In terms of tech and "wow factor" I am very much a google fanboy. They are out there putting together some great quality stuff and making it available. I love the direction, I love the tools. Google really is "wow".
Then theres the ugly side. Clear text on their servers? So how many people do I have no choice but to trust with personal info in my gmail account? (I run my own mail server, and use that almost exclusively for personal correspondence, but I do HAVE a gmail account). My google waves? So I can pull people in to brainstorm on wave.... but how many people are we trusting? Do we have to be careful to keep all our brainstorming clear of private, personal, or confidential data? What if I want to brainstorm about a problem a customer is having? Who am I trusting with my customers private information?
I will feel a lot better when FireGPG fully supports wave. It sort of works now, but its pretty clunky and you need to know what you are doing. Though, I am one guy who doesn't even use this stuff a lot.
Lets go back in time a bit to Kinsey's reports. 1 man in 3 reported a homosexual experience, in his lifetime. The overriding message that came out was, that, in terms of sex, people are very private, and because of that, nobody knew how common many practices were, and many that seemed very taboo and very rare or perverse, turned out to be fairly mundane and normal.
However, that didn't instantly mean that being exposed for what YOU were doing in the bedroom was suddenly less damaging. Kinsey's report came out BEFORE Alan Turing was convicted of being a homosexual. The truth didn't set him free, or save him from "treatment" for his "disease". The standards and laws of his time said that he was a "miscreant" with "something to hide".
It bothers me deeply that the google CEO would take such a position. There are AMPLE reasons for an individual to want to keep secrets, or to share their secrets with a very select group of people.
> One of the things that constantly bothers me when interviewing older workers is the fact that, in many ways, tech is no longer a joy....it's > all job. I've found myself in that position more and more as I get older; building a Linux kernel is now tedious instead of exciting. I > haven't had a GNU/Hurd install in years.
Well, anything you do day in and day out is going to be tedious. Expecting that anything is going to stay fresh, new, and exciting forever is nearly always going to be a disappointment (and I think is what ends as many marriages as careers).
The real question here is.... is the choice boredom or management? Or is that a false choice?
Linux kernel builds are no longer exciting. In fact, I use stock kernels almost exclusively now and fight hard any time someone wants to do anything that involves custom modules (not that there is never a need, just that its enough management overhead on an ongoing basis to be worth making damned sure its the right solution).
However, I just a side project to learn Java and write some servlets to run under tomcat. Thats still pretty exciting. Tech guys can still keep things fresh through lateral moves. Or moves to other companies.
I say take the pay increase, and start sending out resumes. Then be sure to use your new current salary in negotiations. Even if the net result is a loss, I would rather be in the negotiating position of making more than they are offering and "considering a pay cut if the job seems right" than to be making what I make now and trying to ask for more. Just a thought.
Speaking of foreign citizens... Who is a miscreant?
- Are Iranian Protesters and Journalists Miscreants? - Are Chinese dissidents miscreants? - NORML activists? (or by extension pot growers/smokers) - People with embarrassing medical conditions? - Adults in non-monogamous lifestyles who can't admit it publicly?
Each country has its laws, each social circle has its norms. Are we expected to adhere happily to all of them? No matter how arbitrary the rule or by whose force it demands respect?
> This allows them to nab online adults who are using the internet pushing drugs, violence (not games, but seriously > damaging stuff), emotional trauma and non-sexual abuse on minors. As far as I'm concerned, this is a step forward.
Why? Was there a sudden epidemic of people "pushing drugs, violence, emotional trauma and non-sexual abuse on minors" over the internet? Where? When? Because I must have missed it.
What it sounds like to me, is just legal theater. Speeches are made, a new law is passed, triumph over the bogeyman is declared, the prosecutor gets to experience his first hard on without viagra in a few weeks, and these are the MOST significant effects of the whole affair.
The only other significant effect is to push forward the idiotic idea that there is an epidemic of harmful practices on the internet and we need more laws to deal with it. Which, leads to more laws, more declared triumphs, and more bogeymen done away with.
The only children protected are the children of the politicians who can rest easily knowing they will never want for anything so long as the people are gullible enough to swallow their parents BS.
These issues were going on back when there was real competition. However, I think my own point illustrates this... in the 90s I left an ISP over this. Right now I am with Verizon FIOS. If they pulled this sort of tactic with me, who would I turn to?
The only real rival in town is comcast. Thats it. Two big players hardly make a free market.
That depends on how you man bandwidth. I would say that, in the case you describe, he is NOT getting the bandwidth promised. It is the responsibility of the ISP to A) enforce their caps fairly (and as advertised) and B) make sure they have enough "pipe" to handle ALL of the demands that are made within the allowed amounts.
So if I subscribed for 100 units of bandwith (it doesn't matter what the units are), I should have that available to me, regardless of what any other network user is taking up. If they can provide that while oversubscribing (because most people seldom use even a fraction of their allotment), then more power to them.
If that means they need a LOT more pipe, to deliever what they sold, then maybe they shouldn't have oversold so much pipe. Oversubscription is always a bit of a gamble.
Sometimes you gamble and lose, sometimes you can't prevent your commitments to one customer from causing issues with the commitments to another. When that happens to a company, they need to find a way to deal and to adjust either their capabilities or their offerings.
It is regrettable to offer a service, have genuine problems, and have to modify agreements or spend more on expansion. It is downright dishonest to continue to advertise a service that you already know that you can't provide as advertised, and continue to take your customers money while blaming them for being why you can't provide the service that they are paying you for.
> A much fairer way would be to share bandwidth amongst users on a per IP basis. > That means if two users are active they get about 50% each, even if one user has 100 P2P > connections and the other user has only one measly http connection.
Although, it really doesn't matter if Alice gets 99% of the bandwidth if Bob is only trying to use.1 % of the bandwith. As long as he gets that.1% that he wants, it is all fair as far as he is concerned. That is to say, someone with "only one measly http connection" is clearly unlikely to be using near the bandwidth he is subscribed to.
> Of course if you have oversubscribed too much, you will have way too many active users for your available > bandwidth. A fair distribution of "not enough" will still be not enough.
This, I think, is more the reality. ISPs have been pulling this game for a long time. I left one of my first ISPs because of this in the mid 90s. I was on my 14.4 kbps modem, with my Unlimited service. They had the nerve to call me up and tell me that I was on the "offenders list" because I was one of the top users of time on the system. I told them that I had an unlimited account. They said "Your usage amount is business level, you either need to cut back or get a business line".
I quickly found a new ISP and they lost my business. Its too bad how hard the broadband companies have made that with locked in contracts and well... they even own the lines now!
Voting with my dollars worked for me back in the 90s, but now, there are just less viable players in the field, and none of them seem much better than the others.
The problem really is ignorance. Too many people just don't understand the service that they are buying well enough to know when they are being offered less for their money than advertised, and a full comparison of the value of services is complicated and not easily available or easily made relevant to an individual (a comparison of services not offered in my area doesn't help me). As such all competition is based on geography, speed, and price.
Blaming your customers for your poor capacity planning is kind of bad form, if you ask me. If you can't compete fairly (that is offering the unlimited service, at the speeds that you know your customers are expecting when they buy it), then perhaps you overplayed your hand, and need look no further for places to land the buck.
Now there is a question that is often glossed over.
I am inclined to think that they are the only ones with the power to do anything. They have set themselves up as the requirers. They set regulations, and everyone else either abides by them or risks punishment. Nobody else can rightly claim that position (lest THEY find themselves on the receiving end of an assload of "justice")
That said, I would like to think that there are other ways, I just wonder if they can happen fast enough or thoroughly enough.
Then again, there are those more powerful than governments. Insurance companies.
What would happen if major insurance companies became so convinced of the need to take action (assuming there is such a need, there is little to discuss hear without the need, so we have to assume it for the purposes of this line of thought) that they simply stopped offering to sign or renew policies without commitment agreements to take measurable action to reduce pollution and carbon footprint?
Few businesses can get very far without insurance of some sort.
True, but the looser the syntax, the more that you need to know to debug. Supporting complete natural language is a daunting task. Whatever constructs that you don't employ end up forming an exceptions list.
To be honest, the language is hardly the real problem. Its been a while since I did it, but I picked up my first couple from books. The challenge was seldom the language itself, and more about breaking down a task logically into discrete units and defining them, ordering them, and putting the right logic around them.
Text based languages had many reasons to evolve the way that they did. However, I see nothing invalid about producing code in a way and or language that defines this information in a different manner. Couldn't you just as easily replace the text editor with a flow chart where each operation or function was represented as an object in the chart? Not saying this is how I want to roll, but, I see no reason that it couldn't be made functionally equivalent.
In truth, I am not sure that it will shorten the time that it takes to learn, as it will still take time to learn the skills of putting the pieces together. A calculator makes you an instant basic math wiz. Addition, subtraction, no need to learn times tables. However, its not going to obsolete learning the concepts. It can't make you an algebra god.
Once you learn one or two languages, picking up another is usually easy (I never really gave lisp a fair shake, but it was the exception). The concepts are the same. I would imagine that a person who became proficient with something more hypercard like would have little trouble translating those concepts and learning some of the high level text languages.
Like the ones that come out every four years or so?
I heard a great piece on Mike Capuano today. He was mayor of the city I grew up in, never really paid him much mind. What caught my attention was that he helped reform House Ethics rules. Apparently, before he was put in charge of ethics reform, the ethics committee was pointless. The only person who could even bring an ethics complaint against a sitting representative was.... another representative.
I mean seriously. This guy has been in the house for less than 10 years, and its only during his term that it was decided that maybe it would be a good idea if someone outside of the house could file ethics complaints against them? Were we actually expected to believe that they policed themselves? or that the ethics committee did next to nothing because they were such righteous and incorruptible people?
Well if and only if thats whats happening. Remember the original supposition was that kids with propensity for immune function problems die earlier in such cultures. If thats the case, then they wouldn't breed, and a selective pressure would be pretty obvious.
However, that was only someones hypothesis. I was merely stating what I would expect if that hypothesis is correct.
How that relates to your own values in terms of relationships and whether it would help justify filling the emptiness in your life with a mail order bride, well, thats your issue. Though, genetics would tend to make a case for mail order brides anyway. Diversity is a form of strength. So, I say, if its what your leaning towards, why not go for it?
I was happy enough to have met mine on myspace. Though she was local anyway, so no mail order was needed, which is good. Do you know what the shipping costs are on a 5'11 woman?
> You're assuming that their intention is to rigorously uphold the law.
I made no statement of intention:)
What they intend is besides the point, if anything, what you describe is part of the problem that needs to be solved. What I am talking about is what changes in culture the police need to make if they want to be viewed as a respectable institution by me. That is, an institution that avoids even the perception of impropriety, whenever possible.
Not so much rigorous upholding the law, as thats only so possible. They HAVE to prioritize just as a practical matter. However, they should under no circumstances, be breakers of the law. They should STRIVE to AVOID stepping over the bounds of their authority.
When they live up to these standards. When honest effort is made to make absolutely sure that they have not stepped over the line, when they readily admit their error and strive to make ammends for it, then such incidents are more forgiveable. When the organization learns from its mistakes and adjusts how it trains its people, THEN they earn the privilege of being forgiven.
When they claim they did nothing wrong, when they defend their actions, when they do it over and over again for years.... there really is no reason to give them any sympathy.
Its sort of, if they wont address these issues internally, then it is entirely right to put pressure on them to reform.
> The boss told me to is not a get out of jail free card for anyone else, why should police be any different? His > best bet is to rat the boss out FAST!
Yup. I have to agree. I work in healthcare. We have an entire department known as "Compliance" that deals with ethics investigations and even has a third party anonymous reporting service. We are required on a yearly basis to go to training provided by that department.
The company has done everything in its power to, as the grandparent said "Fry the clerk", AND make sure "the clerk" knows that the frying pan is hot and ready for him. What is needed is a culture of ethics. Where whistle blowers are seen as heros who protected the organization. However, a whistle blower can't protect the organization if there is no repercussions for the organization to just let ethics violations go.
If the organization suffers when such violations occur, then the whistle blower is a hero. Otherwise, he is the villain who hurts his fellow workers for no reason (afterall, there is no repercussion for not whistle blowing)
> The job of the police is to maintain order. If someone is being disorderly the odds are pretty good that they are > going to end up getting arrested.
My problem here is that this goes to the very center of the question of what is order exactly, and what level of it do they need to maintain.
If a court has ruled that a particular action is not disorderly, then the police are NOT maintaining order by arresting a person who is doing it. This is not a controversial matter, its settled by the courts. Its been settled by the courts. How can it be the responsibility of the police to maintain order, but not their responsibility to actually know what that means?
My company has a responsibility (by law) to protect its customers information (healthcare). As an employee, no matter what department I work in, I have to take a refresher training class every year. Actually, I have to take a couple of related courses each year. Each year they go over the current understanding of ethics, what issues we have been having, what questions come up, what we need to report and why etc.
Why do we do it? Because the law has teeth. Because we are liable if we don't. Very simple.
I would expect that this would place a strong selective pressure on immune function. As such, I would think that you would expect the trend to continue in the children of families from such areas and transplanted them into a cleaner culture.
I also would expect that this is the sort of question a good study would ask, and attempt to select participants such that they would be able to remove such an effect from their data. (which is not to say they did, just that a proper study would try to do that)
Certainly I am ok with it in the case of the man who was arrested, convicted, appealed, and eventually won. It was a precident setter.
After that, maybe a few times. However, that was 20 years ago! I would like to think that, by now, the police would be receiving some manner of training that covered this part of the law, since its one that they actually need to evaluate fairly often. Its not like we are talking about a potential Lacey Act violation here... this is law that applies to their day to day operations. I just don't see how they can be excused from such a gross misapplication of such a well trodden law.
As to maintaining order... the courts have ruled that this behavior is NOT DISORDERLY. Surely they should understand the basic concept of what is and is not maintaining order BEFORE they are set out to perform the task?
Frankly, I think the police are allowed to get away with far too much in the name of expediency. Though, that goes right back to a point I was making earlier. If the law has no teeth, even the police will not follow it. There is just no incentive to obey the law when there are no consequences to not obeying it. Thats the very reason that "fruit of the poison tree" evidence is tossed out... to create a disincentive for the police to break the law (it ruins their case). Clearly such disincentives are needed.
> Wow. The fact that you can even be charged for something as vague and open to interpretation as that is scary > regardless of the context.
Actually... you can be CHARGED for almost anything.
One of the facts overlooked in the Henry Gates fiasco was that.... he never broke the law, yet he was arrested.
Its true, MA courts have ruled pretty decisively AGAINST the interpretation of "disturbing the peace" that would have allowed for him to be convicted. Over 20 years ago there was a case of a man who was told by police to leave the scene, refused. Not only refused by yelled at the officer, and gesticulated wildly with his arms while doing so.
The courts ruled that nothing that he did, not gesticulating wildly (since it was not threatening motion, just wild passionate gesture), not refusing to leave the scene, not yelling, not because a crowd gathered. NONE of the behavior that was WELL BEYOND what Mr Gates did... NONE of it was enough to find him guilty.
There have been several cases since then, all the same result.
So the question, in my mind, becomes... where does the responsibility lie on the police side to actually know the law and legal precident and to apply it correctly? Shouldn't such public behavior laws be something the police know about and know how to enforce? SHouldn't they be required to at least attempt to apply the law correctly?
Apparently the official answer is: No they shouldn't.
But... if you let that be an excuse to not make the law, or not give the law teeth, then you are essentially saying that "the convenience of the police is more important than peoples privacy".
If there is no punishment, then they will simply not comply. They will NEVER allocate the resources, and this will ALWAYS be the case, UNLESS there are real teeth to the law. The simple fact that somebody along the chain is going to fry for it will MAKE SURE that doesn't happen.
This is NO DIFFERENT than at ANY workplace. What if an accountant goes to his boss and says "We have to spend some time tieing up loose ends to comply with reporting laws" and the boss says "No work on this other thing instead"? Would it be a mess? Maybe. Would the boss be liable or the employee? Probably depends. (I imagine the employee would be smart to make sure he got that in email at least).
The point remains, if there is no penalty then they will never comply.
> What I'm basically saying is that just go and do something. As the geeky non-social persons we are, it's actually > really easy to get to know new people when in a foreign country.
Thats how I experienced Paris, and I have to say... I agree. Wake up every day, find some spot to have breakfast and spend some time perusing a map or a guide book, and pick a place to go today. Then go there.
ALso.... stay in hostels!
Hostels are cheaper than hotels, and only really a problem if you expect to sleep in the afternoons or meet people to "take back to your room". Even then, chances are, they have a place.
The best part of hostels is, they are FILLED with other travelers. When you get up and head to the lobby, it will be bustling with other people who are... all planning to head to many of the same places as you. You have natural things to talk about, and even a pretty shy geek like myself managed to find traveling companions more often than not. (and I wasn't even trying!)
> Such evidence should only be collected without consent with a warrant and if the individual is not charged and > convicted with a crime such evidence should be removed from any database/storage and destroyed/deleted. If it is > taken with consent then the individual should have the right to ask that it be destroyed after the investigation > is complete.
Agreed but... the measure also needs teeth. There should be STRONG penalties for NOT destroying evidence that should be destroyed. In fact, I would say that the standard should be that DNA evidence may be collected and used for a test, if that test comes back negative, all samples (and data) MUST be destroyed.
If it comes back positive, then start a clock. When the clock runs out, either charges must be filed, or all samples and data MUST be destroyed.
Failure to follow this should be considered a civil rights violation, and should have stiff "ram them up the ass" penalties. CRIMINAL penalties. Career ending penalties.
Then, some idiot will break that law, get caught, and have his career ended, and spend time in JAIL for his crime. THEN the police will follow the law.
Not that any of this will happen. Just thats the best way I see to close this severe gap. -Steve
Sadly, I think this is insightful. Not because it would really keep us safe, just the very idea that we are "in danger" or that anyone with nukes would actually use them in such a way is well.... so ridiculous that you may as well use it to justify a lunar base.
I mean seriously, this unceasing snipe hunting is just ridiculous. We are talking about a group of people that generate unrealistic attack vectors and gets caught incompetently failing to even get their ideas off the ground way more often than they manage even a low-tech attack.
So far, in all of history, we are looking at a statistically insignificant number of large events, which mostly have no effect but to make us overreact and waste time and money on unscrupulous "security experts" to dream up new attack vectors to protect us from... even after the very people we are to be protected from show themselves time and again to be incompetent and disorganized.... when they even exist (more frequently, they don't even manage that)
0 benefit pork barrel program stalled. Our risk remains at infinitesimally small,
> I call this phenomenon "Tom Clancy Syndrome", it's a state of believing that the US military is not > only better in every way than everyone else anywhere, but that this doesn't give rational people any > reason to seriously reconsider their half-baked world domination plans.
ROTFL! I think you just hit the nail on the head!
There is a real tendency for people to look back at history for patterns and, lo and behold, if you look hard enough for a pattern, and are willing to ignore enough facts, then, you sure can find patterns.
I think the reality is that people hate war. The world over, nobody really likes getting into wars. Oh, there may be some gung ho kids, or guys who don't know much esle. There are excitement junkies etc. However, in the end, nobody really likes the result. The sacrifice, the bloodshed etc.
Sure, we can be talked into liking it. We can like it in context. Who didn't love that we fought WWII and liberated europe? Who didn't want to see Bin Ladens head on a pike after 9/11? Who can't understand fighting off an invading force?
But there is a difference between being willing to do something, and wanting it to happen.
The trend, that I see, is actually very anti-war. War seems like it was much more popular when it was out of the way. When it took days for the real effects of a battle to get out. When stories of bravery were all that were heard.
The faster information moves.... the less people seem to like war. Nothing eroded support for the Viet-Nam conflict like pictures and stories coming right home from the front lines. Stories of collective punishments, stories of rapes and murders, villages burned, families massacred. This is war, this has always been war. No matter how good we get (and we are much better than ever before by any standard), war is ALWAYS a travesty.
I dare say the internet is the pacifier. The faster information moves, the less freedom troops have to loot, pilliage, and generally act atrociously. The more we see, the less we support. The more apparent the hell, the less apt we are to create it.
I think we should be doing as much as possible to make SURE that EVERY country ends up with their forces as hamstrung by public opinion and internet fueled information leaks as our own is. When any member of the public, in any country can tune in and watch the carnage from any conflict in the world, in real time as heads explode and body parts fly... I predict that the closer to that point we get, the less desire for conflict we will see.
That is, until someone starts buying ad space on soldiers uniforms and they start just fighting for the ad dollars....
Or how about.... a life long tax credit for voluntary sterilization (for people who have not yet bred)?
Some non-profit was offering heroin addicts like $500 to have themselves sterilized. I bet a fund could be put together without much government help to extend that offer out to everyone else. Maybe a public ad campaign "A snip now can save a lifetime of child support". "Marriages fail, vasectomies don't".
Though, there has never been the political will to do anything about these issues. Mostly because you can't do it without offending someone. Oh NO you might have to.... show kids whose bodies are now capable of sex how to.... use a condom! Society will fucking fall apart if we do that!
The simple fact is, you can make all the "green" adjustments you want... the whole lot of everything you can do will have less than HALF the impact of having ONE LESS CHILD.
Or how about... if you opt to be sterilized before you breed... you are exempt from inheritance tax on what you inherit? I don't think it would work alone, but it could help.
Aside from that, controlling worldwide population... maybe some sorts of credits there too. Impose trade tariffs on any country not taking defined steps to realistically lower birth rates.
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of tech and "wow factor" I am very much a google fanboy. They are out there putting together some great quality stuff and making it available. I love the direction, I love the tools. Google really is "wow".
Then theres the ugly side. Clear text on their servers? So how many people do I have no choice but to trust with personal info in my gmail account? (I run my own mail server, and use that almost exclusively for personal correspondence, but I do HAVE a gmail account). My google waves? So I can pull people in to brainstorm on wave.... but how many people are we trusting? Do we have to be careful to keep all our brainstorming clear of private, personal, or confidential data? What if I want to brainstorm about a problem a customer is having? Who am I trusting with my customers private information?
I will feel a lot better when FireGPG fully supports wave. It sort of works now, but its pretty clunky and you need to know what you are doing. Though, I am one guy who doesn't even use this stuff a lot.
Lets go back in time a bit to Kinsey's reports. 1 man in 3 reported a homosexual experience, in his lifetime. The overriding message that came out was, that, in terms of sex, people are very private, and because of that, nobody knew how common many practices were, and many that seemed very taboo and very rare or perverse, turned out to be fairly mundane and normal.
However, that didn't instantly mean that being exposed for what YOU were doing in the bedroom was suddenly less damaging. Kinsey's report came out BEFORE Alan Turing was convicted of being a homosexual. The truth didn't set him free, or save him from "treatment" for his "disease". The standards and laws of his time said that he was a "miscreant" with "something to hide".
It bothers me deeply that the google CEO would take such a position. There are AMPLE reasons for an individual to want to keep secrets, or to share their secrets with a very select group of people.
> One of the things that constantly bothers me when interviewing older workers is the fact that, in many ways, tech is no longer a joy....it's
> all job. I've found myself in that position more and more as I get older; building a Linux kernel is now tedious instead of exciting. I
> haven't had a GNU/Hurd install in years.
Well, anything you do day in and day out is going to be tedious. Expecting that anything is going to stay fresh, new, and exciting forever is nearly always going to be a disappointment (and I think is what ends as many marriages as careers).
The real question here is.... is the choice boredom or management? Or is that a false choice?
Linux kernel builds are no longer exciting. In fact, I use stock kernels almost exclusively now and fight hard any time someone wants to do anything that involves custom modules (not that there is never a need, just that its enough management overhead on an ongoing basis to be worth making damned sure its the right solution).
However, I just a side project to learn Java and write some servlets to run under tomcat. Thats still pretty exciting. Tech guys can still keep things fresh through lateral moves. Or moves to other companies.
I say take the pay increase, and start sending out resumes. Then be sure to use your new current salary in negotiations. Even if the net result is a loss, I would rather be in the negotiating position of making more than they are offering and "considering a pay cut if the job seems right" than to be making what I make now and trying to ask for more. Just a thought.
-Steve
Speaking of foreign citizens... Who is a miscreant?
- Are Iranian Protesters and Journalists Miscreants?
- Are Chinese dissidents miscreants?
- NORML activists? (or by extension pot growers/smokers)
- People with embarrassing medical conditions?
- Adults in non-monogamous lifestyles who can't admit it publicly?
Each country has its laws, each social circle has its norms. Are we expected to adhere happily to all of them? No matter how arbitrary the rule or by whose force it demands respect?
> This allows them to nab online adults who are using the internet pushing drugs, violence (not games, but seriously > damaging stuff), emotional trauma and non-sexual abuse on minors. As far as I'm concerned, this is a step forward.
Why? Was there a sudden epidemic of people "pushing drugs, violence, emotional trauma and non-sexual abuse on minors" over the internet? Where? When? Because I must have missed it.
What it sounds like to me, is just legal theater. Speeches are made, a new law is passed, triumph over the bogeyman is declared, the prosecutor gets to experience his first hard on without viagra in a few weeks, and these are the MOST significant effects of the whole affair.
The only other significant effect is to push forward the idiotic idea that there is an epidemic of harmful practices on the internet and we need more laws to deal with it. Which, leads to more laws, more declared triumphs, and more bogeymen done away with.
The only children protected are the children of the politicians who can rest easily knowing they will never want for anything so long as the people are gullible enough to swallow their parents BS.
-Steve
These issues were going on back when there was real competition. However, I think my own point illustrates this... in the 90s I left an ISP over this. Right now I am with Verizon FIOS. If they pulled this sort of tactic with me, who would I turn to?
The only real rival in town is comcast. Thats it. Two big players hardly make a free market.
-Steve
That depends on how you man bandwidth. I would say that, in the case you describe, he is NOT getting the bandwidth promised. It is the responsibility of the ISP to A) enforce their caps fairly (and as advertised) and B) make sure they have enough "pipe" to handle ALL of the demands that are made within the allowed amounts.
So if I subscribed for 100 units of bandwith (it doesn't matter what the units are), I should have that available to me, regardless of what any other network user is taking up. If they can provide that while oversubscribing (because most people seldom use even a fraction of their allotment), then more power to them.
If that means they need a LOT more pipe, to deliever what they sold, then maybe they shouldn't have oversold so much pipe. Oversubscription is always a bit of a gamble.
Sometimes you gamble and lose, sometimes you can't prevent your commitments to one customer from causing issues with the commitments to another. When that happens to a company, they need to find a way to deal and to adjust either their capabilities or their offerings.
It is regrettable to offer a service, have genuine problems, and have to modify agreements or spend more on expansion. It is downright dishonest to continue to advertise a service that you already know that you can't provide as advertised, and continue to take your customers money while blaming them for being why you can't provide the service that they are paying you for.
-Steve
> A much fairer way would be to share bandwidth amongst users on a per IP basis.
> That means if two users are active they get about 50% each, even if one user has 100 P2P
> connections and the other user has only one measly http connection.
Although, it really doesn't matter if Alice gets 99% of the bandwidth if Bob is only trying to use .1 % of the bandwith. As long as he gets that .1% that he wants, it is all fair as far as he is concerned. That is to say, someone with "only one measly http connection" is clearly unlikely to be using near the bandwidth he is subscribed to.
> Of course if you have oversubscribed too much, you will have way too many active users for your available
> bandwidth. A fair distribution of "not enough" will still be not enough.
This, I think, is more the reality. ISPs have been pulling this game for a long time. I left one of my first ISPs because of this in the mid 90s. I was on my 14.4 kbps modem, with my Unlimited service. They had the nerve to call me
up and tell me that I was on the "offenders list" because I was one of the top users of time on the system. I told them that I had an unlimited account. They said "Your usage amount is business level, you either need to cut back or
get a business line".
I quickly found a new ISP and they lost my business. Its too bad how hard the broadband companies have made that with locked in contracts and well... they even own the lines now!
Voting with my dollars worked for me back in the 90s, but now, there are just less viable players in the field, and none of them seem much better than the others.
The problem really is ignorance. Too many people just don't understand the service that they are buying well enough to know when they are being offered less for their money than advertised, and a full comparison of the value of services is complicated and not easily available or easily made relevant to an individual (a comparison of services not offered in my area doesn't help me). As such all competition is based on geography, speed, and price.
Blaming your customers for your poor capacity planning is kind of bad form, if you ask me. If you can't compete fairly (that is offering the unlimited service, at the speeds that you know your customers are expecting when they buy it), then perhaps you overplayed your hand, and need look no further for places to land the buck.
-Steve
Man, if your IN THE CAR on a drive by and your chance of survival is only 32.33.... um... WTF?
Does your driver suck that bad? Are you trying to pull a drive by at the front gates of a military base?
I would think that you would be much closer to 95%
Don't waste your time man. Recruit lvl 80 Bomb makers and strategists, and lvl 1 suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers never really make it to the high levels. Their characters are on a gimped build.
Now there is a question that is often glossed over.
I am inclined to think that they are the only ones with the power to do anything. They have set themselves up as the requirers. They set regulations, and everyone else either abides by them or risks punishment. Nobody else can rightly claim that position (lest THEY find themselves on the receiving end of an assload of "justice")
That said, I would like to think that there are other ways, I just wonder if they can happen fast enough or thoroughly enough.
Then again, there are those more powerful than governments. Insurance companies.
What would happen if major insurance companies became so convinced of the need to take action (assuming there is such a need, there is little to discuss hear without the need, so we have to assume it for the purposes of this line of thought) that they simply stopped offering to sign or renew policies without commitment agreements to take measurable action to reduce pollution and carbon footprint?
Few businesses can get very far without insurance of some sort.
True, but the looser the syntax, the more that you need to know to debug. Supporting complete natural language is a daunting task. Whatever constructs that you don't employ end up forming an exceptions list.
To be honest, the language is hardly the real problem. Its been a while since I did it, but I picked up my first couple from books. The challenge was seldom the language itself, and more about breaking down a task logically into discrete units and defining them, ordering them, and putting the right logic around them.
Text based languages had many reasons to evolve the way that they did. However, I see nothing invalid about producing code in a way and or language that defines this information in a different manner. Couldn't you just as easily replace the text editor with a flow chart where each operation or function was represented as an object in the chart? Not saying this is how I want to roll, but, I see no reason that it couldn't be made functionally equivalent.
In truth, I am not sure that it will shorten the time that it takes to learn, as it will still take time to learn the skills of putting the pieces together. A calculator makes you an instant basic math wiz. Addition, subtraction, no need to learn times tables. However, its not going to obsolete learning the concepts. It can't make you an algebra god.
Once you learn one or two languages, picking up another is usually easy (I never really gave lisp a fair shake, but it was the exception). The concepts are the same. I would imagine that a person who became proficient with something more hypercard like would have little trouble translating those concepts and learning some of the high level text languages.
-Steve
Like the ones that come out every four years or so?
I heard a great piece on Mike Capuano today. He was mayor of the city I grew up in, never really paid him much mind. What caught my attention was that he helped reform House Ethics rules. Apparently, before he was put in charge of ethics reform, the ethics committee was pointless. The only person who could even bring an ethics complaint against a sitting representative was.... another representative.
I mean seriously. This guy has been in the house for less than 10 years, and its only during his term that it was decided that maybe it would be a good idea if someone outside of the house could file ethics complaints against them? Were we actually expected to believe that they policed themselves? or that the ethics committee did next to nothing because they were such righteous and incorruptible people?
-Steve
Well if and only if thats whats happening. Remember the original supposition was that kids with propensity for immune function problems die earlier in such cultures. If thats the case, then they wouldn't breed, and a selective pressure would be pretty obvious.
However, that was only someones hypothesis. I was merely stating what I would expect if that hypothesis is correct.
How that relates to your own values in terms of relationships and whether it would help justify filling the emptiness in your life with a mail order bride, well, thats your issue. Though, genetics would tend to make a case for mail order brides anyway. Diversity is a form of strength. So, I say, if its what your leaning towards, why not go for it?
I was happy enough to have met mine on myspace. Though she was local anyway, so no mail order was needed, which is good. Do you know what the shipping costs are on a 5'11 woman?
-Steve
> You're assuming that their intention is to rigorously uphold the law.
I made no statement of intention :)
What they intend is besides the point, if anything, what you describe is part of the problem that needs to
be solved. What I am talking about is what changes in culture the police need to make if they want to be
viewed as a respectable institution by me. That is, an institution that avoids even the perception of impropriety, whenever possible.
Not so much rigorous upholding the law, as thats only so possible. They HAVE to prioritize just as a practical matter. However, they should under no circumstances, be breakers of the law. They should STRIVE to AVOID stepping over the bounds of their authority.
When they live up to these standards. When honest effort is made to make absolutely sure that they have not stepped over the line, when they readily admit their error and strive to make ammends for it, then such incidents are more forgiveable. When the organization learns from its mistakes and adjusts how it trains its people, THEN they earn the privilege of being forgiven.
When they claim they did nothing wrong, when they defend their actions, when they do it over and over again for years.... there really is no reason to give them any sympathy.
Its sort of, if they wont address these issues internally, then it is entirely right to put pressure on them to reform.
-Steve
> The boss told me to is not a get out of jail free card for anyone else, why should police be any different? His
> best bet is to rat the boss out FAST!
Yup. I have to agree. I work in healthcare. We have an entire department known as "Compliance" that deals with ethics investigations and even has a third party anonymous reporting service. We are required on a yearly basis to go to training provided by that department.
The company has done everything in its power to, as the grandparent said "Fry the clerk", AND make sure "the clerk" knows that the frying pan is hot and ready for him. What is needed is a culture of ethics. Where whistle blowers are seen as heros who protected the organization. However, a whistle blower can't protect the organization if there is no repercussions for the organization to just let ethics violations go.
If the organization suffers when such violations occur, then the whistle blower is a hero. Otherwise, he is the villain who hurts his fellow workers for no reason (afterall, there is no repercussion for not whistle blowing)
-Steve
> The job of the police is to maintain order. If someone is being disorderly the odds are pretty good that they are
> going to end up getting arrested.
My problem here is that this goes to the very center of the question of what is order exactly, and what level of it do they need to maintain.
If a court has ruled that a particular action is not disorderly, then the police are NOT maintaining order by arresting a person who is doing it. This is not a controversial matter, its settled by the courts. Its been settled by the courts. How can it be the responsibility of the police to maintain order, but not their responsibility to actually know what that means?
My company has a responsibility (by law) to protect its customers information (healthcare). As an employee, no matter what department I work in, I have to take a refresher training class every year. Actually, I have to take a couple of related courses each year. Each year they go over the current understanding of ethics, what issues we have been having, what questions come up, what we need to report and why etc.
Why do we do it? Because the law has teeth. Because we are liable if we don't. Very simple.
-Steve
I would expect that this would place a strong selective pressure on immune function. As such, I would think that you would expect the trend to continue in the children of families from such areas and transplanted them into a cleaner culture.
I also would expect that this is the sort of question a good study would ask, and attempt to select participants such that they would be able to remove such an effect from their data. (which is not to say they did, just that a proper study would try to do that)
-Steve
I am MOSTLY ok with this.
Certainly I am ok with it in the case of the man who was arrested, convicted, appealed, and eventually won. It was a precident setter.
After that, maybe a few times. However, that was 20 years ago! I would like to think that, by now, the police would be receiving some manner of training that covered this part of the law, since its one that they actually need to evaluate fairly often. Its not like we are talking about a potential Lacey Act violation here... this is law that applies to their day to day operations. I just don't see how they can be excused from such a gross misapplication of such a well trodden law.
As to maintaining order... the courts have ruled that this behavior is NOT DISORDERLY. Surely they should understand the basic concept of what is and is not maintaining order BEFORE they are set out to perform the task?
Frankly, I think the police are allowed to get away with far too much in the name of expediency. Though, that goes right back to a point I was making earlier. If the law has no teeth, even the police will not follow it. There is just no incentive to obey the law when there are no consequences to not obeying it. Thats the very reason that "fruit of the poison tree" evidence is tossed out... to create a disincentive for the police to break the law (it ruins their case). Clearly such disincentives are needed.
-Steve
> Wow. The fact that you can even be charged for something as vague and open to interpretation as that is scary
> regardless of the context.
Actually... you can be CHARGED for almost anything.
One of the facts overlooked in the Henry Gates fiasco was that.... he never broke the law, yet he was arrested.
Its true, MA courts have ruled pretty decisively AGAINST the interpretation of "disturbing the peace" that would have allowed for him to be convicted. Over 20 years ago there was a case of a man who was told by police to leave the scene, refused. Not only refused by yelled at the officer, and gesticulated wildly with his arms while doing so.
The courts ruled that nothing that he did, not gesticulating wildly (since it was not threatening motion, just wild passionate gesture), not refusing to leave the scene, not yelling, not because a crowd gathered. NONE of the behavior that was WELL BEYOND what Mr Gates did... NONE of it was enough to find him guilty.
There have been several cases since then, all the same result.
So the question, in my mind, becomes... where does the responsibility lie on the police side to actually know the law and legal precident and to apply it correctly? Shouldn't such public behavior laws be something the police know about and know how to enforce? SHouldn't they be required to at least attempt to apply the law correctly?
Apparently the official answer is: No they shouldn't.
-Steve
But... if you let that be an excuse to not make the law, or not give the law teeth, then you are essentially saying that "the convenience of the police is more important than peoples privacy".
If there is no punishment, then they will simply not comply. They will NEVER allocate the resources, and this will ALWAYS be the case, UNLESS there are real teeth to the law. The simple fact that somebody along the chain is going to fry for it will MAKE SURE that doesn't happen.
This is NO DIFFERENT than at ANY workplace. What if an accountant goes to his boss and says "We have to spend some time tieing up loose ends to comply with reporting laws" and the boss says "No work on this other thing instead"?
Would it be a mess? Maybe. Would the boss be liable or the employee? Probably depends. (I imagine the employee would be smart to make sure he got that in email at least).
The point remains, if there is no penalty then they will never comply.
-Steve
> What I'm basically saying is that just go and do something. As the geeky non-social persons we are, it's actually > really easy to get to know new people when in a foreign country.
Thats how I experienced Paris, and I have to say... I agree. Wake up every day, find some spot to have breakfast and spend some time perusing a map or a guide book, and pick a place to go today. Then go there.
ALso.... stay in hostels!
Hostels are cheaper than hotels, and only really a problem if you expect to sleep in the afternoons or meet people to "take back to your room". Even then, chances are, they have a place.
The best part of hostels is, they are FILLED with other travelers. When you get up and head to the lobby, it will be bustling with other people who are... all planning to head to many of the same places as you. You have natural things to talk about, and even a pretty shy geek like myself managed to find traveling companions more often than not. (and I wasn't even trying!)
-Steve
> Such evidence should only be collected without consent with a warrant and if the individual is not charged and
> convicted with a crime such evidence should be removed from any database/storage and destroyed/deleted. If it is
> taken with consent then the individual should have the right to ask that it be destroyed after the investigation
> is complete.
Agreed but... the measure also needs teeth. There should be STRONG penalties for NOT destroying evidence that should be destroyed. In fact, I would say that the standard should be that DNA evidence may be collected and used for a test, if that test comes back negative, all samples (and data) MUST be destroyed.
If it comes back positive, then start a clock. When the clock runs out, either charges must be filed, or all samples and data MUST be destroyed.
Failure to follow this should be considered a civil rights violation, and should have stiff "ram them up the ass" penalties. CRIMINAL penalties. Career ending penalties.
Then, some idiot will break that law, get caught, and have his career ended, and spend time in JAIL for his crime. THEN the police will follow the law.
Not that any of this will happen. Just thats the best way I see to close this severe gap.
-Steve
Sadly, I think this is insightful. Not because it would really keep us safe, just the very idea that we are "in danger" or that anyone with nukes would actually use them in such a way is well.... so ridiculous that you may as well use it to justify a lunar base.
I mean seriously, this unceasing snipe hunting is just ridiculous. We are talking about a group of people that generate unrealistic attack vectors and gets caught incompetently failing to even get their ideas off the ground way more often than they manage even a low-tech attack.
So far, in all of history, we are looking at a statistically insignificant number of large events, which mostly have no effect but to make us overreact and waste time and money on unscrupulous "security experts" to dream up new attack vectors to protect us from... even after the very people we are to be protected from show themselves time and again to be incompetent and disorganized.... when they even exist (more frequently, they don't even manage that)
0 benefit pork barrel program stalled. Our risk remains at infinitesimally small,
-Steve
> I call this phenomenon "Tom Clancy Syndrome", it's a state of believing that the US military is not
> only better in every way than everyone else anywhere, but that this doesn't give rational people any
> reason to seriously reconsider their half-baked world domination plans.
ROTFL! I think you just hit the nail on the head!
There is a real tendency for people to look back at history for patterns and, lo and behold, if you look hard enough for a pattern, and are willing to ignore enough facts, then, you sure can find patterns.
I think the reality is that people hate war. The world over, nobody really likes getting into wars. Oh, there may be some gung ho kids, or guys who don't know much esle. There are excitement junkies etc. However, in the end, nobody really likes the result. The sacrifice, the bloodshed etc.
Sure, we can be talked into liking it. We can like it in context. Who didn't love that we fought WWII and liberated europe? Who didn't want to see Bin Ladens head on a pike after 9/11? Who can't understand fighting off an invading force?
But there is a difference between being willing to do something, and wanting it to happen.
The trend, that I see, is actually very anti-war. War seems like it was much more popular when it was out of the way. When it took days for the real effects of a battle to get out. When stories of bravery were all that were heard.
The faster information moves.... the less people seem to like war. Nothing eroded support for the Viet-Nam conflict like pictures and stories coming right home from the front lines. Stories of collective punishments, stories of rapes and murders, villages burned, families massacred. This is war, this has always been war. No matter how good we get (and we are much better than ever before by any standard), war is ALWAYS a travesty.
I dare say the internet is the pacifier. The faster information moves, the less freedom troops have to loot, pilliage, and generally act atrociously. The more we see, the less we support. The more apparent the hell, the less apt we are to create it.
I think we should be doing as much as possible to make SURE that EVERY country ends up with their forces as hamstrung by public opinion and internet fueled information leaks as our own is. When any member of the public, in any country can tune in and watch the carnage from any conflict in the world, in real time as heads explode and body parts fly... I predict that the closer to that point we get, the less desire for conflict we will see.
That is, until someone starts buying ad space on soldiers uniforms and they start just fighting for the ad dollars....
er... actually... lets not give them any ideas.
Or how about.... a life long tax credit for voluntary sterilization (for people who have not yet bred)?
Some non-profit was offering heroin addicts like $500 to have themselves sterilized. I bet a fund could be put together without much government help to extend that offer out to everyone else. Maybe
a public ad campaign "A snip now can save a lifetime of child support". "Marriages fail, vasectomies don't".
Though, there has never been the political will to do anything about these issues. Mostly because you can't do it without offending someone. Oh NO you might have to.... show kids whose bodies are now capable of sex how to.... use a condom! Society will fucking fall apart if we do that!
The simple fact is, you can make all the "green" adjustments you want... the whole lot of everything you can do will have less than HALF the impact of having ONE LESS CHILD.
Or how about... if you opt to be sterilized before you breed... you are exempt from inheritance tax on what you inherit? I don't think it would work alone, but it could help.
Aside from that, controlling worldwide population... maybe some sorts of credits there too. Impose trade tariffs on any country not taking defined steps to realistically lower birth rates.
-Steve