I think the analogy is more like: "One day an event occurs that starts evolutionary processes, than in hundreds of millions of years refines itself to the point that the end product is capable of assembling a 747, because, collectively, that's what that evolutionary branch was good at doing".
You're actually applying the creationist viewpoint and timescales to evolution, which indicates your grasp of the process is missing. The whirlwind going through a junkyard and assembling a 747 intact would require 'a spontaneous act of creation on a hugely complex scale', in other words, "God did it".
The evolutionary process starts more like: A couple of simple molecules autocatalyse. This is a bonus to that molecule existing. From a few changes (mutation), a modified molecule does this better, so thus it's "strain" becomes more predominant. As longer and more complex strands arise, more advanced behaviour occurs, including the working together of other molecules exhibiting the same autocatalytic effect. From complex interaction of multiple autocatalysing (eventually self replicating) molecules, you get "emergent behaviour", which is a vast complexity arising from many simple interactions.
The more complex our technology gets today, the more we're doing things like harnessing evolution, and setting the start point (the creation event) at something almost random and simplistic, just writing the rules it operates in. Over time, it 'learns' in an evolutionary fashion. If you believe God created Man, then perhaps He/She/It set the start point, and man arose naturally from that by a designated process of evolution, all according to the plan. Perhaps it was all an accident. That part I'll not get into. I'll declare myself as an agnostic (don't know enough either way, and faith isn't enough to pull my life strongly enough in any direction). If you believe in your faith, that's a good thing. But don't try to argue with spurious logic about things that are pretty solidly backed up with evidence, trying to make a point that has no proof, backing or evidence at all behind it.
A fireman is doing a job. A doctor. A soldier. After hitting the ceiling and going through a 'burn out' period myself, I know just what sort of risk that is.
The daily grind isn't the heroic part. The stepping, occasionally, above and beyond the call of duty is.
The AC posting in reply pretty much hit the nail on the head.
A quick google on the difference between Ethics and Morality came up with the following link, which puts it in a few extra words to try and aid the definition. There's some extra cruft in there to make it sound more fluffy, but the core is correct (to my interpretation)
Not all good acts are moral. I'd say I'm largely amoral. Although, that being said, I'm highly ethical. The results are mostly the same, but the rationale is slightly different.
Damn. You mean the research I based my second degree on didn't exist? And the books I read were figments of my imagination? Wow. Can I have a proof for that now please? Or are you following the ID methodology of "It's true because I say it's true!"
You forgot the 'give clear specifications for the work to be carried out'. I've seen so many managers give 'specifications of a system', with a straight face, as a series of wireframe drawings of the user interface, with no mention of data inputs, outputs, movement, translation or any other thing it's required to do.
As for fantasies about being the IT hero.. Each time you recover someone's data, roll back a mistake they made, or otherwise sort out a problem, you change a little bit of the world each time.
Interesting viewpoint. The difference between the chap keeping the air conditioning working, and the guy who keeps the servers running is that when the air con fails, people open the windows to the street to let air in, and feel hot and bothered. When the servers go down, the people who bring in the money suddenly can't contact by email the people they need to talk to, to get money in. The secretaries can't produce documentation, or access their calendars. Meetings fall off the face of the earth. Important messages don't reach their destinations. The IT dept are responsible for making sure the history of the company is recorded, and to make sure people get the information reliably that makes the company operate. No, they're not the whole of the company, but if they screw up, it can almost kill a company stone dead, or at least damage it badly. I'd hazard a guess from this, that you're someone who's never worked in a high availability server environment, with sensitive data, and having to translate business requirements into infrastructure. By your argument, the 'guy who brings in the money', i.e. the sales department staff, would be just fine if you cut their email, phone and mail services. After all, those sections don't bring in any money do they? So they don't count do they?
And before you talk about company structure, I've run my own company for a considerable time, hired staff, and run it from the perspective of MD. Everyone in that company is there to bring in money efficiently, and without communications, you may as well shut up shop and go home. IT, lest it slip your mind is 'Information Technology'. The technology part is not the big part. The information is. And when you trust someone with ALL your information, that's a hell of a responsibility to carry.
They are in compliance with the GPL. Which means SCO are at liberty to distribute GPL apps under the regular rules, although perhaps no longer the Linux kernel, as they've violated the agreement for that program only (sublicensing).
I'd have thought a lifetime supply of coffee would be more use.. He's obviously never going to be resting for the rest of his days, so he'll be needing a really strong brew by next year..
Exactly the argument used by spammers. You see someone in difficulty (they obviously don't understand network security), so you take advantage. You don't speak up and help fix the problem, educate someone and make the world a slightly nicer place (fostering good relations with your neighbour), possibly getting exactly what you get now, with the explicit consent of your neighbour (and maybe the odd bit of cash for fixing it too!).
I've noted elsewhere in my posts how I feel about sharing a connection (fine, as long as people ask). The real issue I have is about being polite and constructive vs. being selfish. You have the opportunity to do some good and help out. What you choose to do about it says more about you than I can, or will (because you haven't yet mentioned what your plans are with this, neighbour situations etc.).
Yes, I do quite see your point with the car, and concede that point. Hopefully you also see mine.
Yes, it matters. In much the same way you're not expected to be a plumber to put in your own washing machine, or be a car mechanic able to build your own car before you get in one. The point I was making is that it's rude, inconsiderate and very selfish to hijack the bandwidth. Just because someone else hasn't spent years learning all about computers, and just wants to plug their laptop into their network without understanding all the underlying principles of wireless transmission and security doesn't mean you have to leech, steal and generally take advantage of them. The NICE thing to do is quitely tell them they have a problem (much like you'd quitely tell someone they had their fly undone in public), and actually educate them. The SELFISH thing to do is take advantage and say "It's not my fault they don't have a clue". Because it IS your fault by not informing them.
I'd hazard a guess that in every day life, you break a goodly many outdated and ignored laws and byelaws. Would you like it if the police suddenly decided to pick you up on them, and say that it was no excuse you weren't aware of 50 heavy tomes of law, and that it was your duty to know it? Why do people think it's ok to ignore these laws without so much as a thought to what they're doing?
Could it be that, to make sure the world works properly, people need to concentrate on other things? And not everyone has the time to spend to learn how wireless works (or that it's even insecure)? Nah. Perish the thought. Everyone's a network engineer, right? Just like we're all as good at diagnosing ourselves as doctors are? And know the Law as well as a Lawyer?
Amen to that. Which is why we keep a close eye on what gets put in (departments are known to cut around IT with installing things they believe they need). I was just wondering which hospital this open port was discovered at.
Actually, considering I work in an NHS hospital, there are very good reason why you don't use their open wireless, and you tell 'em FAST it's there.
Patient records. If you're a nice guy, you won't go looking around. Not everyone is that nice. Ever thought what happens when you delete someone's allergy records when they head to surgery?
We have wireless points here, and regularly go sniffing for open access points run by departments. When we find them, we chastise the owners, and then secure the points.
Or, perhaps, you're happy sharing your medical history with the world. If so, that's fine. Not everybody is.
Incidentally, I'm very suspicious of your claim to read/. from the internal network via an open wireless access point. Simply because the proxies need authentication (it's part of NHSNet's rules). If you don't have the domain account configured for internet access.. Then you're internal only. And you really shouldn't be there.
Hey, you use your car for maybe an hour each way to work. It's being wasted the rest of the day. Fair that I grab it without you knowing in between then?
Of course not. Anything you decide to do becomes their problem. And, well, it's just rude! If it's one of the low cap broadband connections, perhaps you're going to push them over their limit? Or several people using it will do that?
Still alright to cost them money?
All it takes is a nip round to your neighbour's place and say "Look, you've got a wireless point there and broadband.. Mind if I chuck you a bit of cash each month and piggyback on top of the link, 'cos I can't really afford it?". Many would say to just hop on anyway if it's not used, without you paying anything. That's certainly the arrangement I have with my neighbours that can't afford the link (now have 3 people on mine).
Nothing wrong with sharing a link, it's just good manners to ASK before taking things.
Not really. Despite the BBC hedging it's bets, and putting the conspiracy angle on it a touch, The Register has a clearer account of what happened.
Basically the bloke was engaged in Wardriving, and deliberately hooked into the wireless network.
It'll certainly be murky waters when windows automatically selects the average joe's router instead of their own, but with many routers at least asking people to put better security on wireless points, this should start becoming less frequent.
From all accounts, he was caught tapping away on his laptop, moved away when police watched, then came right back to the same point again. At which point he was investigated as he looked a little 'suspicious'.
Wardrivers remember! Just because you're invisible in the network, it doesn't make you invisible to the local copper walking on the street, or the local neighbourhood watch!
It won't be solved by teams of lawyers, and companies in the US with huge warchests. It'll be solved when the countries that don't have the ridiculous laws outstrip the US in terms of innovation and level of technology.
Then, it'll either be a case of the US holds to it's broken system, it's companies cease to be competitive because of it, resulting in nobody being able to afford the lawyers, so the system gets fixed to something simple that doesn't take teams of lawyers.. Or, the pressure to innovate and compete with the upcoming countries (india, china) forces the US to drop the system because they know it would turn the US into a technologically backward country if they didn't.
At the moment, there's too much money to be made, short term, for the patent hoarders to stop doing that. It used to be a case everyone fought for a slice of the pie. Now they're fighting over the ingredients. Hopefully they wake up and realise that by doing so, they're stopping everyone baking the new pies. And a slice of nothing is very poor sustenance indeed.
Wow.. While stating his preferences, the author stated that he stopped using non-microsoft browsers over two years ago, as they "seemed unpolished". That's akin to saying 'Oh. I'm writing a review on a new typewrite. Does everything you could ever need it to! By the way, I'll state my preference, I stopped using those word processor thingies 20 years ago because they looked unpolished'.
For a review to be meaningful in the context of current technology, you have to at least have a good overview of the state of current tech. Perhaps a useful view for those that are MS only shops about how things have come along, but.. For the rest of the world.. Nothing to se...
Errr.. Am I missing something here? Low level hardware control is performed via the kernel, not the user. If you really want a graphical front end to the linux installer, it's a stroke of simplicity to add in a quick GUI wrapper. Really, it's awfully simple to do without the command line. I take it you're really referring to configuration management for the driver when you talk about 'low level hardware control'. Again, a simple script will do the job nicely, and you can add a graphical front end at a pinch.
I know, most people who are 'joe user' can't, or can't be bothered.. If that's known, and becomes an issue.. I'm sure an enterprising person or two will come up with the goodies.
China doesn't need the US market. When it's ready to move there speculatively, you can bet your behind it'll have the money to fund it's legal fees (backed directly by government, most likely). As for power: China cannot be invaded, or bullied. It's military is already too advanced for that. It's economy isn't as flakey as that of the USSR in the cold war, so economic attacks won't work. If outright aggression is shown by the US, China may just point out that India (outsourced software and business), Korea and Taiwan (hi tech manufacturing) and Hong Kong (a major financial hub) sit right on it's borders. Well in range of it's newly installed missiles, and (with the exception of Hong Kong, which it already owns) are subject to a lot more pressure from China than the US can bring to bear. In other words, it has the ability to cripple nearly the entire western world's sources of high technology very easily. And insourcing all it's own tech base, it's not subject to the levels of coercion available to independant entities.
Tactically, in the long game (10 years +), China is looking VERY strong. All it needs to do is wait (and China is very good at waiting), and unless the Western world gets it's collective head out of it's collective behind as concerns suing each other into oblivion for short term gain, China is highly likely to become the next economic (and technological) giant.
At which point, all internet caching becomes illegal. Which will screw over a large amount of people, and organisations which need to upgrade connections, as their caching proxies are now illegal.
If this suit is won, a dangerous precedent will be set that goes a lot wider than the intention. Certainly, if they win, and they have a web proxy, the Internet Archive will be able to countersue, as they have a copy of the homepage (IA's own copyright material) stored for later redistribution.
Could it be that the AD&D world has just cottoned on to a book that the Rolemaster game has had for years?
For a good read on interesting topics for a GM, GM Law really does the trick. It's not geared solely to Rolemaster either, but covers a whole range of topics and ways of running a story (fast and loose rules of thumb that are of interest, rather than hard rules).
I don't think so.. I'm regularly in and around London, use the underground and the trains. This scanner deal will be as much use as a chocolate teapot. Do you get stopped for carrying an iPod, or some other music device? No? Then what if that's just the cover for a bomb?
There is no protection from terrorism. If somebody really wants to get you, they will. If you spend your life worrying over it, stress'll get you before the bomb.
Be vigilant, yes. Watch out for the unclaimed baggage on the tube or the bus. Keep your eyes open. If everyone does that, you've got the best intelligent surveillance network in the world. The general public.
My first reaction to seeing the bombs go off was sadness for the people hit. The second was a wave of resignation that phoney Tony would use this as an excuse to get additional surveillance in, and railroad the ID scheme. Part one dead of track.. We see what happens next.
In the long term, it's more likely that profits go down. I've seen this mentality before. Push people to the limits to make more profit. In a tech team, one guy falls due to burnout, which means that load is spread around the remnants of the already overstressed team. New guy comes in to learn the code/system, so the whole job needs doing, and new guy needs to be taught (if he's going to be any more use than a chocolate teapot). Which leads to a second member falling, as there really is too much to do, and now less time to do it. Which leads to another new guy. More than once, I've seen this take out a whole team as management keep moving stuff onto the remaining originals who know the system, or the new guys who sometimes walk out one day and don't come back because of ridiculous pressure. Eventually nobody knows the whole system, or can use it all effectively. Then the product dies a long and messy death, possibly taking out the whole company surrounding it. Net result, lots of job losses.
Working in the areas I have so long (systems and networks), I find it really odd, how companies are running around yelling "Resilience, reliability.. We need everything able to withstand emergencies", and buy two of every server, RAID the disks, redundant routing, offsite backups.. Yet they have their tech team cut to the bone, with highly compartmentalised skills. One leaves, and for a significant time, they're shafted in one area (at least). There was a very good reason companies always used to have more staff than was strictly necessary to complete a task. It wasn't just morale, and making the job comfortable enough that people wanted to stay.. It was for the ability to obtain an "emergency tolerant" skillset. You could lose a good few staff from any area, and your knowledge base wasn't significantly impacted.
All this 'on the edge' company structuring isn't sustainable. And by the time the West has finally come full circle, and discarded all the bits that have cost if a fortune in the long term as it's chased short term gain for a few decades (until it can't get any more short term gain, and they hit the wall), they'll be facing a fully geared up Asia and China, who have taken the long term view, with fully staffed and skilled departments who can outmanoeuver and outperform any Western company going..
Spending money is what traders do. For quite a few orders, certainly in the circles they seem to be dealing in from reading the article, an order of that size wouldn't be out of the ordinary. Which means, inserting that button would quickly become the "irritant" button that people rapidly learn how to select through automatically to save time. Net result is that you end up with pretty much the same mistakes being made, just everyone moves that little bit slower.
Because the fish is both setting a record (such things matter to some), and it's also on the critically endangered species list (this can also be construed to mean being something "that matters").
Slashdot Mirror
I think the analogy is more like: "One day an event occurs that starts evolutionary processes, than in hundreds of millions of years refines itself to the point that the end product is capable of assembling a 747, because, collectively, that's what that evolutionary branch was good at doing".
You're actually applying the creationist viewpoint and timescales to evolution, which indicates your grasp of the process is missing.
The whirlwind going through a junkyard and assembling a 747 intact would require 'a spontaneous act of creation on a hugely complex scale', in other words, "God did it".
The evolutionary process starts more like:
A couple of simple molecules autocatalyse. This is a bonus to that molecule existing. From a few changes (mutation), a modified molecule does this better, so thus it's "strain" becomes more predominant.
As longer and more complex strands arise, more advanced behaviour occurs, including the working together of other molecules exhibiting the same autocatalytic effect.
From complex interaction of multiple autocatalysing (eventually self replicating) molecules, you get "emergent behaviour", which is a vast complexity arising from many simple interactions.
The more complex our technology gets today, the more we're doing things like harnessing evolution, and setting the start point (the creation event) at something almost random and simplistic, just writing the rules it operates in.
Over time, it 'learns' in an evolutionary fashion.
If you believe God created Man, then perhaps He/She/It set the start point, and man arose naturally from that by a designated process of evolution, all according to the plan.
Perhaps it was all an accident.
That part I'll not get into. I'll declare myself as an agnostic (don't know enough either way, and faith isn't enough to pull my life strongly enough in any direction). If you believe in your faith, that's a good thing.
But don't try to argue with spurious logic about things that are pretty solidly backed up with evidence, trying to make a point that has no proof, backing or evidence at all behind it.
A fireman is doing a job. A doctor. A soldier.
After hitting the ceiling and going through a 'burn out' period myself, I know just what sort of risk that is.
The daily grind isn't the heroic part. The stepping, occasionally, above and beyond the call of duty is.
The AC posting in reply pretty much hit the nail on the head.
A quick google on the difference between Ethics and Morality came up with the following link, which puts it in a few extra words to try and aid the definition. There's some extra cruft in there to make it sound more fluffy, but the core is correct (to my interpretation)
Not all good acts are moral.
I'd say I'm largely amoral. Although, that being said, I'm highly ethical.
The results are mostly the same, but the rationale is slightly different.
Damn. You mean the research I based my second degree on didn't exist?
And the books I read were figments of my imagination?
Wow.
Can I have a proof for that now please? Or are you following the ID methodology of "It's true because I say it's true!"
You forgot the 'give clear specifications for the work to be carried out'.
I've seen so many managers give 'specifications of a system', with a straight face, as a series of wireframe drawings of the user interface, with no mention of data inputs, outputs, movement, translation or any other thing it's required to do.
As for fantasies about being the IT hero.. Each time you recover someone's data, roll back a mistake they made, or otherwise sort out a problem, you change a little bit of the world each time.
Interesting viewpoint.
The difference between the chap keeping the air conditioning working, and the guy who keeps the servers running is that when the air con fails, people open the windows to the street to let air in, and feel hot and bothered.
When the servers go down, the people who bring in the money suddenly can't contact by email the people they need to talk to, to get money in.
The secretaries can't produce documentation, or access their calendars. Meetings fall off the face of the earth. Important messages don't reach their destinations.
The IT dept are responsible for making sure the history of the company is recorded, and to make sure people get the information reliably that makes the company operate. No, they're not the whole of the company, but if they screw up, it can almost kill a company stone dead, or at least damage it badly.
I'd hazard a guess from this, that you're someone who's never worked in a high availability server environment, with sensitive data, and having to translate business requirements into infrastructure.
By your argument, the 'guy who brings in the money', i.e. the sales department staff, would be just fine if you cut their email, phone and mail services. After all, those sections don't bring in any money do they? So they don't count do they?
And before you talk about company structure, I've run my own company for a considerable time, hired staff, and run it from the perspective of MD.
Everyone in that company is there to bring in money efficiently, and without communications, you may as well shut up shop and go home.
IT, lest it slip your mind is 'Information Technology'. The technology part is not the big part. The information is. And when you trust someone with ALL your information, that's a hell of a responsibility to carry.
So, IMHO, you're pretty far off the mark.
They are in compliance with the GPL. Which means SCO are at liberty to distribute GPL apps under the regular rules, although perhaps no longer the Linux kernel, as they've violated the agreement for that program only (sublicensing).
I'd have thought a lifetime supply of coffee would be more use.. He's obviously never going to be resting for the rest of his days, so he'll be needing a really strong brew by next year..
Exactly the argument used by spammers.
You see someone in difficulty (they obviously don't understand network security), so you take advantage.
You don't speak up and help fix the problem, educate someone and make the world a slightly nicer place (fostering good relations with your neighbour), possibly getting exactly what you get now, with the explicit consent of your neighbour (and maybe the odd bit of cash for fixing it too!).
I've noted elsewhere in my posts how I feel about sharing a connection (fine, as long as people ask).
The real issue I have is about being polite and constructive vs. being selfish. You have the opportunity to do some good and help out.
What you choose to do about it says more about you than I can, or will (because you haven't yet mentioned what your plans are with this, neighbour situations etc.).
Yes, I do quite see your point with the car, and concede that point. Hopefully you also see mine.
Yes, it matters.
In much the same way you're not expected to be a plumber to put in your own washing machine, or be a car mechanic able to build your own car before you get in one.
The point I was making is that it's rude, inconsiderate and very selfish to hijack the bandwidth. Just because someone else hasn't spent years learning all about computers, and just wants to plug their laptop into their network without understanding all the underlying principles of wireless transmission and security doesn't mean you have to leech, steal and generally take advantage of them.
The NICE thing to do is quitely tell them they have a problem (much like you'd quitely tell someone they had their fly undone in public), and actually educate them.
The SELFISH thing to do is take advantage and say "It's not my fault they don't have a clue". Because it IS your fault by not informing them.
I'd hazard a guess that in every day life, you break a goodly many outdated and ignored laws and byelaws. Would you like it if the police suddenly decided to pick you up on them, and say that it was no excuse you weren't aware of 50 heavy tomes of law, and that it was your duty to know it?
Why do people think it's ok to ignore these laws without so much as a thought to what they're doing?
Could it be that, to make sure the world works properly, people need to concentrate on other things? And not everyone has the time to spend to learn how wireless works (or that it's even insecure)?
Nah. Perish the thought. Everyone's a network engineer, right? Just like we're all as good at diagnosing ourselves as doctors are?
And know the Law as well as a Lawyer?
Amen to that. Which is why we keep a close eye on what gets put in (departments are known to cut around IT with installing things they believe they need). I was just wondering which hospital this open port was discovered at.
Actually, considering I work in an NHS hospital, there are very good reason why you don't use their open wireless, and you tell 'em FAST it's there. /. from the internal network via an open wireless access point. Simply because the proxies need authentication (it's part of NHSNet's rules). If you don't have the domain account configured for internet access.. Then you're internal only. And you really shouldn't be there.
Patient records. If you're a nice guy, you won't go looking around. Not everyone is that nice. Ever thought what happens when you delete someone's allergy records when they head to surgery?
We have wireless points here, and regularly go sniffing for open access points run by departments. When we find them, we chastise the owners, and then secure the points.
Or, perhaps, you're happy sharing your medical history with the world. If so, that's fine. Not everybody is.
Incidentally, I'm very suspicious of your claim to read
Hey, you use your car for maybe an hour each way to work. It's being wasted the rest of the day. Fair that I grab it without you knowing in between then?
Of course not. Anything you decide to do becomes their problem. And, well, it's just rude! If it's one of the low cap broadband connections, perhaps you're going to push them over their limit? Or several people using it will do that?
Still alright to cost them money?
All it takes is a nip round to your neighbour's place and say "Look, you've got a wireless point there and broadband.. Mind if I chuck you a bit of cash each month and piggyback on top of the link, 'cos I can't really afford it?". Many would say to just hop on anyway if it's not used, without you paying anything. That's certainly the arrangement I have with my neighbours that can't afford the link (now have 3 people on mine).
Nothing wrong with sharing a link, it's just good manners to ASK before taking things.
Not really. Despite the BBC hedging it's bets, and putting the conspiracy angle on it a touch, The Register has a clearer account of what happened.
Basically the bloke was engaged in Wardriving, and deliberately hooked into the wireless network.
It'll certainly be murky waters when windows automatically selects the average joe's router instead of their own, but with many routers at least asking people to put better security on wireless points, this should start becoming less frequent.
From all accounts, he was caught tapping away on his laptop, moved away when police watched, then came right back to the same point again. At which point he was investigated as he looked a little 'suspicious'.
Wardrivers remember! Just because you're invisible in the network, it doesn't make you invisible to the local copper walking on the street, or the local neighbourhood watch!
It won't be solved by teams of lawyers, and companies in the US with huge warchests.
It'll be solved when the countries that don't have the ridiculous laws outstrip the US in terms of innovation and level of technology.
Then, it'll either be a case of the US holds to it's broken system, it's companies cease to be competitive because of it, resulting in nobody being able to afford the lawyers, so the system gets fixed to something simple that doesn't take teams of lawyers..
Or, the pressure to innovate and compete with the upcoming countries (india, china) forces the US to drop the system because they know it would turn the US into a technologically backward country if they didn't.
At the moment, there's too much money to be made, short term, for the patent hoarders to stop doing that.
It used to be a case everyone fought for a slice of the pie. Now they're fighting over the ingredients.
Hopefully they wake up and realise that by doing so, they're stopping everyone baking the new pies.
And a slice of nothing is very poor sustenance indeed.
Wow.. While stating his preferences, the author stated that he stopped using non-microsoft browsers over two years ago, as they "seemed unpolished".
That's akin to saying 'Oh. I'm writing a review on a new typewrite. Does everything you could ever need it to! By the way, I'll state my preference, I stopped using those word processor thingies 20 years ago because they looked unpolished'.
For a review to be meaningful in the context of current technology, you have to at least have a good overview of the state of current tech.
Perhaps a useful view for those that are MS only shops about how things have come along, but.. For the rest of the world.. Nothing to se...
Errr.. Am I missing something here?
Low level hardware control is performed via the kernel, not the user. If you really want a graphical front end to the linux installer, it's a stroke of simplicity to add in a quick GUI wrapper.
Really, it's awfully simple to do without the command line.
I take it you're really referring to configuration management for the driver when you talk about 'low level hardware control'.
Again, a simple script will do the job nicely, and you can add a graphical front end at a pinch.
I know, most people who are 'joe user' can't, or can't be bothered..
If that's known, and becomes an issue.. I'm sure an enterprising person or two will come up with the goodies.
China doesn't need the US market. When it's ready to move there speculatively, you can bet your behind it'll have the money to fund it's legal fees (backed directly by government, most likely).
As for power: China cannot be invaded, or bullied. It's military is already too advanced for that. It's economy isn't as flakey as that of the USSR in the cold war, so economic attacks won't work.
If outright aggression is shown by the US, China may just point out that India (outsourced software and business), Korea and Taiwan (hi tech manufacturing) and Hong Kong (a major financial hub) sit right on it's borders. Well in range of it's newly installed missiles, and (with the exception of Hong Kong, which it already owns) are subject to a lot more pressure from China than the US can bring to bear.
In other words, it has the ability to cripple nearly the entire western world's sources of high technology very easily.
And insourcing all it's own tech base, it's not subject to the levels of coercion available to independant entities.
Tactically, in the long game (10 years +), China is looking VERY strong. All it needs to do is wait (and China is very good at waiting), and unless the Western world gets it's collective head out of it's collective behind as concerns suing each other into oblivion for short term gain, China is highly likely to become the next economic (and technological) giant.
At which point, all internet caching becomes illegal.
Which will screw over a large amount of people, and organisations which need to upgrade connections, as their caching proxies are now illegal.
If this suit is won, a dangerous precedent will be set that goes a lot wider than the intention. Certainly, if they win, and they have a web proxy, the Internet Archive will be able to countersue, as they have a copy of the homepage (IA's own copyright material) stored for later redistribution.
Could it be that the AD&D world has just cottoned on to a book that the Rolemaster game has had for years?
For a good read on interesting topics for a GM, GM Law really does the trick. It's not geared solely to Rolemaster either, but covers a whole range of topics and ways of running a story (fast and loose rules of thumb that are of interest, rather than hard rules).
I don't think so..
I'm regularly in and around London, use the underground and the trains.
This scanner deal will be as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Do you get stopped for carrying an iPod, or some other music device?
No?
Then what if that's just the cover for a bomb?
There is no protection from terrorism. If somebody really wants to get you, they will.
If you spend your life worrying over it, stress'll get you before the bomb.
Be vigilant, yes. Watch out for the unclaimed baggage on the tube or the bus.
Keep your eyes open.
If everyone does that, you've got the best intelligent surveillance network in the world. The general public.
My first reaction to seeing the bombs go off was sadness for the people hit.
The second was a wave of resignation that phoney Tony would use this as an excuse to get additional surveillance in, and railroad the ID scheme.
Part one dead of track.. We see what happens next.
In the long term, it's more likely that profits go down. I've seen this mentality before. Push people to the limits to make more profit.
In a tech team, one guy falls due to burnout, which means that load is spread around the remnants of the already overstressed team.
New guy comes in to learn the code/system, so the whole job needs doing, and new guy needs to be taught (if he's going to be any more use than a chocolate teapot).
Which leads to a second member falling, as there really is too much to do, and now less time to do it.
Which leads to another new guy.
More than once, I've seen this take out a whole team as management keep moving stuff onto the remaining originals who know the system, or the new guys who sometimes walk out one day and don't come back because of ridiculous pressure.
Eventually nobody knows the whole system, or can use it all effectively.
Then the product dies a long and messy death, possibly taking out the whole company surrounding it.
Net result, lots of job losses.
Working in the areas I have so long (systems and networks), I find it really odd, how companies are running around yelling "Resilience, reliability.. We need everything able to withstand emergencies", and buy two of every server, RAID the disks, redundant routing, offsite backups..
Yet they have their tech team cut to the bone, with highly compartmentalised skills.
One leaves, and for a significant time, they're shafted in one area (at least).
There was a very good reason companies always used to have more staff than was strictly necessary to complete a task.
It wasn't just morale, and making the job comfortable enough that people wanted to stay..
It was for the ability to obtain an "emergency tolerant" skillset.
You could lose a good few staff from any area, and your knowledge base wasn't significantly impacted.
All this 'on the edge' company structuring isn't sustainable.
And by the time the West has finally come full circle, and discarded all the bits that have cost if a fortune in the long term as it's chased short term gain for a few decades (until it can't get any more short term gain, and they hit the wall), they'll be facing a fully geared up Asia and China, who have taken the long term view, with fully staffed and skilled departments who can outmanoeuver and outperform any Western company going..
Spending money is what traders do. For quite a few orders, certainly in the circles they seem to be dealing in from reading the article, an order of that size wouldn't be out of the ordinary.
Which means, inserting that button would quickly become the "irritant" button that people rapidly learn how to select through automatically to save time.
Net result is that you end up with pretty much the same mistakes being made, just everyone moves that little bit slower.
Because the fish is both setting a record (such things matter to some), and it's also on the critically endangered species list (this can also be construed to mean being something "that matters").