Which is better, being type cast into a role you can't escape from (yet gaining mass popularity and recognition), or having an assortment of characters from which to draw, but not the degree of prestige?...which path would you have a new actor avoid?
The real question here is do you want an $800 tablet computer? Forget about the OS.
If enough hobbiests want them, then you know Linux (any flavor) will be available sooner or later.
Are any of these resources distributed?
on
Just One Page a Day
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It seems like every few years I turn around and notice that some massive archive collection gets sued, goes out of business, has funding pulled, gets tangled in legal action, has a university board go into panic mode, etc. and suddenly it disappears without warning or notice to the frustration of many. I'm certain you also can name a number of services, collections, and resources that spontaneously vanished when hosted at friendly sites. History has proven that despite best intentions, nothing lasts forever unless we go out of our way to protect it.
So that work isn't lost or destroyed, are any of the mega-sized projects replicated elsewhere in the event that a "it'll never happen" situation crops up to this unsuspecting resource?
My real concern puts the issue about where to draw the line between security and liberty off to the side: I'm more concerned about the United States being effective once we decide to act.
We're too concerned about the "world opinion" from nations we barely respect or who have historically been shown to be liars.
So what exactly makes our Freedom of the Press that limited?
My suspicion is not so much that press is limited, or that information is censured, but rather the bias in the distribution.
Take books; these are fairly conservative in nature. Liberal view points don't sell as many books as conservative view points do. Take telvision and radio; these are fairly liberal in nature. Conservative view points aren't expressed as readily as liberal view points are.
The problem stems from the fact that each group views itself as the normal. That is, liberals don't think they're THAT liberal. Conservatives don't think they're THAT conservative. So, to be "fair", they extend a little to the left, and a little to the right when reporting.
On a normalized scale, this means we really _are_ getting biased data. For instance, when a Republican is in office, we have a homeless problem. When a Democrat is in office, we don't have a homeless problem. Given the number of homeless stays the same, what's changed -- that's right, what gets reported. Suitable examples exist for the other direction.
So, my bet is that it's the selection of the news that gets printed, rather than the prevention of printing news.
As a dumpster diver, let me say that when AOL used to send out floppy diskettes, that when they did a software update they just threw the old labeled and unlabeled media out by the thousands. I have boxes and boxes of rescued AOL floppies that I reformat when I need to pass out a small file over old media.
Given that they treated reusable media with such discontempt, it only makes sense that they are already accustomed to disposing large quantities of non-reusable media.
Will this action even be a blip on their radar? Probablly not, unless environmentalists and the media are dragged into the lot.
That's what's so great about this system of government, Congress doesn't have to worry about that! It's the judicial branch that's got to make sense of things.
The/. image that had been painted in my mind (not that from the article itself) was that you had these guys waiting to pull cable, but until the software side of things worked, they weren't going to run them. "Why string this copper if next week they decide they need fiber."
You're correct, of course, the article does say both are late. And that statement may be true, I have no reason to doubt it. But I viewed these as independent events.
When I had my house built, I had 25 pair CAT 5 strung to each room of the house before I even knew what kind of jack I was going to use the wire for. The way/.ers presented it, it would be like the foreman holding up production until I got my applications working.
I'm now pondering if by the time they get the infrastructure in place, will a better technology have come out.
"This is the network of cameras, traffic-flow sensors, carbon monoxide gauges, and electronic signage, all linked to an Operations Control Center in South Boston"
Perhaps I imagine long strands of fiber optics or ethernet cables with the ability to plug arbitrary devices at the ends. Allow for high enough bandwidth, and even if you have to sit on driving technology to catch up, you still know how much data you can pump through a fiber.
It'd be really, really, really sad if no one planned the project out, or even worse, planned it out in such a way that it depended on specific transport media. Test labs and simulations ought to go a long way for telling if something is scalable.
I don't understand how the software developers are holding up laying of the infrastructure. One would have thought that the software would be fairly independent of the media on which it operates.
Actually, the proposed idea was not to break copyright nor distribute movies. I've done neither, and the size of my personal commercial movie collection assists in demonstrating that.
Where I was going was that adoption of standards don't really happen by dictate of use or by people going "oh that's a really cool technology." Nor, does it even reside with quality. It resides with ease of use.
No matter how good or how bad this codec is, if someone makes a utility that is just so pathetically easy to install and use, then it will gain adoption because people won't abandon it for the wrong reason.
Now, yes, I'd have to concede that it's likely that people will engage in illegal activities. However, let's face it, they'll do that with whatever is at hand -- AVI and MPG being a good example, and those have dozens of codec choices. Ironically, if the "copyright breaking bad guys" flood the net with stuff in this codec, the technology and applications will mature faster, much the same way you're benefiting from the VCRs, recorable CD-ROMs, dual layer DVDs, high bandwidth internet, and streaming video technologies the porn industry funneled lots of money into.
I say a technology is neutral, and it's user is where the ethical standpoint resides. But it's demonstrated through history "great technology" is not the factor that leads to a win, it's adoption by the masses. And that means making something so simple to use that the masses can use it -- the good part, however, is that when the open source community does that, they don't skimp on quality to make a buck.
The killer application is to insert a DVD and have it simplistically rip and encode it for personal viewing. Make it simplistic enough for the masses to use, and let the codec take off as a standard induced by practice not dictates or technology.
It's true that Linux wins on technology. However, it isn't technology that's going to win it for us.
Think Betamax... heck, think NeXT, think BeOS!
What matters is ease-of-use by the computer-illerate-end-user who has a task to perform or, more realistically, just wants to play a game.
In the corporate world it's about being able to pass blame if something goes wrong. Management throwing blame downhill can make "choosing Linux" stick easier than dealing with the counter of "it's Microsoft's fault, you know how their trackrecord is."
Just generating the perception of "we've been on hold for 70 minutes trying to get through to someone who knows what they're doing" creates more illusion of 'doing something' than a Unix guru going "oh, look, it wasn't Linux afterall -- it was this hard drive that burned out because you didn't replace it when I told you to."
It can't happen. Think of it this way: In order to replace a SysAdmin, they're going to have to be able to define a process for resolving at least 80% of the problems a system administrator faces. ("I can't get my email," "the printer doesn't work," "can you change my password," "the Internet is down," etc.)
If they had these processes already, wouldn't you think when you dialed customer support you'd get competent assistance?
One year ago today, US soil was attacked. I expect to hear a lot about it in the news. I expect to see a lot of ribbons. I expect to see a show of security.
That's why I'm not going to watch the news, wear a ribbon, but will make a comment on security.
You see, a lot of American have already mourned and come to emotional terms with what happened. A day of remembrance is nothing more than a day of television ratings. Fair-weather patriots bother me even more; too many people just wear a ribbon to call attention to themselves more than to silently commemorate. The loss of Jim Henson, Gene Roddenberry, and George Burns seemed far more sincere by Americans on many accounts. Perhaps that's because we knew them more intimately, and we know we're supposed to feel bad, but just don't have the connection. I feel it's more important to be honest about your emotional state than to follow the trend of buying a $10 flag for your car and taking a company mandated minute of silence during your lunch break. Is it true loss felt, or more of the desire to just fit in because of peer pressure?
Air travel will be particularly light as American's fear to board a plane this anniversary. We've got scud missiles pointed at the clouds. NIH is checking every single car that passes through its gates. Many US citizens tremble in not being able to leave Northern Virginia fast enough, wanting as much distance as possible between them and the District of Columbia.
It just seems like society doesn't have common sense anymore. Everyone thinks the terrorists are out to get him or her specifically. At SAIC when the planes were falling from the skies, they locked down their parking lots and you had to show a badge. If you're a terrorist, and you've got scare resources of hijacked planes, where are you most likely going to put it... some place of specific military importance or of high political interest, or one of hundreds of SAIC buildings spread over the country? Hmm. Let's think.
GEIS did the same thing for things like the Gulf War or threats from Iraq, and at times even took the GE meatball logo off the building. Security by obscurity just gives a false sense of safety. It's like covering your eyes so the monsters under the bed don't get you.
We know for a fact that the terrorists we're dealing with are patient. They'll sit low for 10 years or more just planning. You think somewhere along the way they'd have access to a phone book with a street address. I'm sorry, but many of us just aren't that important enough to be attacked: what we do or produce can quickly be picked up somewhere else by someone else. Such an attack is wasted, and the terrorists know that.
I understand the publicly stated reasoning behind it all: "we deal with government," "we make parts used in missiles," "we deal with the stock market." The reality is employees who don't understand risk analysis feel scared, and making a show of activity is creates the illusion they're protected. This way they'll go back to being productive and making money for the company.
Take the anthrax scare. The day it came out, the very day, near the very hour of the news report, SAIC had to call in the HAZMAT team because someone reported seeing a white substance in the stall of the women's bathroom. When this happens, every call must be taken seriously. It's expensive, it's inconvenient, and it shuts the place down. It places a taxing burden on emergency response units, and those who seriously need it don't get the on-demand service required for a real emergency. Consider this, Bin Laden himself sneaks past dozens of guards and automated systems, by passes the lobby, conference rooms filled with military, skips over a great biological target like the cafeteria, and goes up half a dozen or so floors, sneaks into the women's bathroom, and drops a white substance overtly on the floor to be seen and recognized by the untrained. Great plan, or irrational panic? I'd argue that more financial damage was done by Americans who did a knee-jerk reaction without asking "come on, is this a likely target of benefit" than the planes themselves. Naturally, hours later the lab reports it's dust from the toilet paper rolls. Go figure. And to be fair, other companies were doing the exact same thing. What did security do? They passed out handy-wipe packets, the kind you get to wipe your fingers after a BBQ dinner, to everyone... yeah, that'll stop Anthrax.
Let's get real, should a terrorist want to breach any of these facilities, do they have the resources to fake a badge? Sure do. But why go through that trouble, when you can point a machine gun at a minimum wage security guard. I once asked an AOL guard what he'd do if a gunman came in demanding to pass. The answer: "Hand him my keys and resign."
Countries are always ready to re-fight the last war, never the current one. We assume that the tactics used will be the ones used again. That's not how wars are fought. Look at how the Red-Coats expected the engagement -- let's point guns at each other, you fire at me, I fire at you, we reload, and go till no one's left to drop. Change tactics, boom. Fast forward to present day, we've got all our defenses set up so that we can address a missile-flying and world-war-II threats. Duh, hasn't anyone realized the enemy is already on our land, has been for years, and has access to deploy from within our borders? Crippling a country has become so much easier now that people won't defend themselves and we rely on supply chains and lack the knowledge of basic survival skills.
I loathe the airport and NIH security policies. First of all, ask yourself, if you were going to conduct another attack, would you be doing it on a day the Americans were waiting for it? The element of surprise just worked so well last time. So, where will todays stepped up security measures be tomorrow? Why weren't they in place yesterday? This is the same issue I take with holiday-only patriots -- where was your pride of country before this event, and why did it fade so quickly?
What's worse is that even if we had all the security policies in place, all the time, even back in 2001, it would not have prevented the attacks. Even the US government admits that. So, I ask, why if we've just declared the procedure benefit-less do we engage in doing it, especially at such cost? The answer: because if we don't do something, people will says "you're not doing anything" -- and that looks politically bad for those holding public office.
It doesn't take half a mind to fashion a decent weapon real-time on an aircraft from readily available supplies. There are so many ways to bypass security that even 60 Minutes got past airport security with a gun on national television.
I'm surprised at how panicked Americans get, too. Two planes barely put a dent in the real face of New York. One plane damaged only a section segment of one wall at the Pentagon. Yet, people were acting like DC had been flattened and the shock wave was traveling hundreds of miles. That's movie special effects, not reality. I thought other countries had a problem with conceptualizing the size of the United States, apparently it's own citizens do as well. If something really bad is happening, please leave the public utilities and transportation means open to emergency units. News will still travel.
The problem with current security policies is two fold. Number one, we don't take into account that the attacker is willing to trade their life for their goal. This one is hard to combat, because the common set of deterrents don't work. Number two, we don't take a pro-active stance; we believe the world thinks like us, shares our views, embraces diversity, and as a whole wants to get along. People, we're the ignorant ones.
What this attack has shown is how unprepared we are, and more importantly, were. We can't want the government to protect our borders and at the same time deny them the means to provide that defense. Defense doesn't equate to war. And each time a country has been completely subdued by force, peace results, and usually good relations after the fact. Each time we let the politicians dictate how, we still have skirmishes and we've lost. Think Japan. Think Korea.
Because we're in a panic, many Americans are willing to trade privacy, freedoms, and liberties for security. I shake my head at this behavior. Safety does not have to come at the expenditure of these things, and more importantly, shouldn't. Plus, the "security" we're getting is illusionary; it's not the real kind that gets the job done. It's a show.
Let's wise up and start asking the right questions. What is the realistic probability that terrorists are going to attack today?...that they are going to attack where you specifically work and live over better targets?...and what is the cost you're paying.
As the old joke goes, "elephants are excellent at hiding in trees." "What do you mean, I've never seen one before." "My point exactly." Before you allow fear and stress to ruin your emotional state and you've tossed every principle being an American is about out the window, ask yourself if those guys protecting trees from having elephants climb in them are actually providing value, and while you're at it, find out how many elephants they've personally been able to stop in the past.
Perhaps then, the problem isn't with the viewing audience, but instead the commercials themselves.
SuperBowl...? Everyone watches the commercials. The execs think "everyone will be watching, we have to make this good" the consumers are saying "this will be good, therefore we will watch."
How about those "Funniest Commericals" television shows where all the content is funny commecials. How about those small clips passed around in email?
If a commerical is well done and entertaining, it will get viewer following -- and the product will stick. If it's just annoying in-your-face product announcement, people can (and will) move on.
Version control systems, as a whole, seem to make a mistake when over-generalizing and combining concepts with implementation. These things are all different:
The file you want versioned.
The archive that holds it.
The workfile you extracted from an archive.
The shadow file automatically extracted from an archive.
A directory.
A project, which is not always 1:1 with a directory.
A view, which is not a subset of files or directories.
For instance, I may have the file archive.c,v which I check out as myfile.c, which is shadowed as mainfile.c, which exists in multiple projects, inside different subdirectories, exposed whenever I have a view of a particular time on a particular branch for a given subset of a module.
Everytime a version control system tries to combine things you run into problems. Take the GUI version of PVCS, which called Projects a collection of files (from different directories) -- which ended up enforcing that all filenames had to be unique, even if in different directories. And what they call Views is actually a subset of the list of available filenames.
Ever get the idea developers are so into archiving versions of a file that they gloss over the fact the file organization itself is a structure that also needs preserving?
Between something that's historical, working with a few minor annoyances, and something that's new with hopeful promises, which should you go with?
Consultants usually argue that new doesn't work (a solid trend in hisotry), but we try it any way because of hope this time it may be different. And it usually isn't.
By Linus making this decision, he's effectively forcing a user base, and there by excercising the SCM tool fairly heavily.
Lots of usage, combined with small, incremental revision, is the best way to get controlled quality. Since the product is "new," people are going to be more likely to stand up and rattle a little louder when request a fix.
At the 50,000ft view, this may be the way Linus gets a SCM system of decent quality that operates the way he thinks it should. Frankly, I can't say that's a bad thing.
StarTase has serious problems, in my book. From an SCM stand point, it doesn't allow you to do corrections on the respository. Say for instance a developer checks something in the wrong place and creates a branch unintentionally. You know it's wrong, he knows it's wrong, everyone agrees it's wrong -- and you want to get rid of it. StarTeam was to preserve cronological history -- the fact that someone messed up -- rather than project history, which reflects where your software has been and where it's going.
From a licensing standpoint, they have a problem with the code that validates you. We went through some layoffs and backed off the number of users upon renewal. Even though users didn't exist in the database, the licensing reports said they were there. It took me a few days to demonstrate this was actually happening and get them to admit to it -- don't trust their logs!
Every tech person reading this knows that the Microsoft operating system platform is certainly capable of being built and shipped without dozens of Microsoft applications. That platform doesn't care who wrote the applications it runs. And one only has to turn to a version of that platform before Internet Explorer and Media Player ever existed to see that Gates is bending the definition of what Windows is.
Microsoft is has pulled a definition swap on the non-technical world. It is trying to say that the APIs, the interface, and the applications in a certain configuration represent the concept of "Windows." This is very much like how an Apple is an Apple is an Apple. When us techies sling code, we know better. But what Microsoft knows is that the end-user doesn't know... or care.
People choose Windows because they can tweak it; there is so much software out there to choose from, and much of the good stuff isn't from Microsoft.
Remember, Microsoft is going where the money is, and money can be easily removed from the hands of the uninformed. As such, the "lame end-user" who just wants to turn on their PC and have it "work" with no frills is a large base to draw from.
The rest of us, the hobbiests, the scientists, the engineers, the developers, spend most of our time conversing on the higher end of the IQ distribution that we forget what the average user is like or how many of them there are. These people don't want to know how it works; they don't care it could be better, faster, or smaller. They want the first solution, not a best fit. They want the computer to tell them what to do, not the other way around as a power-user mandates.
I don't mind Microsoft going after these people, but don't insult the rest of us by twisting word meanings. Afterall, we're the ones developing the applications and content for that operating system. We're the source of your "innovation." The problem is, that last statement is true, it stings, and they know it. That's why there will always be a love/hate relationship with us -- they need us, but don't want to be reminded of that fact. While the left hand condems, the right hand acts in secret.
Slashdot Mirror
But will it be cheaper to build and cost less to operate. If not, doubt it will catch on.
Which is better, being type cast into a role you can't escape from (yet gaining mass popularity and recognition), or having an assortment of characters from which to draw, but not the degree of prestige? ...which path would you have a new actor avoid?
The stylus, hidden in the band, is confused by most airport guards as a prison shank.
The real question here is do you want an $800 tablet computer? Forget about the OS.
If enough hobbiests want them, then you know Linux (any flavor) will be available sooner or later.
It seems like every few years I turn around and notice that some massive archive collection gets sued, goes out of business, has funding pulled, gets tangled in legal action, has a university board go into panic mode, etc. and suddenly it disappears without warning or notice to the frustration of many. I'm certain you also can name a number of services, collections, and resources that spontaneously vanished when hosted at friendly sites. History has proven that despite best intentions, nothing lasts forever unless we go out of our way to protect it.
So that work isn't lost or destroyed, are any of the mega-sized projects replicated elsewhere in the event that a "it'll never happen" situation crops up to this unsuspecting resource?
My real concern puts the issue about where to draw the line between security and liberty off to the side: I'm more concerned about the United States being effective once we decide to act.
We're too concerned about the "world opinion" from nations we barely respect or who have historically been shown to be liars.
So what exactly makes our Freedom of the Press that limited?
My suspicion is not so much that press is limited, or that information is censured, but rather the bias in the distribution.
Take books; these are fairly conservative in nature. Liberal view points don't sell as many books as conservative view points do. Take telvision and radio; these are fairly liberal in nature. Conservative view points aren't expressed as readily as liberal view points are.
The problem stems from the fact that each group views itself as the normal. That is, liberals don't think they're THAT liberal. Conservatives don't think they're THAT conservative. So, to be "fair", they extend a little to the left, and a little to the right when reporting.
On a normalized scale, this means we really _are_ getting biased data. For instance, when a Republican is in office, we have a homeless problem. When a Democrat is in office, we don't have a homeless problem. Given the number of homeless stays the same, what's changed -- that's right, what gets reported. Suitable examples exist for the other direction.
So, my bet is that it's the selection of the news that gets printed, rather than the prevention of printing news.
As a dumpster diver, let me say that when AOL used to send out floppy diskettes, that when they did a software update they just threw the old labeled and unlabeled media out by the thousands. I have boxes and boxes of rescued AOL floppies that I reformat when I need to pass out a small file over old media.
Given that they treated reusable media with such discontempt, it only makes sense that they are already accustomed to disposing large quantities of non-reusable media.
Will this action even be a blip on their radar? Probablly not, unless environmentalists and the media are dragged into the lot.
That's what's so great about this system of government, Congress doesn't have to worry about that! It's the judicial branch that's got to make sense of things.
The /. image that had been painted in my mind (not that from the article itself) was that you had these guys waiting to pull cable, but until the software side of things worked, they weren't going to run them. "Why string this copper if next week they decide they need fiber."
/.ers presented it, it would be like the foreman holding up production until I got my applications working.
You're correct, of course, the article does say both are late. And that statement may be true, I have no reason to doubt it. But I viewed these as independent events.
When I had my house built, I had 25 pair CAT 5 strung to each room of the house before I even knew what kind of jack I was going to use the wire for. The way
I'm now pondering if by the time they get the infrastructure in place, will a better technology have come out.
Perhaps I imagine long strands of fiber optics or ethernet cables with the ability to plug arbitrary devices at the ends. Allow for high enough bandwidth, and even if you have to sit on driving technology to catch up, you still know how much data you can pump through a fiber.
It'd be really, really, really sad if no one planned the project out, or even worse, planned it out in such a way that it depended on specific transport media. Test labs and simulations ought to go a long way for telling if something is scalable.
I don't understand how the software developers are holding up laying of the infrastructure. One would have thought that the software would be fairly independent of the media on which it operates.
Actually, the proposed idea was not to break copyright nor distribute movies. I've done neither, and the size of my personal commercial movie collection assists in demonstrating that.
Where I was going was that adoption of standards don't really happen by dictate of use or by people going "oh that's a really cool technology." Nor, does it even reside with quality. It resides with ease of use.
No matter how good or how bad this codec is, if someone makes a utility that is just so pathetically easy to install and use, then it will gain adoption because people won't abandon it for the wrong reason.
Now, yes, I'd have to concede that it's likely that people will engage in illegal activities. However, let's face it, they'll do that with whatever is at hand -- AVI and MPG being a good example, and those have dozens of codec choices. Ironically, if the "copyright breaking bad guys" flood the net with stuff in this codec, the technology and applications will mature faster, much the same way you're benefiting from the VCRs, recorable CD-ROMs, dual layer DVDs, high bandwidth internet, and streaming video technologies the porn industry funneled lots of money into.
I say a technology is neutral, and it's user is where the ethical standpoint resides. But it's demonstrated through history "great technology" is not the factor that leads to a win, it's adoption by the masses. And that means making something so simple to use that the masses can use it -- the good part, however, is that when the open source community does that, they don't skimp on quality to make a buck.
The killer application is to insert a DVD and have it simplistically rip and encode it for personal viewing. Make it simplistic enough for the masses to use, and let the codec take off as a standard induced by practice not dictates or technology.
It's true that Linux wins on technology. However, it isn't technology that's going to win it for us.
... heck, think NeXT, think BeOS!
Think Betamax
What matters is ease-of-use by the computer-illerate-end-user who has a task to perform or, more realistically, just wants to play a game.
In the corporate world it's about being able to pass blame if something goes wrong. Management throwing blame downhill can make "choosing Linux" stick easier than dealing with the counter of "it's Microsoft's fault, you know how their trackrecord is."
Just generating the perception of "we've been on hold for 70 minutes trying to get through to someone who knows what they're doing" creates more illusion of 'doing something' than a Unix guru going "oh, look, it wasn't Linux afterall -- it was this hard drive that burned out because you didn't replace it when I told you to."
It can't happen. Think of it this way: In order to replace a SysAdmin, they're going to have to be able to define a process for resolving at least 80% of the problems a system administrator faces. ("I can't get my email," "the printer doesn't work," "can you change my password," "the Internet is down," etc.)
If they had these processes already, wouldn't you think when you dialed customer support you'd get competent assistance?
The Egyptians had it right... using the pyramids to secretly and safely store all their MP3 collections.
One year ago today, US soil was attacked. I expect to hear a lot about it in the news. I expect to see a lot of ribbons. I expect to see a show of security.
...that they are going to attack where you specifically work and live over better targets? ...and what is the cost you're paying.
That's why I'm not going to watch the news, wear a ribbon, but will make a comment on security.
You see, a lot of American have already mourned and come to emotional terms with what happened. A day of remembrance is nothing more than a day of television ratings. Fair-weather patriots bother me even more; too many people just wear a ribbon to call attention to themselves more than to silently commemorate. The loss of Jim Henson, Gene Roddenberry, and George Burns seemed far more sincere by Americans on many accounts. Perhaps that's because we knew them more intimately, and we know we're supposed to feel bad, but just don't have the connection. I feel it's more important to be honest about your emotional state than to follow the trend of buying a $10 flag for your car and taking a company mandated minute of silence during your lunch break. Is it true loss felt, or more of the desire to just fit in because of peer pressure?
Air travel will be particularly light as American's fear to board a plane this anniversary. We've got scud missiles pointed at the clouds. NIH is checking every single car that passes through its gates. Many US citizens tremble in not being able to leave Northern Virginia fast enough, wanting as much distance as possible between them and the District of Columbia.
It just seems like society doesn't have common sense anymore. Everyone thinks the terrorists are out to get him or her specifically. At SAIC when the planes were falling from the skies, they locked down their parking lots and you had to show a badge. If you're a terrorist, and you've got scare resources of hijacked planes, where are you most likely going to put it... some place of specific military importance or of high political interest, or one of hundreds of SAIC buildings spread over the country? Hmm. Let's think.
GEIS did the same thing for things like the Gulf War or threats from Iraq, and at times even took the GE meatball logo off the building. Security by obscurity just gives a false sense of safety. It's like covering your eyes so the monsters under the bed don't get you.
We know for a fact that the terrorists we're dealing with are patient. They'll sit low for 10 years or more just planning. You think somewhere along the way they'd have access to a phone book with a street address. I'm sorry, but many of us just aren't that important enough to be attacked: what we do or produce can quickly be picked up somewhere else by someone else. Such an attack is wasted, and the terrorists know that.
I understand the publicly stated reasoning behind it all: "we deal with government," "we make parts used in missiles," "we deal with the stock market." The reality is employees who don't understand risk analysis feel scared, and making a show of activity is creates the illusion they're protected. This way they'll go back to being productive and making money for the company.
Take the anthrax scare. The day it came out, the very day, near the very hour of the news report, SAIC had to call in the HAZMAT team because someone reported seeing a white substance in the stall of the women's bathroom. When this happens, every call must be taken seriously. It's expensive, it's inconvenient, and it shuts the place down. It places a taxing burden on emergency response units, and those who seriously need it don't get the on-demand service required for a real emergency. Consider this, Bin Laden himself sneaks past dozens of guards and automated systems, by passes the lobby, conference rooms filled with military, skips over a great biological target like the cafeteria, and goes up half a dozen or so floors, sneaks into the women's bathroom, and drops a white substance overtly on the floor to be seen and recognized by the untrained. Great plan, or irrational panic? I'd argue that more financial damage was done by Americans who did a knee-jerk reaction without asking "come on, is this a likely target of benefit" than the planes themselves. Naturally, hours later the lab reports it's dust from the toilet paper rolls. Go figure. And to be fair, other companies were doing the exact same thing. What did security do? They passed out handy-wipe packets, the kind you get to wipe your fingers after a BBQ dinner, to everyone... yeah, that'll stop Anthrax.
Let's get real, should a terrorist want to breach any of these facilities, do they have the resources to fake a badge? Sure do. But why go through that trouble, when you can point a machine gun at a minimum wage security guard. I once asked an AOL guard what he'd do if a gunman came in demanding to pass. The answer: "Hand him my keys and resign."
Countries are always ready to re-fight the last war, never the current one. We assume that the tactics used will be the ones used again. That's not how wars are fought. Look at how the Red-Coats expected the engagement -- let's point guns at each other, you fire at me, I fire at you, we reload, and go till no one's left to drop. Change tactics, boom. Fast forward to present day, we've got all our defenses set up so that we can address a missile-flying and world-war-II threats. Duh, hasn't anyone realized the enemy is already on our land, has been for years, and has access to deploy from within our borders? Crippling a country has become so much easier now that people won't defend themselves and we rely on supply chains and lack the knowledge of basic survival skills.
I loathe the airport and NIH security policies. First of all, ask yourself, if you were going to conduct another attack, would you be doing it on a day the Americans were waiting for it? The element of surprise just worked so well last time. So, where will todays stepped up security measures be tomorrow? Why weren't they in place yesterday? This is the same issue I take with holiday-only patriots -- where was your pride of country before this event, and why did it fade so quickly?
What's worse is that even if we had all the security policies in place, all the time, even back in 2001, it would not have prevented the attacks. Even the US government admits that. So, I ask, why if we've just declared the procedure benefit-less do we engage in doing it, especially at such cost? The answer: because if we don't do something, people will says "you're not doing anything" -- and that looks politically bad for those holding public office.
It doesn't take half a mind to fashion a decent weapon real-time on an aircraft from readily available supplies. There are so many ways to bypass security that even 60 Minutes got past airport security with a gun on national television.
I'm surprised at how panicked Americans get, too. Two planes barely put a dent in the real face of New York. One plane damaged only a section segment of one wall at the Pentagon. Yet, people were acting like DC had been flattened and the shock wave was traveling hundreds of miles. That's movie special effects, not reality. I thought other countries had a problem with conceptualizing the size of the United States, apparently it's own citizens do as well. If something really bad is happening, please leave the public utilities and transportation means open to emergency units. News will still travel.
The problem with current security policies is two fold. Number one, we don't take into account that the attacker is willing to trade their life for their goal. This one is hard to combat, because the common set of deterrents don't work. Number two, we don't take a pro-active stance; we believe the world thinks like us, shares our views, embraces diversity, and as a whole wants to get along. People, we're the ignorant ones.
What this attack has shown is how unprepared we are, and more importantly, were. We can't want the government to protect our borders and at the same time deny them the means to provide that defense. Defense doesn't equate to war. And each time a country has been completely subdued by force, peace results, and usually good relations after the fact. Each time we let the politicians dictate how, we still have skirmishes and we've lost. Think Japan. Think Korea.
Because we're in a panic, many Americans are willing to trade privacy, freedoms, and liberties for security. I shake my head at this behavior. Safety does not have to come at the expenditure of these things, and more importantly, shouldn't. Plus, the "security" we're getting is illusionary; it's not the real kind that gets the job done. It's a show.
Let's wise up and start asking the right questions. What is the realistic probability that terrorists are going to attack today?
As the old joke goes, "elephants are excellent at hiding in trees." "What do you mean, I've never seen one before." "My point exactly." Before you allow fear and stress to ruin your emotional state and you've tossed every principle being an American is about out the window, ask yourself if those guys protecting trees from having elephants climb in them are actually providing value, and while you're at it, find out how many elephants they've personally been able to stop in the past.
SuperBowl...? Everyone watches the commercials. The execs think "everyone will be watching, we have to make this good" the consumers are saying "this will be good, therefore we will watch."
How about those "Funniest Commericals" television shows where all the content is funny commecials. How about those small clips passed around in email?
If a commerical is well done and entertaining, it will get viewer following -- and the product will stick. If it's just annoying in-your-face product announcement, people can (and will) move on.
That's because they have a personal invested interest in what gets produced, and that's a strong motivation for fixing problems.
One should only be allowed to pollute upsteam.
I'm really pissed that Chevrolet, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Acura, Audi, etc. are ripping off the Ford's idea.
Damn them for making better, cheaper, products with more features. What kind of innovation is that? It's all theft.
- The file you want versioned.
- The archive that holds it.
- The workfile you extracted from an archive.
- The shadow file automatically extracted from an archive.
- A directory.
- A project, which is not always 1:1 with a directory.
- A view, which is not a subset of files or directories.
For instance, I may have the file archive.c,v which I check out as myfile.c, which is shadowed as mainfile.c, which exists in multiple projects, inside different subdirectories, exposed whenever I have a view of a particular time on a particular branch for a given subset of a module.Everytime a version control system tries to combine things you run into problems. Take the GUI version of PVCS, which called Projects a collection of files (from different directories) -- which ended up enforcing that all filenames had to be unique, even if in different directories. And what they call Views is actually a subset of the list of available filenames.
Ever get the idea developers are so into archiving versions of a file that they gloss over the fact the file organization itself is a structure that also needs preserving?
Consultants usually argue that new doesn't work (a solid trend in hisotry), but we try it any way because of hope this time it may be different. And it usually isn't.
By Linus making this decision, he's effectively forcing a user base, and there by excercising the SCM tool fairly heavily.
Lots of usage, combined with small, incremental revision, is the best way to get controlled quality. Since the product is "new," people are going to be more likely to stand up and rattle a little louder when request a fix.
At the 50,000ft view, this may be the way Linus gets a SCM system of decent quality that operates the way he thinks it should. Frankly, I can't say that's a bad thing.
From a licensing standpoint, they have a problem with the code that validates you. We went through some layoffs and backed off the number of users upon renewal. Even though users didn't exist in the database, the licensing reports said they were there. It took me a few days to demonstrate this was actually happening and get them to admit to it -- don't trust their logs!
Every tech person reading this knows that the Microsoft operating system platform is certainly capable of being built and shipped without dozens of Microsoft applications. That platform doesn't care who wrote the applications it runs. And one only has to turn to a version of that platform before Internet Explorer and Media Player ever existed to see that Gates is bending the definition of what Windows is.
Microsoft is has pulled a definition swap on the non-technical world. It is trying to say that the APIs, the interface, and the applications in a certain configuration represent the concept of "Windows." This is very much like how an Apple is an Apple is an Apple. When us techies sling code, we know better. But what Microsoft knows is that the end-user doesn't know... or care.
People choose Windows because they can tweak it; there is so much software out there to choose from, and much of the good stuff isn't from Microsoft.
Remember, Microsoft is going where the money is, and money can be easily removed from the hands of the uninformed. As such, the "lame end-user" who just wants to turn on their PC and have it "work" with no frills is a large base to draw from.
The rest of us, the hobbiests, the scientists, the engineers, the developers, spend most of our time conversing on the higher end of the IQ distribution that we forget what the average user is like or how many of them there are. These people don't want to know how it works; they don't care it could be better, faster, or smaller. They want the first solution, not a best fit. They want the computer to tell them what to do, not the other way around as a power-user mandates.
I don't mind Microsoft going after these people, but don't insult the rest of us by twisting word meanings. Afterall, we're the ones developing the applications and content for that operating system. We're the source of your "innovation." The problem is, that last statement is true, it stings, and they know it. That's why there will always be a love/hate relationship with us -- they need us, but don't want to be reminded of that fact. While the left hand condems, the right hand acts in secret.