know what I mean.
So do the Illuminati, and their henchmen, the NSA. Take care in what you say, my friend. They know whether or not you ate corn last night. If by some chance they don't, a simple Probe will tell them, and you'll be left with nothing but confused memories of gray aliens and bright lights.
Well, presumably you'll be left with some residual bits of corn, as well. Every cloud has a silver lining.
"The fly-by-wire system of the 777 is indeed based on Token Ring"
That seemed unreasonable, going by '787 is latest thing, can an aircraft one model number earlier be old enough to use to use Token Ring'? Wikipedia says the 777 rolled out in 1993, based upon a basic design begun in 1990. So I absolutely believe that.
Times change, and we're now in an Ethernet world. I'm familiar with snipping the transmit wire, for purposes such rendering Intrusion Detection System sensors less detectable by attackers. That means no handshake, and no reliable delivery, but that seems good enough in your scenario of squirting nav system data into the passenger information system, for 'you are here' purposes.
I wonder if it didn't start out that way, then the Sales and Marketing people had Brilliant Ideas, and feature creep set in. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen something like that. Perhaps I was too quick to blame some engineer, who might well have had a firm handle on the problem, but was overruled.
According to http://www.lsst.org/About/Tour/software.shtml "Current projects show that approximately 5000 mathematical operations are required per pixel of the image to process and classify survey data. Scaling this to the size of the LSST data stream shows that approximately a thousand of today's high-end processors will be required a feasible proposition. Advances in processor power over the next five years will reduce this number to a few hundred, by which time the required LSST computer system will seem quite pedestrian. Storing this data is also well within even today's technology. At current prices, a one-petabyte disk storage system costs less than $1 million; in five years this price should drop to well below $100,000. Keeping all of the LSST data online will certainly be affordable."
Windows may not play a central data reduction role, unless Microsoft can support 100 CPUs within the next six years. Of course six calendar years is a long time in techo-years. By then, perhaps the data analysis would be done on game consoles.
Deprecate: 1. trans. To pray against (evil); to pray for deliverance from; to seek to avert by prayer. arch.
Well, there's a bit of history behind it. Various 'X considered harmful' articles. 'Evil' also gets heavy usage in the hacker vocabulary, and that moves up into more mainstream IT-speak, and also into non-IT language. Notice how 'parse' has come into common use over the past few years? Ten years ago, I very seldom heard that word in other than a software context.
Language evolves, and I've completely failed to keep the kids off my lawn. Now I reserve serious dislike for words like 'meh', which can mean one thing, it's polar opposite, or indeed anything at all.
"If what TFA claims is really true, i.e. that the passenger network is physically connected to the control and navigation system, then someone should get fired for this."
If you meant that in an 'out of a cannon' sense, then I'd agree. But there's a weakness at the FAA as well. I checked the FAA doc linked from TFA (the cryptome.org mirror, actually), and found this:
"Because of this new passenger connectivity, the proposed data network design and integration may result in security vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane. The existing regulations and guidance material did not anticipate this type of system architecture or electronic access to aircraft systems that provide flight critical functions. Furthermore, 14 CFR regulations and current system safety assessment policy and techniques do not address potential security vulnerabilities that could be caused by unauthorized access to aircraft data buses and servers. Therefore, special conditions are imposed to ensure that security, integrity, and availability of the aircraft systems and data networks are not compromised by certain wired or wireless electronic connections between airplane data buses and networks."
I'd *like* to be stunned and amazed at multiple levels of problems. Unfortunately, I'm not. People never learn. Take a random walk through most large cube farms, and I'd bet you'll find at least one password on a Post-It note.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking the same thing. At some point, desktop developers the world over decided that buttons should look like radioactive throat lozenges, etc. I want small, distinctive, contrasty icons. I want one display, so I can keep everything the same between a laptop and a desktop. I use a very small panel, then add a second just above it, which contains my pager and taskbar. The total size is about the same as the panel alone on a default installation. The best icons I've seen for this purpose are KDE Classic.
I use 9 desktops, and keep things pretty rigidly sorted by habits I developed long ago. Kontact is always on 1, chat is on 2, etc., all the way up to music on 8, and Konsole (usually half a dozen named ssh sessions open) on 9. So going pretty much anywhere is just a CTRL-n away, and maybe an ALT-TAB or two. It happens by reflex.
My other quirk is the taskbar setup. I'm right handed, and scroll bars are on the right anyway. So I keep the KDE button, application buttons, and a couple of menu packages (editors and utils) on the right. I keep the clock in the center as a divider, and the system tray, which I use comparatively little, on the left. My mouse usage is predominantly lower right, or upper left, since you can't change that in apps. I'd reverse app toolbars if I could, and my pointer would very seldom leave the right side of the screen. As it is, I'm not darting the pointer all over the screen half as much as many users.
I'm not into beauty. I want to hammer work out. It's just as well, because things that some users seem to really appreciate, such as file previews, I've no use for. I use a detailed list view to get the details I need (mod times, etc.) on directory hierarchies that are often both deep and stuffed. Spacial file managers are obviously a complete non-starter for me. How pretty can you make previews of text files, anyway? 90% of the files I'm looking at are text.
I'm almost always either writing code, testing code, or documenting code. I want a desktop that stays out of my way, and lets me Get Stuff Done. End of story. To me, beauty is just a distraction, leads to larger icons for equal clarity, etc. Overall, less information density. To me, beauty on a computer is in the code, the algorithm, the data structure, the architecture--solving the current problem. When I want beauty of other sorts--well that's what that whole 'non-work' thing is for. No computer required or desired.
I know I'm a corner case, but I hope the authors of coming versions of KDE don't forget us worker bees. If so, I'd have to at least look into switching to one of the simpler desktops. And lose the benefits of a lot of really productive habits that I've spent several years consciously developing. I was bummed when KDE decided I had to have Documents, Pictures, Music, (including the caps) etc. directories, and apps that open file selectors into what it thinks are the correct locations, but aren't, and which setup won't let me change! I can lay out my own damn directory structure, thank you very much.
There again--the habits of years. I use directories like 'projects' and 'reference'. One directory named 'personal' contains a sub-directory for 'audio' (it's not all music--which is a sub-directory within 'audio'), etc. My home dir is kept pretty tidy, by choice, and I don't want KDE or anything else to clutter it up. What's next? 'Drawings' and 'Taxes'? Or full-on 'My Computer' and 'My Documents'?
I designed what, to me, was the perfect layout, better than ten years ago. I must have done a good job, because there have been almost no changes to rsync scripts, etc. It sane. It ain't broke. As I routinely develop on a couple of machines with no GUI, I don't like letting a GUI lay this stuff out for me. I wanted to scp, rsync, or whatever between them, without having to remember that this machine has no GUI, so it has no frapping ~/Documents/projects. Just ~/projects. So that damned ~/Documents folder never gets used, even on KDE. It's just something I'm always backing out of when I op
Hi Raven. Long time, no post swappage.
:)
"If they say no, then publish their refusal online somewhere, and approach another bank. If they say no, add them to the list. Start sending the list to consumer groups and mainstream media publications. Then contact another bank."
The problem is that then banks that have refused will never work with you in future, if that list is traceable to you. It could be rather easy to trace--a media outlet might sell that bank a lot of advertising, or similar. Banks that you haven't called would probably see it as blackmail, if they knew of it. It's just not a good business practice, particularly for a security guy, where in my experience maintaining a solid trust relationship pays large dividends.
Also, a useful audit is an expensive thing to do [1], and it's still just a snapshot of a moment in time. While you're driving away from this several-day gig, someone could be forgetting to test a patch so that it could be installed on a production machine that night, etc. Random operational errors, even against written procedures, are a huge problem.
Lastly, there's the issue that a bank might well have valid but confidential reasons for declining your offer. They're intrusive, after all, and for all you know they may have a periodic audit scheduled for the following week. Unless you already have a business relationship, and a need to know, they aren't going to be telling you about a coming audit schedule. They shouldn't be, at any rate. That specific scenario could be enough to land you in legal difficulties, and I'm sure you can think of others, now that I've got you started.
[1] The IT environment can be complex, with a data flows from Web servers, ATM machines, check imaging systems, clearing houses, log hosts, CRM systems, etc., in and out of a large SMP machine running the OLTP db. You may not even be able to do an audit you'd be happy with, simply because the people you're working with may not know about some of the defenses built into the db itself. Must such systems have internal mechanisms to specifically guard against teller, branch manager, and manager fraud, but details are (quite rightly) hard to come by.
He's provided a lot of useful information to people who aren't security practitioners, exposes a lot of post-9/11 politics of fear, government security theater, etc. I've given away a couple of copies of _Secrets & Lies_ to friends, with good effect. I just don't see his writings as egotistical. He's a known-smart guy. I'm usually willing to read things written by known-smart people. Perhaps I'm just missing something.
Plus, it's hard for me to stay current (probably true for anyone in a technical field, these days), even though I'm in the business. He covers a broad range, which is helpful. For instance, I mostly missed breaking anonymity of data sets. I was too busy the couple of times it was really in the press, and wasn't doing anything related to it at the time. Keeping feeds from his blog and Wired in my aggregator jogs me to get back to things I had to ignore at the time, and usually provides links to the research papers, where that's appropriate.
If I had any complaint, it would probably be that he's biased toward outsourced security. I'm a recipient of outsourced security work, so stating that is probably acting against my own best interests. But I'm trying to be fair.
LOL. Figures that when I do a post that mentions Roving Bands of Managers, a CTO would be reading the thread. I've always been lucky that way...
/2. A CTO/CS major might be able to write directly to an editor, and have some effect on editorial policy.
OTOH, I wish CTOs who were also CS majors would post in a lot more places. For example http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/20/motoring_offences_clampdown/
has the math wrong. They forgot
I guess I just wish CTOs would encourage their people to post in public fora as a Good Thing. You would, in general terms, encourage employee membership in USENIX/SAGE/ACM, right? What those orgs do is disseminate knowledge. I wonder if corporate officers couldn't have more an effect, with a minor bit of employee encouragement, than USENIX/SAGE/ACM combined.
I'll likely be wondering for some time, as I don't see any way to develop metrics via postings. You'd have to send talent to a college or something if you had to have metrics. So it's not likely to happen. OTOH, maybe just advertising that some percentage of time is devoted to edu would grab some Google-like good will, and good will can go on the balance sheet...
I'm dead-on with you for all of your first para. That's the better world, and not seen remotely often enough.
Re: the second para, using email as a message-passing interface. I've an example that backs up your first para.
I once created such a beast, horrible as it is, in concept. The data source was commercial software that couldn't emit anything but warning emails, and the demands upon the system I needed to create demonstrably wouldn't grow beyond a message count in the low hundreds in any 24-hour period.
Several years later, no scalability tweaks have had to be added, as it's still operating well within original constraints on message counts, and meeting the need. The admins have a firm handle on it, etc. A nasty concept, from a pure developer POV, that proved to be a solid win.
Here's the interesting bit--I wrote it as a developer who was then working in an admin group. More focus on clear commenting than clever code, etc. I knew the people that would have to maintain it after I left, wrote it for that maintainer audience, left an overview and design doc, etc. No way was I going to subject them to 3AM support calls--these were a group of people that had all helped me out, when I was the one getting the 3AM call as a newbie admin, and who I might be having a beer with after work. I'm funny about that--anyone who bales me out of a jam at 3AM, when they really didn't have to, is someone I'm likely to have a beer with. I couldn't care less if they're a Microsoft or Linux fan, from the developer or admin side of the fence, etc.
It's amazing how well even some bizarre (and using an MTA as a programmatic messaging interface certainly meets that description) concepts can work quite well, if everyone is actually on the same side, and talking.
I've other examples, such as convincing a developer of the Microsoft persuasion who was responsible for several internal Web apps that using IE-only extensions would hose some people that did Unix development, and rarely even looked at their Win machines. We ended up investing something like half a day's time swapping some ideas and code around, and that was sorted. Neither manager involved had a problem with it, when it went into our weekly reports. My boss just expected that sort of thing out of me, the LAN app developer got a kudo out of it, and another interdepartmental bridge was built. There was no downside anywhere; everything was either neutral or up. That's a win, by my definition.
Religious wars are tons of fun on Slashdot, where we can mod each other as trolls, etc. This is a voluntary playground where we can all happily fight amongst ourselves, and no harm done. Religious wars carried into the workplace tend to suck, with rare exceptions.
Users v Admins is yet another category of religious war, and has been for at least 30 years. It's further complicated by the fact that the role of IT can (and does) vary from org to org. Sometimes it follows a role somewhat like you'd find described in a college's curricula listing, but they sometimes absorb more MIS-like functions, etc.
One large factor that keeps the war burning brightly is that the relative skills between various user communities and an administration community is also all over the map. I've seen developer groups who were purely code-monkeys, and made some very bad calls on software that they would then have thrown over the fence for an admin group to support, no matter the (large) impact on that support group, if someone from an admin group hadn't been able to do some basic sanity checking. OTOH, I've seen groups of users thrashing about trying to accomplish even the simplest thing, because some bit of software they needed had been wedged in the IT approval loop for several months.
Another factor is that admins often have little concept of what the developer has to deal with on a daily basis, and vice-versa. In my experience, this one doesn't get enough attention, and it often leads to people from different groups talking past each other, instead of helping each other.
Better communications, and a bit of experience on both sides of the fence, often helps people find some commonality of experience. I know I've usually had buddies (and people I didn't were too clueful) in both broad groups, in any org I've worked with. If nothing else, you can always band together with admins in mutual hatred of Roving Bands of Managers, thereby moving the religious wars to a different level.
I don't mean to deprive anyone of the pleasures of a religious war. If the two groups could somehow band together, but somehow not against Roving Bands of Managers, all is not lost. Developers can always fight other developers in the language wars, etc. Well, actually *both* sides can do that, so never mind. But admins can always fight the MTA wars, or similar, amongst themselves, while developers can argue about the One True Way to do IPC, etc.
As far as I can tell, it's turtles all the way down.
Uh, no. Most of the species figured that out PDQ. There are also these things called search engines. One of the really choice things about them is that they can be used to find answers to questions that you can't quite puzzle out on your own.
If you think search engines are likely to simply remain beyond you, you might just look at some film sites. For instance, by 2002, The British Film Institute had it on their list of the top ten films of all time.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics.html
Even the Internet Movie Database has a plot synopsis that should clear it all up for you. In an effort to be helpful, I'm leaving that URL as an exercise you might find useful in stretching your mind.
Some of it's on YouTube. Have a search for the third part of the Antikythera video. That was was what first brought home to me some hint of what a tremendous loss to humanity the destruction of the Library at Alexandria was. He makes a reasonable argument that it cost us 2,000 years of technological development.
The man impacted all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways.
Actually, no. The BBC makes no such reference.
Direct quote from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7304004.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2358011.stm
"Although cleared by an investigation, Sir Arthur's unconventional lifestyle continued to cause some raised eyebrows."
His BBC obit is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2358011.stm
Same text. Yes, he had an unconventional lifestyle. That's not the same as stating that he had an unconventional _sexual_ lifestyle.
Nor would it be any of my business, unless he was doing something heinous enough for me to boycott his work. While molesting children of either sex would definitely qualify, the story (in a UK paper that's little, if any, better than a US supermarket tabloid) was bogus. They were then forced to print a retraction, as mentioned above.
See: http://www.mirror.co.uk/ and judge for yourself. Title of the home page is "Celebrity, Football, and Today's News Headlines." Of course, it might be less likely that anyone will hold their feet to the fire if they were to publish something more, now that he's gone. It wouldn't surprise me if a rag like the Mirror were to quote Sir Arthur's bisexual martian lover in tomorrow's edition, and be repeated by similar publications. The Mirror is probably quite popular amongst those who are limited to slowly puzzling out the words.
"After that you still have a huge pile of raw data collected from a collection of (probably crappy) detectors who are not calibrated."
That may be the best argument against the whole 'wisdom of crowds' Web 2.0 thing that I have ever heard.
Resolution increases linearly with aperture. The effective aperture for the LBT would then be the separation of the two telescopes plus twice the aperture (8.4 m) of either. You only get that increased resolution directly along only one axis--the one through both telescopes. So you take multiple images and do some math, and in many cases you should be able to arrive at the max resolution--which is equivalent to a single instrument of 22.8 m aperture.
See my post above, open the 'why build' link in another tab, and scroll down to the simulated infrared images of Io. Now see
http://www.keckobservatory.org/article.php?id=54
which is another image of Io in infrared, from Keck, which is a very large, highly-capable system, at one of the best sites in the world. If the LBT reality is as good as the simulations--wow.
BTW, the light-gathering power varies as the square of aperture. So this pair of 8.4 m mirrors gives you the equivalent of a single 11.8 m instrument. So as a light-bucket, it's quite as much of a win as it is in resolution. But 11.8 m is still huge. The Keck telescopes are 10 m., for instance, and astronomers were stoked about them coming on line.
This stuff knocks me out. I remember seeing images of the Jovian moons in which you barely tell Io was a bit off-white.
I don't know why authors don't point to original sources instead of news sites.
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto
has links to the press release, but a lot of other stuff as well, including why it was built at:
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/why.htm
and information about the telescope, including photos, at:
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/telescope.htm
The 'why it was built' article could have answered the speculation in many of the above posts.
Judging from the sig, the name of the band, mail address, and prodding various servers, I think we are indeed talking about the same library. If the main library is within, say, 500 yards of _the_ mall, the name of the street between the old and new locations begins with 'W' and ends with 'y', then I'd call the odds extremely high.
Just sent you a confirming mail.
They can be low cost gateways to a *lot* of Internet material you'd have to pay for. I can hit my public library's Web site, and have access to full text articles from 11,000+ magazines, archives of the state's leading newspaper, the local paper (back to 1859), all sorts of databases, etc. The list goes on and on. Most of it, of course, I don't use. But what I do use, I have to spend several hundred dollars to get without that library card obtained at nominal expense, then renewed for free.
It's also a pleasant, relaxing space. I enjoy being there.
It also has *books*. I can scan through several physical books I lost faster than I can perform the equivalent operation over the Web, even if the books were there. Checkout period is three weeks, and I can renew on the Web site. I won't even go into the audio/video aspects.
It also has *librarians*. The ones I've asked for help have been great; knowledgeable, friendly, and available. You get that sense that you're dealing with someone who enjoys their job. They also get points from me for ruining former Attorney General John Ashcroft's day when they fought him over warrant-less searches of what citizens read, etc., due to some of the more despicable bits of the Patriot Act. So anyone who wants to think of librarians as a bunch of little old ladies might stop and conjure an image of little old ladies putting down their knitting, and picking up their war axes.
This is in a town of about 50,000 people. The main library is centrally enough located that I drive within 2-3 blocks of it at least once or twice a week, without fail, but parking is dead easy. It's a great local resource, well worth supporting, and many people do. In fact, it's getting a much larger building, with a new location within about two hundred yards of the current location.
I just don't see it going away. In the first what, 13-14 [1] years or so of mass Internet, my local library hasn't just survived, it's thrived.
[1] I don't know how most people judge the arrival of mass Internet. I know I was building Web sites in 1994, and at the time I had to explain to most people what a Web site was.
I wonder what you'd need for a bus? PCI, AGP 1, 2 or 4 won't do it. We'll need a standard there before we can a have a NIC to plug into it.
I find your lack of faith disturbing. Microsoft has the Zune.
You must be old here.
But if you could somehow double that headcount, Starbucks would open a shop. That would drive launch costs down, allowing further expansion, etc. A virtuous circle.
I wouldn't be too sure of that (casting a cunning, but somehow suave glance over shoulder), as some believe that the Illuminati have timed various peaks to coincide, causing massive disruption, and further their Shadow Government agenda.
So far, we're looking at Music and Oil peaks in the 1997-2000 time frame. Your 1988 claim is well outside. It's possible that you're correct, if other peaks are considered. For instance, there's a possible Mutant Humor Flick peak as early as '83, with the release of Strange Brew. http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=strange+brew&x=0&y=0&=go
That's somewhat scary, as it would seem to indicate a broad peak, and correspondingly poor usefulness as means of predicting future events. By your reasoning, the peak is so broad that we've yet to see the trailing edge. What would you have us do, invent bizarre new metrics? Peak of Brittney Lunacy? Peak of Ozzy's IQ? OK, ignore that last. But you know what I mean.
So do the Illuminati, and their henchmen, the NSA. Take care in what you say, my friend. They know whether or not you ate corn last night. If by some chance they don't, a simple Probe will tell them, and you'll be left with nothing but confused memories of gray aliens and bright lights.
Well, presumably you'll be left with some residual bits of corn, as well. Every cloud has a silver lining.
"The fly-by-wire system of the 777 is indeed based on Token Ring"
That seemed unreasonable, going by '787 is latest thing, can an aircraft one model number earlier be old enough to use to use Token Ring'? Wikipedia says the 777 rolled out in 1993, based upon a basic design begun in 1990. So I absolutely believe that.
Times change, and we're now in an Ethernet world. I'm familiar with snipping the transmit wire, for purposes such rendering Intrusion Detection System sensors less detectable by attackers. That means no handshake, and no reliable delivery, but that seems good enough in your scenario of squirting nav system data into the passenger information system, for 'you are here' purposes.
I wonder if it didn't start out that way, then the Sales and Marketing people had Brilliant Ideas, and feature creep set in. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen something like that. Perhaps I was too quick to blame some engineer, who might well have had a firm handle on the problem, but was overruled.
Amusingly, use of "deprecate" as only meaning "to pray against" has been deprecated--m-w even labels that usage as "archaic".
Amusing? That was almost coffee-through-the-nose.
OTOH, it will generate 30TB per day.
According to http://www.lsst.org/About/Tour/software.shtml
"Current projects show that approximately 5000 mathematical operations are required per pixel of the image to process and classify survey data. Scaling this to the size of the LSST data stream shows that approximately a thousand of today's high-end processors will be required a feasible proposition. Advances in processor power over the next five years will reduce this number to a few hundred, by which time the required LSST computer system will seem quite pedestrian. Storing this data is also well within even today's technology. At current prices, a one-petabyte disk storage system costs less than $1 million; in five years this price should drop to well below $100,000. Keeping all of the LSST data online will certainly be affordable."
Windows may not play a central data reduction role, unless Microsoft can support 100 CPUs within the next six years. Of course six calendar years is a long time in techo-years. By then, perhaps the data analysis would be done on game consoles.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/10/ps3_supercomputer
http://www.physorg.com/news92674403.html
I'd guess that much will depend upon how much can run on a cluster, vice how how much must run on a SMP machine.
Deprecate: 1. trans. To pray against (evil); to pray for deliverance from; to seek to avert by prayer. arch.
Well, there's a bit of history behind it. Various 'X considered harmful' articles. 'Evil' also gets heavy usage in the hacker vocabulary, and that moves up into more mainstream IT-speak, and also into non-IT language. Notice how 'parse' has come into common use over the past few years? Ten years ago, I very seldom heard that word in other than a software context.
Language evolves, and I've completely failed to keep the kids off my lawn. Now I reserve serious dislike for words like 'meh', which can mean one thing, it's polar opposite, or indeed anything at all.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meh
Of course, now I'll probably get a reply of 'meh'.
Nah, this all due to the same reason oil prices are so high. We've reached Peak Music.
"If what TFA claims is really true, i.e. that the passenger network is physically connected to the control and navigation system, then someone should get fired for this."
If you meant that in an 'out of a cannon' sense, then I'd agree. But there's a weakness at the FAA as well. I checked the FAA doc linked from TFA (the cryptome.org mirror, actually), and found this:
"Because of this new passenger connectivity, the proposed
data network design and integration may result in security
vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data
and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane. The
existing regulations and guidance material did not anticipate this type
of system architecture or electronic access to aircraft systems that
provide flight critical functions. Furthermore, 14 CFR regulations and
current system safety assessment policy and techniques do not address
potential security vulnerabilities that could be caused by unauthorized
access to aircraft data buses and servers. Therefore, special
conditions are imposed to ensure that security, integrity, and
availability of the aircraft systems and data networks are not
compromised by certain wired or wireless electronic connections between
airplane data buses and networks."
I'd *like* to be stunned and amazed at multiple levels of problems. Unfortunately, I'm not. People never learn. Take a random walk through most large cube farms, and I'd bet you'll find at least one password on a Post-It note.