It's not hypocritical because they didn't tell other people that they must open source everything. The hypocrisy I intend to imply does not stem from what IBM (or BCG) is telling others (though it would be interesting if IBM was really requesting other companies Open their source, yet not doing the same). My BCG hypothetical company didn't do that at all. What I was speaking about was a company that directly benefits from Open Source, which is provided freely by others, yet doesn't participate in it whole-heartedly with their own source, when given the opportunity. Unused internal source is ripe ground for Open Sourcing -- you never know what will take off, until you have the courage to put it out there, and let others have a go at it. I don't mean to imply Open Sourcing old, unused code is an easy task; but I would say it is "low hanging fruit", compared to starting an OSS project from scratch.
demanding (not asking) that something on someone else's shelf be released is not really going to give co's a warm feeling about putting anything out there. you might reconsider your statement in terms of damage it could cause to open source... Bravo! Spoken like a true Anonymous Coward!;P
Kidding aside, you make plenty of good points. Those points are not necessarily related to my statements, though.
I didn't say that the two forms of archiving (private vs. public) don't pose any difficulty, or that they are even of equal difficulty. I was just bringing up the fact that both forms of "archiving" are *available*, in this case and many others. Each method choice results in a different potential set of public opinions.
Calling someone a "hypocrite", and "demanding" something from them, are two very separate acts. One is a matter of stating opinion, and the other of calling to action. If you choose to equate them, that just shows a personal bias against the word "hypocrite", more than anything.;) Perceived "hypocracy" can be debated in the public sphere. "Demands" are a one-way street.
A corporation is merely a legal business entity created by law Thank you for repeating my point -- a corporation IS *merely* an entity created by law. As a *legal entity*, it has no "rights" outside of what is granted by law. There is nothing intrinsic about those rights, unlike the rights granted to PEOPLE by the Bill of Rights, because *legal entities* are a fabrication of law. Your apology is accepted.
You seem to confuse corporations with their investors (whom again, due to activist Conservative judges, have even fewer rights concerning control of "their" corporations, today more than ever). I'm not against restricting the rights of any individual, with any label, such as investor. That includes you, you Sparky Cheesemonkey Messenger lover! In any well-considered, non-activist, liberal interpretation of the Constitution, such *legal entities* would have no rights unto themselves -- all the rights belong to the PEOPLE involved with those entities, individually. Take away the made-up entity, and the PEOPLE are still there, and their rights don't change either way.
I can't believe you have me defending corporations here. Well if it's any consolation, you're not very good at it.;)
The concept that corporations have ANY "rights", including free speech, is completely ludicrous. Corporations don't really die (even when they go out of business, their brand sometimes gets picked up, like Atari), and they have no sense of consequence unless regulations force them to. The activist Conservative judges gave corporations some of the same "rights" as people, through a grave misunderstanding of the term "people" in the Constitution, because apparently Conservatives think corporations are more important than actual living, breathing PEOPLE. You know, the new type of hairless talking monkeys. That kind of people!
Apart from that, "freedom of speech" has nothing to do with your ability to call my phone, send mail to my mail box, or e-mail me. Those communication methods all terminate on MY PROPERTY, and my property rights trump your "speech" rights any day. You can stand and yell at me all you want, but if you do it on my lawn, I can call the cops and have them drag you away, and no activist Conservative judges can change that. If they do, I'll just use my "right to bear arms" and shoot you.;) I may even try that with the corporations SPAMMING me too, but they are so much bigger of a target, the ammo may be cost prohibitive.
Ignore IBM and OS/2 and everything, just for a second, and review this hypothetical situation on its own:
A Big Computer Giant (BCG) purports to be very Open Source friendly. They defend OSS products and licenses, even using their own lawyers, and make a lot of money using/supporting OSS, in their own hardware, and in huge consulting contracts. It turns out they have this collection of source code that they aren't really using anymore, and they have complete rights to at least part of it. Let's just say they only have 2 real options when archiving the source code they own the rights to:
1. Keep it locked in some internal media or shelf, never to see the light of day, unless an internal developer finds it interesting and digs it up for an internal-only project. The internal project may never see the light of day either.
2. Put it on the Internet, and Open Source License it, preferably with an existing OSI license. Not only could the online repository be considered the source "archive", but it also leaves the possibility of growing a redundant, living archive. The source could then be provided by various OSS repositories and mirror hosts.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but shouldn't #2 always be the default, or at least the first option considered? Even if you're not an OSS nut (like me), you have to admit the hypothetical company looks pretty darn hypocritical if they don't choose #2, when given the choice, early and often.
So am I using a hypothetical situation to say that IBM (BCG) is a big hypocrite if they DON'T release and apply an OSI License to SOM/DSOM source, ASAP? Why yes I am! How could you tell?...
I still wont be happy until Opt-Out becomes the default, just like it should be with any other form of SPAM. Communications like this should all be Opt-In only, and only then if specifically subscribed per list type. All these contracts that say "we do business with you now, so our subsidiaries and 'partners' all get to SPAM you now, unless you go over there and print this form and sign and snail-mail it" are the default now, and they all stink.
Based on these, I feel confident saying this: anyone who claims Hillary has more structured, sound, or reasoned policy is either an idiot, or just willfully ignorant. Being married to a former President doesn't count as experience, or Laura Bush might be on the Republican ticket. And experience has shown Clintons to be the best Republican lackeys, not anything else. Remember that Mr. Clinton sold us out to China first, long before W renewed it! His bad fiscal decisions were masked by the Internet bubble, which broke soon after he left office. Take off your damn rose-colored Clinton history specs people! If Clinton was that great, how the hell did W Bush ever get elected???
I honestly think it comes down to Ron Paul vs. John McCain. Here's my breakdown on the issues:
Roads: Ron hates national anything that costs money. McCain has a bus. Meep meep! Advantage: McCain
War: Ron doesn't want to deal with any conflict outside our own borders. McCain is cool with wars started by other Republicans, as long as he doesn't have to spend any POW time again himself. Advantage: Ron-ish
Torture: Ron probably thinks the Republican debates are torture enough for anyone. McCain is fine with anything less than what he's been through already. Advantage: Ron
Fiscal Policy: Ron thinks States should have all the money, and the Feds only need enough for chairs and Spartan sheilds. McCain thinks the banks should be the ones handling money -- they've done such a good job all on their own so far... Advantage: Ron
Having said all that, I guess I'm for Ron. But based on Republican average voting history in all these areas, my bet is McCain will win. While "small government" and "lower taxes" sounds awfully nice, no Real Republican (excluding Libertarians in Republican clothing here) seems to think that's a realistic goal. Tax cuts that result in larger deficit are just deferred taxes, with hefty interest and penalties. Tax cuts that only go to those with a bazillion dollars also don't count, at least until I earn my first bazillion, which is at least 1000 scratchers away now. Getting God back in office, smiting anyone who isn't as bigoted as the establishment, and giving golden goblets to the Chosen Lobby Creed, seems to be their main purpose right now.
I understand the idealist point of patent protection, but you don't seem to understand that the patent system was NEVER actually used that way. Bell didn't really invent the telephone -- he had some ideas that got him part way there, and then used his patent examiner (via bribery) to steal someone else's invention, to complete the job. He got ALL the power and money, through cunning use of power and money, while the powerless REAL inventor got nothing. Pardon me for not remembering the name of the real inventor for a moment -- Bell's is etched into my brain, primarily through the monopoly he created, that was later broken up, and now is mysteriously reforming... Reminds me of Terminator 2... Meanwhile, Marconi, who was really the first telephone inventor, didn't even come close to getting any credit, because he wasn't "connected" to the patent system. And these three men show another flaw in the patent system: something useful, however novel, tends to have more than one inventor. People who never knew each other tend to stumble on the same discoveries, at around the same time. Revealing their discoveries to the world immediately is most often in their best interest, and all the "advantages" of the patent system tend to get exploited at the real inventor's detriment. There is no real "incentive" there for the real inventors. Most often, the only patent beneficiary is the already-rich investor, or corporation, that "employs" the inventor. The most credit goes to the scoundrel ready to TAKE credit, usually where none is due.
The patent system originally had high, Benjamin Franklin inspired ideals. What it really became is another clique, a place for elites to play, and a tool to victimize anyone not as well connected as themselves. Just ask any of Edison's employees. Oops, you can't -- they're dead, and you don't know their names anyway, because they never really got credit for their own inventions -- Edison took it ALL.
In this case, analog-digital TV signal conversion pre-dated Tivo by a long shot. Streaming audio/video to and from hard drives were already well established technologies. Tivo just managed to get in when the hardware was cheap, and put together some software that made the output and menus look prettier than those damn boxy Windows video players. Why isn't Tivo suing the hell out of Microsoft for Media Center? Because they would lose. A Tivo is just a computer with a video capture card, decent hard drive(s), and TV output, in a box that looks more like a DVD player than a PC. There's nothing unique, or patent worthy, about it. Look and branding are copyright and trademark items -- none of it has any place in the patent system.
Several other countries, including the EU, don't allow software patents for very good reasons -- the possibilities for all software are already written in the collection of transistors they operate on. Software bits are like letters in a book -- it's writing, not "invention". If it were truly novel, it could not be parsed by existing brains or "processors". All writing, including software, is the realm of copyright, exclusively. Now copyright reform is a different subject worth discussing...
I would say this is exactly what the consumer telco monopolies are saying when they threaten to throttle bandwidth on any Internet host or service, if some form of additional payment is not provided.
On day 1 of my first use of the Internet, it was on a college campus. It was a good thing I was starting college in '94, because we couldn't afford true Internet access from home back then. Having used ethernet from day 1, I don't think modems count, so now I'm a snob. The college campus had Internet peering agreements with several other colleges and institutions, including the local telco. Thus the local telco monopoly benefits from that college's own bandwidth, network deployment, and redundant peers. The "same companies you depend on" also relentlessly lobby our government, at all levels, to maintain their local monopoly against competition. It was tax dollars and monopoly status grants, NOT private investment, that built their networks, yet they continue to charge whatever they want for crappy service. If there's no other option where you live, where else are you going to go? Day 1 of the Internet had nothing to do with telco's, and everything to do with the government opening up its military/academic ARPA Network to be exploited by private industry. It just happened that the only private industry in a position to take advantage of this network was the local monopoly telcos. It was very convenient that they already had the lobbyists, and campaign funding power, to maintain those monopolies afterwards.
Yes, I view money-grubbing, anti-consumer, anti-competition, monopolist-fascist-oligarchs as 'evil'. Unlike our current Supreme Court, I don't think freedom of speech is only for those who can afford to be heard.
Based on the article, I have a similar theory or three. The article leaves me wondering quite a few things...
Where exactly were these "drops of blood", and how old were they? I don't see how people could live together long enough to have two kids and NOT leave some blood, fingerprints, and/or DNA all over each other's belongings. I find foot and hand cuts, blood blisters, and paper cuts I never remember getting all the time, and I'm not even a doctor or file system designer. I find it extremely strange that no fingerprints were found in Nina's car other than her own. I'm sure I have my friends, relatives, and co-workers' fingerprints all over my cars.
How can they claim murder without a body, and who first claimed she was missing?
Why is it so easy for the kids to stay in Russia, assuming they were born in the USA, children of US citizens regardless, and have relatives outside of prison in the US?
What the heck does a missing car seat have to do with anything? If he read the books about murder listed as being found in his car, wouldn't he have been much smarter about hiding any circumstantial evidence, such as books about murder?
How the heck does a foreign born person who gained citizenship through marriage, openly cheating with a self-pronounced sadomasochist, get custody of kids in divorce, over a respected computer science figure who happens to like real video games, and who has the intellect to defend it? I'm not even acknowledging all the hand-wringing about violence -- all games are violent under some critical interpretation, and to call the violence of a game like Battlefield Vietnam any more real or psyche-threatening than network news is ridiculous. Of course, that doesn't stop me from thinking all parents who watch Fox News should have their kids taken away...
With all this talk about the Russian Mafia, I think DARPA is too easily overlooked. I bet they were peeved to realize our best hope at a secure file system was paid for by US tax dollars, developed in Moscow, and wasn't owned by Haliburton or Micro$loth.
All these strange missing facts lead me to a couple of main questions:
How do we know Nina isn't in Russia, living happily with her kids right now? How are Russian authorities cooperating with the case, if they are involved at all?
Who is the genius at Oakland Police Station, who is going to pull some CSI crap at the last second, and prove Hans Reiser mentally formed a black hole that sucked Nina into the 6th dimension, and left the kids scared of random US black holes, seeking solace in black hole-less Russia? They're still little kids, so they probably haven't heard of "black bagging" yet.
OJ got off when there was plenty of physical evidence against him, just by learning to shoot with tight gloves on! A racist cop screwing with evidence is just a given in LA, and I doubt Oakland is any different.
"Reasonable doubt" is the least of this case's problems.
I probably can't pay you nearly as much as your current job (at least, not before bonuses), but I bet you IT in the entertainment sector is a lot more fun than IT in the financial sector. I'm also with a very small start-up, so the opportunities to branch out into other areas of interest is also a lot easier, than it would be in a big corporate bureaucracy.:) The royalty and bonuses can be huge. It has a lot more risk, and more random work hours; but the creative environment, and long term financial rewards from taking the "right" risks, are worth it in the end.
If you really want to get picky, how about the fact that every time a computer shows up in a movie it has an Apple logo on it:)
What about Jerry McGuire, wherein everyone seems to be using SGI IRIX?! I know I always turn to my SGI Indigo and IRIX for word processing and contact lists...:p
Where I work, things are obviously much different. We apparantly don't need any "manager" but the Owner/CEO, who is also one of our top Engineers, and the Production Manager, who is more like a Milestone minder with QA lead tasks. The PM doesn't write the Milestones -- the real practitioners do that for each department collectively. He just reminds people of their tasks, and works with QA to make sure they're done right, often acting as a QA tester himself.
They're there to make sure the lights stay on.
Our landlord covers electric and lighting as part of the lease. Besides, I like to work while only in the soft glow of my monitor.;) At best, the company accountant can take most of the credit for this.
that there's water in the coolers
No, the delivery truck guy does that -- and the accountant that pays his water company. And the last person to empty a bottle is responsible for putting the next one on. We don't need a specific position for that. If someone is too weak, they ask for help with the bottle, but that's pretty rare. If people can't figure out how to throw a new water bottle on the cooler, maybe you should buy my instructional video, for a small consultation fee...
donuts in the kitchen
No water bottle excercises, and now donuts? Your employees must be rolling blobs by now, with casters for legs. Significant Others, or Chef-hobbiests, at the office sometimes bring cookies and other treats to the kitchen, but a position for a full time donut supplier??? That bloat needs to be chopped right away!
that you get a new computer
All our employees get a working box, ready before they sit down the first time. New computers are brought by IT before they need them. Why would management be involved with that? Good IT practitioners can predict when someone needs new hardware based on upcoming projects and related software requirements, and a good Production Manager keeps IT informed. IT "Managers" often can't predict this, so who needs 'em? "Managers" just tend to muck it up with some ridiculous procurement policy, which usually involves a vendor who's giving them kickbacks on the sly. A proper procurement policy involves a knowledgeable IT worker with a known budget, who mods PCs on the cheap as a hobby, with a mix of Froogle, NexTag, and CNet.
that you can order software
Employee: "I need software." IT: "Are you sure?" E: "Yes"
IT-to-Project Manager: "Does E really need this? Is it worth X$ in productivity or project time?"
Project Manager: "Yes."
IT buys software. It is downloaded and installed immediately, or delivered and disk-swapped within a week iff luddite disk-dist-ware.
that you get feedback on your code
Programmer #1: "How does this look? I trust your judgement."
Programmer #2, on related project: "...Sucks. Fix this and that."
#1: "OK, I'll refactor."
#1: "...Done."
#2: "Good 'nuff."
QA: "Found problem."
#1: "Fixing..."
that you don't have to go looking for customers
Where I come from, that's called Sales, PR, or Marketing. All the useful work there is footwork and communication to the outside, not managerial communication inside. If any marketer is out of whack with what the production staff knows they're making, they are soon corrected. No manager needed for that -- just a few outspoken production workers, who care about product perceptions.
and so that you don't have to deal with every trifling detail that goes with running an organisation and basically can just get down to work
You see, in a healthy company, where the majority is doing their own job, and all the tasks are well defined, this happens fairly naturally. When nearly everyone is not just some manager, who is always trying to seem sufficiently more busy than an actual production worker, enough to justify their bloated salary, and
If they have access to the server root, being administrators, they have access to the *encrypted* versions of the affected password files. From there, it is trivial to run Cain, or a similar decrypt tool, on the password list, to see which passwords get decrypted fastest. You would be amazed how fast even 9+ character long, multi-case, special character encrusted passwords can be decrypted with some nice Rainbow Tables on modern *desktop* hardware, not to mention a relatively cheap Beowulf cluster, or even a relatively simple multi-PC distributed brute-force crack. Think CRAKI-at-home. Bad passwords, like dictionary words, proper names, SSNs, and dates, can be decrypted by the most limited tools on 10 year old hardware, in a matter of minutes. Decent hardware and tools can reduce that to seconds.
You have to assume any passwords on the 'Net, encrypted or not, can be sniffed -- copied whole as they travel, with no way to detect who did the sniffing. If an encrypted password is sniffed, the same tools an administrator can use to weed out weak passwords can be used by crackers. That's why even encrypted password tokens should be further encrypted by VPN or SSL tunnels, which have other nice features to prevent Man In The Middle, and related address-spoof style attacks. These encrypted tunnels should always be used on anything other than a very physically secure LAN (and no, drywall does not make a LAN secure), and even on a LAN the overhead is low enough to use SSL anyway. I personally use a minimum of HTTPS around any Internet traffic that is intended for private use.
Likewise, e-mail is never "private" unless you use PGP, and phone conversations (VoIP and PSTN, Skype included) are never "private" unless you use something like Zphone on both ends -- as AT+T and NSA have taught us all. Who knows when the NSA will approach Skype?...
From the things you list, it sounds more like you want to learn IS software, with a strong web applications bent, more than "IT". When ever I hear a coworker referring to IT, Information *Technology*, it tends to be more somewhere between software and hardware maintenance, than a programmer per say.
Having said that, I personally think hardware is a good thing to understand, no matter how abstracted your work is from the hardware "layer". I think what the assembly guys are trying to say is learn something closer to machine code, so you understand the hardware you're resting everything on better. Sure, architects don't need to know how to make bricks, but they sure as hell need to know the physical properties of the bricks in their buildings' walls. Programmers of all stripes should have some basic knowledge of bit-logic and transistors. To the guys proscribing specific languages, need I remind you Object Oriented programming is more a design pattern than a set of languages? Sure, some languages (Java, Ruby) make it easier to fit OO patterns than others (C), but a good OO designer can make ANY language fit their OO patterns, even Assembler.
Starting fresh, I say the first thing you need to do is learn how to make a good flow chart. Flow chart anything, from your morning bathroom routine through your preparing for bed at the end of the day. You can plug flow charts in to any language -- just use the flowcharts to show your inputs, outputs, and conditional branches, before you need to write one line of code. Other diagrams are better for certain problem types. State machines are great for hardware work. Network diagrams are useful for networking and AI type logic.
Then learn design patterns. Make your flow charts Object Oriented, so you can re-use them and plug them in to different, larger flow charts, without starting from scratch every time. Learn widgets and factory patterns. No reason to get stuck on a specific language just to learn patterns -- a lot of books use real-world analogies (Starbuzz, Pizza Factory, etc.) for process patterns, pared down to specific languages. I say stick with the real-world until you absolutely need to use a specific language, or specific hardware for that matter.
To start slowly in coding, start with something simple, like HTML. Many argue HTML sans JavaScript isn't really programming, but a lot of the flow is there, and it's a good place to experiment with the basics. Block structures, attributes, hierarchy, order of operations, etc. And there's tons of example HTML out there -- just click "View Page Source" on any browser.
The next language to learn is up for debate. I would say it depends on the application you want to work on. If you're parsing text data, Perl and Python have some nice tools. For GUI presentation, Java, JavaScript, or even Flash and PHP are possible starting point for Web/file GUI presentation. Learn C and C++ dead last. They are very powerful and widely used languages, but their syntax is very bloated and counter-intuitive in some ways, for historical reasons. They're all easy enough to learn with some grounding in the basics. I would say Pascal is a good learning language for good coding habits, but it's kind of a dead language now, for other historical reasons. I personally started on LogoBASIC, but that's just showing my age too plainly.:)
I personally use Gizmo Project www.gizmoproject.com -- software front-end to sipphone.com, which has been reviewed by several magazines as having a better interface than Skype, and their Call-In service is a little cheaper. They offer 775 area code Call-In numbers for free. They also offer true SIP routing, so you can call numbers at several other SIP services (like Earthlink VoIP and many University campus phones) internationally for free, and they can call you for free, unlike Skype which involves single service/software lock-in. I can also use many free SIP software and low-cost hardware alternatives to connect to the same Gizmo account, like my Windows Mobile SIP phone software, and D-Link VoIP router. PSTN calls are about 1 cent a minute US, with some international rates better than Skype too.
I may just use Skype rather than my 1000 Gizmo Call-Out minutes this year, to make them last longer, and switch back as soon as the New Year hits.:) Those 1000 cents may still be handy for long international calls.
I'll also use my WinMobile phone with Sprint $15/mo unlimited EVDO/WiFi 'Net, and SIP or Skype, to save my minimal airtime minutes for days I can't get any 'Net connection.:) I also use my Gizmo Call-In number as my primary, since I can recieve calls or check my voicemail-emails on almost any 'Net capable device, all without using any airtime minutes, unlike my cell voicemail. That way I can pay the bare-minimum cell plan and still never go over. The land line is now relegated to DSL and 911. The total cost is much less than my previous Land+cell+DSL+LongDist+airtime, even after the recent addition of my EVDO wireless 'Net service, faster DSL upgrade, and multiple new phone-in area codes, for both me and my spouse. I can't wait for pure WiFi/WiMAX everywhere access and Fiber to home/node, so I can drop the haggard PSTN system entirely.
No wonder the telco monopolies are running scared yelling "Save me FCC and NSA!".
To assume these touch screens are well designed is a huge leap. My bank (BofA) recently changed to Diebold ATMs, and I wish they would go back to the old hardware. I am thinking about leaving them over it. The bigger screens and fonts might help someone with poor eye sight, but I would rather not have the amount I'm withdrawing broadcast to everyone in eye shot. Each action creates a series of bright flashes and loud beeps that begin well before the machine actually lets me complete the action, and continue to well after I've completed the task it's "reminding" me to complete.
It might as well yell "Hey, this guy wants to withdraw $200, and this flashing slot is about to be filled with money in a few seconds! He just got it! $200 out of this now-empty slot right here! Look! It's still flashing and beeping! Hide around the corner now!"
In general, I wont trust any voting or ATM machine that is not open to testing by a third party security audit, to be chosen by the machine owner (in this case the subject of the article). If Diebold wants to void the warranty on every attempt at a security audit, there's obviously something very wrong with their system.
Re:A lot less than meets the eye
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Region-free PS3
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The ATSC HDTV standards are changing that -- TVs are getting more the same, and often have PC Monitor-like inputs (HDMI is practically DVI with optional sound and DRM). Sometimes they even put the output format hardware in the cable. Some systems can even set the output frequencies necessary for the different regions in software/firmware, which keeps the hardware manufacturing volumes higher, and thus the costs lower. Whether the PS3 video signal-out is as region-free as the ROM loader remains to be seen.
I've often thought wireless mesh networks, like Zig-Bee, and wired routing equivalents, could be used to create an alternative ultra-high-bandwidth high-latency alternative IP network. Houses are close enough, and high-bandwidth multi-hundred-meter wire connections cheap enough, that transport to someone in the same neighborhood or city would be faster over such a network than any current ISP can provide.
Think 8-port LACP copper gigabit trunks on cheap "managed" switches, with firmware altered to route over a static mesh topology -- creating a gigaBYTE neighbor-network with a one-time cost-per-node less than a 2-year (discounted) DSL contract. 10-Gb copper links are bound to come down in price within a few years too. If enough households/apartments/offices joined in, with enough geographical border members creating ad-hoc distance links (with parabolic focused WiFi or lasers or something), the traditional long-haul telco-monopolized fiber network could be avoided entirely. It would be of limited use for real-time services like VoIP outside a local region, due to the high number of hops, and require the insanely high IP-address count of IPv6 just for routing. It would require a lot of friendly techs and hackers to help the non-techs complete their links, and to provide ad-hoc DNS services, but the OSS community already shows that level of generosity is possible.
I'm sure plenty of pirates would be happy with PTP e-mail, slow IM, and enough bandwidth to torrent a BD-ROM in under an hour. The FCC's lack of ability to provide against localized ISP monopolies might just drive the rest of us to join them.
Slashdot Mirror
Kidding aside, you make plenty of good points. Those points are not necessarily related to my statements, though.
I didn't say that the two forms of archiving (private vs. public) don't pose any difficulty, or that they are even of equal difficulty. I was just bringing up the fact that both forms of "archiving" are *available*, in this case and many others. Each method choice results in a different potential set of public opinions.
Calling someone a "hypocrite", and "demanding" something from them, are two very separate acts. One is a matter of stating opinion, and the other of calling to action. If you choose to equate them, that just shows a personal bias against the word "hypocrite", more than anything.
You seem to confuse corporations with their investors (whom again, due to activist Conservative judges, have even fewer rights concerning control of "their" corporations, today more than ever). I'm not against restricting the rights of any individual, with any label, such as investor. That includes you, you Sparky Cheesemonkey Messenger lover! In any well-considered, non-activist, liberal interpretation of the Constitution, such *legal entities* would have no rights unto themselves -- all the rights belong to the PEOPLE involved with those entities, individually. Take away the made-up entity, and the PEOPLE are still there, and their rights don't change either way. I can't believe you have me defending corporations here. Well if it's any consolation, you're not very good at it.
The concept that corporations have ANY "rights", including free speech, is completely ludicrous. Corporations don't really die (even when they go out of business, their brand sometimes gets picked up, like Atari), and they have no sense of consequence unless regulations force them to. The activist Conservative judges gave corporations some of the same "rights" as people, through a grave misunderstanding of the term "people" in the Constitution, because apparently Conservatives think corporations are more important than actual living, breathing PEOPLE. You know, the new type of hairless talking monkeys. That kind of people!
;) I may even try that with the corporations SPAMMING me too, but they are so much bigger of a target, the ammo may be cost prohibitive.
Apart from that, "freedom of speech" has nothing to do with your ability to call my phone, send mail to my mail box, or e-mail me. Those communication methods all terminate on MY PROPERTY, and my property rights trump your "speech" rights any day. You can stand and yell at me all you want, but if you do it on my lawn, I can call the cops and have them drag you away, and no activist Conservative judges can change that. If they do, I'll just use my "right to bear arms" and shoot you.
Ignore IBM and OS/2 and everything, just for a second, and review this hypothetical situation on its own:
A Big Computer Giant (BCG) purports to be very Open Source friendly. They defend OSS products and licenses, even using their own lawyers, and make a lot of money using/supporting OSS, in their own hardware, and in huge consulting contracts. It turns out they have this collection of source code that they aren't really using anymore, and they have complete rights to at least part of it. Let's just say they only have 2 real options when archiving the source code they own the rights to:
1. Keep it locked in some internal media or shelf, never to see the light of day, unless an internal developer finds it interesting and digs it up for an internal-only project. The internal project may never see the light of day either.
2. Put it on the Internet, and Open Source License it, preferably with an existing OSI license. Not only could the online repository be considered the source "archive", but it also leaves the possibility of growing a redundant, living archive. The source could then be provided by various OSS repositories and mirror hosts.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but shouldn't #2 always be the default, or at least the first option considered? Even if you're not an OSS nut (like me), you have to admit the hypothetical company looks pretty darn hypocritical if they don't choose #2, when given the choice, early and often.
So am I using a hypothetical situation to say that IBM (BCG) is a big hypocrite if they DON'T release and apply an OSI License to SOM/DSOM source, ASAP? Why yes I am! How could you tell?...
I still wont be happy until Opt-Out becomes the default, just like it should be with any other form of SPAM. Communications like this should all be Opt-In only, and only then if specifically subscribed per list type. All these contracts that say "we do business with you now, so our subsidiaries and 'partners' all get to SPAM you now, unless you go over there and print this form and sign and snail-mail it" are the default now, and they all stink.
Check these out for yourself, but I think Obama is the clear winner at both sites:
http://www.techpresident.com/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4237333.html
Based on these, I feel confident saying this: anyone who claims Hillary has more structured, sound, or reasoned policy is either an idiot, or just willfully ignorant. Being married to a former President doesn't count as experience, or Laura Bush might be on the Republican ticket. And experience has shown Clintons to be the best Republican lackeys, not anything else. Remember that Mr. Clinton sold us out to China first, long before W renewed it! His bad fiscal decisions were masked by the Internet bubble, which broke soon after he left office. Take off your damn rose-colored Clinton history specs people! If Clinton was that great, how the hell did W Bush ever get elected???
I honestly think it comes down to Ron Paul vs. John McCain. Here's my breakdown on the issues:
Roads: Ron hates national anything that costs money. McCain has a bus. Meep meep!
Advantage: McCain
War: Ron doesn't want to deal with any conflict outside our own borders. McCain is cool with wars started by other Republicans, as long as he doesn't have to spend any POW time again himself.
Advantage: Ron-ish
Torture: Ron probably thinks the Republican debates are torture enough for anyone. McCain is fine with anything less than what he's been through already.
Advantage: Ron
Fiscal Policy: Ron thinks States should have all the money, and the Feds only need enough for chairs and Spartan sheilds. McCain thinks the banks should be the ones handling money -- they've done such a good job all on their own so far...
Advantage: Ron
Having said all that, I guess I'm for Ron. But based on Republican average voting history in all these areas, my bet is McCain will win. While "small government" and "lower taxes" sounds awfully nice, no Real Republican (excluding Libertarians in Republican clothing here) seems to think that's a realistic goal. Tax cuts that result in larger deficit are just deferred taxes, with hefty interest and penalties. Tax cuts that only go to those with a bazillion dollars also don't count, at least until I earn my first bazillion, which is at least 1000 scratchers away now. Getting God back in office, smiting anyone who isn't as bigoted as the establishment, and giving golden goblets to the Chosen Lobby Creed, seems to be their main purpose right now.
I understand the idealist point of patent protection, but you don't seem to understand that the patent system was NEVER actually used that way. Bell didn't really invent the telephone -- he had some ideas that got him part way there, and then used his patent examiner (via bribery) to steal someone else's invention, to complete the job. He got ALL the power and money, through cunning use of power and money, while the powerless REAL inventor got nothing. Pardon me for not remembering the name of the real inventor for a moment -- Bell's is etched into my brain, primarily through the monopoly he created, that was later broken up, and now is mysteriously reforming... Reminds me of Terminator 2... Meanwhile, Marconi, who was really the first telephone inventor, didn't even come close to getting any credit, because he wasn't "connected" to the patent system. And these three men show another flaw in the patent system: something useful, however novel, tends to have more than one inventor. People who never knew each other tend to stumble on the same discoveries, at around the same time. Revealing their discoveries to the world immediately is most often in their best interest, and all the "advantages" of the patent system tend to get exploited at the real inventor's detriment. There is no real "incentive" there for the real inventors. Most often, the only patent beneficiary is the already-rich investor, or corporation, that "employs" the inventor. The most credit goes to the scoundrel ready to TAKE credit, usually where none is due.
The patent system originally had high, Benjamin Franklin inspired ideals. What it really became is another clique, a place for elites to play, and a tool to victimize anyone not as well connected as themselves. Just ask any of Edison's employees. Oops, you can't -- they're dead, and you don't know their names anyway, because they never really got credit for their own inventions -- Edison took it ALL.
In this case, analog-digital TV signal conversion pre-dated Tivo by a long shot. Streaming audio/video to and from hard drives were already well established technologies. Tivo just managed to get in when the hardware was cheap, and put together some software that made the output and menus look prettier than those damn boxy Windows video players. Why isn't Tivo suing the hell out of Microsoft for Media Center? Because they would lose. A Tivo is just a computer with a video capture card, decent hard drive(s), and TV output, in a box that looks more like a DVD player than a PC. There's nothing unique, or patent worthy, about it. Look and branding are copyright and trademark items -- none of it has any place in the patent system.
Several other countries, including the EU, don't allow software patents for very good reasons -- the possibilities for all software are already written in the collection of transistors they operate on. Software bits are like letters in a book -- it's writing, not "invention". If it were truly novel, it could not be parsed by existing brains or "processors". All writing, including software, is the realm of copyright, exclusively. Now copyright reform is a different subject worth discussing...
'The four simple words "pay up or else" are sufficient to constitute the crime of extortion.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion
I would say this is exactly what the consumer telco monopolies are saying when they threaten to throttle bandwidth on any Internet host or service, if some form of additional payment is not provided.
On day 1 of my first use of the Internet, it was on a college campus. It was a good thing I was starting college in '94, because we couldn't afford true Internet access from home back then. Having used ethernet from day 1, I don't think modems count, so now I'm a snob. The college campus had Internet peering agreements with several other colleges and institutions, including the local telco. Thus the local telco monopoly benefits from that college's own bandwidth, network deployment, and redundant peers. The "same companies you depend on" also relentlessly lobby our government, at all levels, to maintain their local monopoly against competition. It was tax dollars and monopoly status grants, NOT private investment, that built their networks, yet they continue to charge whatever they want for crappy service. If there's no other option where you live, where else are you going to go? Day 1 of the Internet had nothing to do with telco's, and everything to do with the government opening up its military/academic ARPA Network to be exploited by private industry. It just happened that the only private industry in a position to take advantage of this network was the local monopoly telcos. It was very convenient that they already had the lobbyists, and campaign funding power, to maintain those monopolies afterwards.
Yes, I view money-grubbing, anti-consumer, anti-competition, monopolist-fascist-oligarchs as 'evil'. Unlike our current Supreme Court, I don't think freedom of speech is only for those who can afford to be heard.
Based on the article, I have a similar theory or three. The article leaves me wondering quite a few things...
Where exactly were these "drops of blood", and how old were they? I don't see how people could live together long enough to have two kids and NOT leave some blood, fingerprints, and/or DNA all over each other's belongings. I find foot and hand cuts, blood blisters, and paper cuts I never remember getting all the time, and I'm not even a doctor or file system designer. I find it extremely strange that no fingerprints were found in Nina's car other than her own. I'm sure I have my friends, relatives, and co-workers' fingerprints all over my cars.
How can they claim murder without a body, and who first claimed she was missing?
Why is it so easy for the kids to stay in Russia, assuming they were born in the USA, children of US citizens regardless, and have relatives outside of prison in the US?
What the heck does a missing car seat have to do with anything? If he read the books about murder listed as being found in his car, wouldn't he have been much smarter about hiding any circumstantial evidence, such as books about murder?
How the heck does a foreign born person who gained citizenship through marriage, openly cheating with a self-pronounced sadomasochist, get custody of kids in divorce, over a respected computer science figure who happens to like real video games, and who has the intellect to defend it? I'm not even acknowledging all the hand-wringing about violence -- all games are violent under some critical interpretation, and to call the violence of a game like Battlefield Vietnam any more real or psyche-threatening than network news is ridiculous. Of course, that doesn't stop me from thinking all parents who watch Fox News should have their kids taken away...
With all this talk about the Russian Mafia, I think DARPA is too easily overlooked. I bet they were peeved to realize our best hope at a secure file system was paid for by US tax dollars, developed in Moscow, and wasn't owned by Haliburton or Micro$loth.
All these strange missing facts lead me to a couple of main questions:
How do we know Nina isn't in Russia, living happily with her kids right now? How are Russian authorities cooperating with the case, if they are involved at all?
Who is the genius at Oakland Police Station, who is going to pull some CSI crap at the last second, and prove Hans Reiser mentally formed a black hole that sucked Nina into the 6th dimension, and left the kids scared of random US black holes, seeking solace in black hole-less Russia? They're still little kids, so they probably haven't heard of "black bagging" yet.
OJ got off when there was plenty of physical evidence against him, just by learning to shoot with tight gloves on! A racist cop screwing with evidence is just a given in LA, and I doubt Oakland is any different.
"Reasonable doubt" is the least of this case's problems.
I probably can't pay you nearly as much as your current job (at least, not before bonuses), but I bet you IT in the entertainment sector is a lot more fun than IT in the financial sector. I'm also with a very small start-up, so the opportunities to branch out into other areas of interest is also a lot easier, than it would be in a big corporate bureaucracy. :) The royalty and bonuses can be huge. It has a lot more risk, and more random work hours; but the creative environment, and long term financial rewards from taking the "right" risks, are worth it in the end.
Our landlord covers electric and lighting as part of the lease. Besides, I like to work while only in the soft glow of my monitor. ;) At best, the company accountant can take most of the credit for this.
No, the delivery truck guy does that -- and the accountant that pays his water company. And the last person to empty a bottle is responsible for putting the next one on. We don't need a specific position for that. If someone is too weak, they ask for help with the bottle, but that's pretty rare. If people can't figure out how to throw a new water bottle on the cooler, maybe you should buy my instructional video, for a small consultation fee...
No water bottle excercises, and now donuts? Your employees must be rolling blobs by now, with casters for legs. Significant Others, or Chef-hobbiests, at the office sometimes bring cookies and other treats to the kitchen, but a position for a full time donut supplier??? That bloat needs to be chopped right away!
All our employees get a working box, ready before they sit down the first time. New computers are brought by IT before they need them. Why would management be involved with that? Good IT practitioners can predict when someone needs new hardware based on upcoming projects and related software requirements, and a good Production Manager keeps IT informed. IT "Managers" often can't predict this, so who needs 'em? "Managers" just tend to muck it up with some ridiculous procurement policy, which usually involves a vendor who's giving them kickbacks on the sly. A proper procurement policy involves a knowledgeable IT worker with a known budget, who mods PCs on the cheap as a hobby, with a mix of Froogle, NexTag, and CNet.
Employee: "I need software." IT: "Are you sure?" E: "Yes" IT-to-Project Manager: "Does E really need this? Is it worth X$ in productivity or project time?" Project Manager: "Yes." IT buys software. It is downloaded and installed immediately, or delivered and disk-swapped within a week iff luddite disk-dist-ware.
Programmer #1: "How does this look? I trust your judgement." Programmer #2, on related project: "...Sucks. Fix this and that." #1: "OK, I'll refactor." #1: "...Done." #2: "Good 'nuff." QA: "Found problem." #1: "Fixing..."
Where I come from, that's called Sales, PR, or Marketing. All the useful work there is footwork and communication to the outside, not managerial communication inside. If any marketer is out of whack with what the production staff knows they're making, they are soon corrected. No manager needed for that -- just a few outspoken production workers, who care about product perceptions.
You see, in a healthy company, where the majority is doing their own job, and all the tasks are well defined, this happens fairly naturally. When nearly everyone is not just some manager, who is always trying to seem sufficiently more busy than an actual production worker, enough to justify their bloated salary, and
If they have access to the server root, being administrators, they have access to the *encrypted* versions of the affected password files. From there, it is trivial to run Cain, or a similar decrypt tool, on the password list, to see which passwords get decrypted fastest. You would be amazed how fast even 9+ character long, multi-case, special character encrusted passwords can be decrypted with some nice Rainbow Tables on modern *desktop* hardware, not to mention a relatively cheap Beowulf cluster, or even a relatively simple multi-PC distributed brute-force crack. Think CRAKI-at-home. Bad passwords, like dictionary words, proper names, SSNs, and dates, can be decrypted by the most limited tools on 10 year old hardware, in a matter of minutes. Decent hardware and tools can reduce that to seconds.
You have to assume any passwords on the 'Net, encrypted or not, can be sniffed -- copied whole as they travel, with no way to detect who did the sniffing. If an encrypted password is sniffed, the same tools an administrator can use to weed out weak passwords can be used by crackers. That's why even encrypted password tokens should be further encrypted by VPN or SSL tunnels, which have other nice features to prevent Man In The Middle, and related address-spoof style attacks. These encrypted tunnels should always be used on anything other than a very physically secure LAN (and no, drywall does not make a LAN secure), and even on a LAN the overhead is low enough to use SSL anyway. I personally use a minimum of HTTPS around any Internet traffic that is intended for private use.
Likewise, e-mail is never "private" unless you use PGP, and phone conversations (VoIP and PSTN, Skype included) are never "private" unless you use something like Zphone on both ends -- as AT+T and NSA have taught us all. Who knows when the NSA will approach Skype?...
Me Takey
From the things you list, it sounds more like you want to learn IS software, with a strong web applications bent, more than "IT". When ever I hear a coworker referring to IT, Information *Technology*, it tends to be more somewhere between software and hardware maintenance, than a programmer per say.
:)
Having said that, I personally think hardware is a good thing to understand, no matter how abstracted your work is from the hardware "layer". I think what the assembly guys are trying to say is learn something closer to machine code, so you understand the hardware you're resting everything on better. Sure, architects don't need to know how to make bricks, but they sure as hell need to know the physical properties of the bricks in their buildings' walls. Programmers of all stripes should have some basic knowledge of bit-logic and transistors. To the guys proscribing specific languages, need I remind you Object Oriented programming is more a design pattern than a set of languages? Sure, some languages (Java, Ruby) make it easier to fit OO patterns than others (C), but a good OO designer can make ANY language fit their OO patterns, even Assembler.
Starting fresh, I say the first thing you need to do is learn how to make a good flow chart. Flow chart anything, from your morning bathroom routine through your preparing for bed at the end of the day. You can plug flow charts in to any language -- just use the flowcharts to show your inputs, outputs, and conditional branches, before you need to write one line of code. Other diagrams are better for certain problem types. State machines are great for hardware work. Network diagrams are useful for networking and AI type logic.
Then learn design patterns. Make your flow charts Object Oriented, so you can re-use them and plug them in to different, larger flow charts, without starting from scratch every time. Learn widgets and factory patterns. No reason to get stuck on a specific language just to learn patterns -- a lot of books use real-world analogies (Starbuzz, Pizza Factory, etc.) for process patterns, pared down to specific languages. I say stick with the real-world until you absolutely need to use a specific language, or specific hardware for that matter.
To start slowly in coding, start with something simple, like HTML. Many argue HTML sans JavaScript isn't really programming, but a lot of the flow is there, and it's a good place to experiment with the basics. Block structures, attributes, hierarchy, order of operations, etc. And there's tons of example HTML out there -- just click "View Page Source" on any browser.
The next language to learn is up for debate. I would say it depends on the application you want to work on. If you're parsing text data, Perl and Python have some nice tools. For GUI presentation, Java, JavaScript, or even Flash and PHP are possible starting point for Web/file GUI presentation. Learn C and C++ dead last. They are very powerful and widely used languages, but their syntax is very bloated and counter-intuitive in some ways, for historical reasons. They're all easy enough to learn with some grounding in the basics. I would say Pascal is a good learning language for good coding habits, but it's kind of a dead language now, for other historical reasons. I personally started on LogoBASIC, but that's just showing my age too plainly.
I personally use Gizmo Project www.gizmoproject.com -- software front-end to sipphone.com, which has been reviewed by several magazines as having a better interface than Skype, and their Call-In service is a little cheaper. They offer 775 area code Call-In numbers for free. They also offer true SIP routing, so you can call numbers at several other SIP services (like Earthlink VoIP and many University campus phones) internationally for free, and they can call you for free, unlike Skype which involves single service/software lock-in. I can also use many free SIP software and low-cost hardware alternatives to connect to the same Gizmo account, like my Windows Mobile SIP phone software, and D-Link VoIP router. PSTN calls are about 1 cent a minute US, with some international rates better than Skype too. :) Those 1000 cents may still be handy for long international calls. :) I also use my Gizmo Call-In number as my primary, since I can recieve calls or check my voicemail-emails on almost any 'Net capable device, all without using any airtime minutes, unlike my cell voicemail. That way I can pay the bare-minimum cell plan and still never go over. The land line is now relegated to DSL and 911. The total cost is much less than my previous Land+cell+DSL+LongDist+airtime, even after the recent addition of my EVDO wireless 'Net service, faster DSL upgrade, and multiple new phone-in area codes, for both me and my spouse. I can't wait for pure WiFi/WiMAX everywhere access and Fiber to home/node, so I can drop the haggard PSTN system entirely.
I may just use Skype rather than my 1000 Gizmo Call-Out minutes this year, to make them last longer, and switch back as soon as the New Year hits.
I'll also use my WinMobile phone with Sprint $15/mo unlimited EVDO/WiFi 'Net, and SIP or Skype, to save my minimal airtime minutes for days I can't get any 'Net connection.
No wonder the telco monopolies are running scared yelling "Save me FCC and NSA!".
To assume these touch screens are well designed is a huge leap. My bank (BofA) recently changed to Diebold ATMs, and I wish they would go back to the old hardware. I am thinking about leaving them over it. The bigger screens and fonts might help someone with poor eye sight, but I would rather not have the amount I'm withdrawing broadcast to everyone in eye shot. Each action creates a series of bright flashes and loud beeps that begin well before the machine actually lets me complete the action, and continue to well after I've completed the task it's "reminding" me to complete.
It might as well yell "Hey, this guy wants to withdraw $200, and this flashing slot is about to be filled with money in a few seconds! He just got it! $200 out of this now-empty slot right here! Look! It's still flashing and beeping! Hide around the corner now!"
In general, I wont trust any voting or ATM machine that is not open to testing by a third party security audit, to be chosen by the machine owner (in this case the subject of the article). If Diebold wants to void the warranty on every attempt at a security audit, there's obviously something very wrong with their system.
The ATSC HDTV standards are changing that -- TVs are getting more the same, and often have PC Monitor-like inputs (HDMI is practically DVI with optional sound and DRM). Sometimes they even put the output format hardware in the cable. Some systems can even set the output frequencies necessary for the different regions in software/firmware, which keeps the hardware manufacturing volumes higher, and thus the costs lower. Whether the PS3 video signal-out is as region-free as the ROM loader remains to be seen.
I've often thought wireless mesh networks, like Zig-Bee, and wired routing equivalents, could be used to create an alternative ultra-high-bandwidth high-latency alternative IP network. Houses are close enough, and high-bandwidth multi-hundred-meter wire connections cheap enough, that transport to someone in the same neighborhood or city would be faster over such a network than any current ISP can provide.
Think 8-port LACP copper gigabit trunks on cheap "managed" switches, with firmware altered to route over a static mesh topology -- creating a gigaBYTE neighbor-network with a one-time cost-per-node less than a 2-year (discounted) DSL contract. 10-Gb copper links are bound to come down in price within a few years too. If enough households/apartments/offices joined in, with enough geographical border members creating ad-hoc distance links (with parabolic focused WiFi or lasers or something), the traditional long-haul telco-monopolized fiber network could be avoided entirely. It would be of limited use for real-time services like VoIP outside a local region, due to the high number of hops, and require the insanely high IP-address count of IPv6 just for routing. It would require a lot of friendly techs and hackers to help the non-techs complete their links, and to provide ad-hoc DNS services, but the OSS community already shows that level of generosity is possible.
I'm sure plenty of pirates would be happy with PTP e-mail, slow IM, and enough bandwidth to torrent a BD-ROM in under an hour. The FCC's lack of ability to provide against localized ISP monopolies might just drive the rest of us to join them.