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I must h/t Matt Simons for bringing my attention to this act, which would significantly curtail the salaries of many IT professionals. His blog post asking for additional input can be found here:

http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/11/usa-computer...

> Why do you assume Americans are more deserving of Apple's manufacturing jobs than the Chinese?

Because the consumers of every nation on earth, deep-down, are superficially patriotic. We don't want to recognize that the global economy is post-nation state. We want to pretend that when we buy an American company's products it is, American. Just as if we decide to buy an Italian sports car we want it to be Italian. Companies prey on these emotional ties to our identities in all manner of ways. In the parent thread's example, Apple does that by labeling their products' packaging, "Designed by Apple in California."

I have seen the light and been converted to the Church of SSD. The expense /is/ worth it. I routinely run Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (running Windows Deployment Server to reimage computers at different physical locations) on my Macbook Pro via VMWare Fusion at all times (in addition to all the other random apps I have open on the Mac). I haven't noticed /any/ performance penalties day-in-day out. Compare this to my previous Macbook Pro from three years ago, which begged for mercy booting Windows XP. Sure, I have more RAM and an i7 now, but it was always disk thrashing that killed me.... that's not a problem any more.

Could enterprise software development become "fun" if WebOS fulfills it's potential? Funny to think of BeOS and BeIA becoming HP's NextStep. There's a lot riding on this at HP. I'm not familiar with their executive leadership, other than that Leo Apotheker comes from an enterprise computing background, but a good evaluation of where that leadership comes from will be important at divining what's ahead. Microsoft should be terrified. If anyone can rip enterprise customer's out of Microsoft's grip it's going to be HP.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/company-information/executive-team/...

HP certainly seems to be trying really hard to support developers. For example, get a $200 developer discount on an unlocked Pre 2. I'm sure they'll have something similar for the Palm Pre 3.

http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&v...

Now's a good time to speculate long-term on HP stock. If they do well with WebOS and spin it off to their other computing platforms they could become the "Apple" of enterprise computing. If they /really/ do well maybe people will want to take their work equipment home with them instead of wanting to take their Macs/iphones into work...

Edit: I mean, it's 403'd, not 404'd...

Thanks for the leads. I'm in the Washington, DC area so I'll be looking into ShmooCon. I had never heard of it. The other's are on my "too investigate" list, too.

The back-and-forth potshots that faculty members take at each other in the Chronicles comments are even more insightful than the original article. The Chronicle moderators had to go so far as to delete follow-up comments. That's... eye opening.

Every time I read what comes out of Steve Ballmer's mouth I wonder if that guy has ever touched a computer. Microsoft's employees need to acquire some parrots and eye patches. It's mutiny time.

It's not that non-university students are immoral or stupid. The article says nothing of the sort. Plagiarism is a basic lesson of university students on day one. You're being too sensitive.

The unsaid connection the author is making is that universities have honor codes that get drilled into you from freshman year. Those honor codes have very specific definitions of plagiarism, usually with examples. Only an idiot, lazy, or jackoff university student would plagiarize word-for-word thinking that a font change is good enough. That makes the university student 100x "stupid-er" than a non-university student that figured out what plagiarism is through intuition. :)

edit: slight wording changes.

Chrome, so far, is the only browser I can keep open with a bazillion tabs for days, weeks, MONTHS without seeing my system take a slow, deadly, performance hit. I'm sorry I didn't start using it sooner.

Every time I hear about this game I'm intrigued. I read a year-or-so-ago about one of the most powerful guilds in the game being infiltrated, it's armories ransacked, and then decimated in a surprise attack/trap.

If the attack vector is petty theft the following would be more than sufficient:

* Encrypt the user data portion of the hd.

* Password protect the bios, hard drive (if it has that capability in the bios.), and the OS accounts.

* Keep account passwords and account information in an additional password protected store (such as 1password).

* Don't save sensitive data in web browsers or other autocomplete programs.

Encrypting the whole hard drive, in my experience, is a huge pain in the ass; particularly for disaster recovery. For non-IT department systems it's not worth it.

I disagree that search is the only answer and that Google with get AppStores right first because that is their expertise. Everyone is on the "better search" bandwagon because we want to find quality products faster in an ecosystem of far too many competitors. That makes immediate sense. But, a superior retail experience can just as easily solve this problem.

The root challenge of app stores is that they break the invisible hand(s) that rule the marketplace, which consumers and retailers all take for granted as an important source of guidance and information. A market flooded with unlimited supplies of unlimited competitors is a wild west of competition. This is great. But, it's also terrible. As long as supplies of products are unlimited and free to stock because retail space is also limitless there are no motives for the retailer to prune it's shelves of unpopular duplicate products.

I think that Apple will continue to allow it's AppStore to grow and for duplicate applications to be produced, but when the competition with Android starts to get fierce they will begin to prune the AppStore of low quality applications. Non-selling apps, particularly with low ratings, will be cut... and insanely great search that can tell you which fart app of the 30 available is the best one won't be so important anymore because the one fart app that exists in the store will be so great it'll make your eyes water.

The trick, of course, is determining how upstarts can compete with more established applications within a problem space. But, that's a discussion for next time.

While I do think it's a bad idea for the military to outsource computer networks this article uses terrible evidence to back up it's critique and complaints.

* "Worse, HP — which acquired Electronic Data Systems and its Navy contract in 2008 — still operates under performance metrics set a decade ago. A typical workstation on the network costs the Navy $2,490.72 per year."

A secure workstation with full outsourced support costs $2,490.72 a year? That sounds pretty damn good to me.

* "That includes an e-mail inbox with a 50-MB capacity (Gmail’s: 7,500 MB), and 700 MB of network storage (compared to Evernote’s unlimited, free plan). Anything above that is extra."

Most corporations give their staff 150mb inboxes. Let's see Google meet the military's requirements at 7,500mb per inbox. Better yet, let's see Evernote give the military unlimited storage space. I bet they could meet all of those requirements for free! The public market client is exactly the same as the Department of the Navy, so it should be a quick switcher-oo! Problem solved!

* "A year’s use of a “high-end graphics” workstation sets the Navy back $4,085.64. Extra applications on a laptop or desktop computer can run anywhere from $1,006.68 to $4,026.72 annually. A classified Ethernet port — $9,300 to $28,800 per year, depending on where it’s located."

Yup, that sounds about right. High-end graphics workstations and their software are expensive. So are classified networks.

* "What’s more, HP isn’t required to take security measures like hard disk encryption, threat heuristics, and network access control that are common today, but were exotic in 2000.

Really? They're not taking any security measures?!

“Anti-spam services” runs the Navy $2.7 million per year under the contract."

It costs $2.7 million to filter spam on the second biggest network in the world? Oh, only the ENTIRE INTERNET is bigger? $2.7 million is a steal.

* "Cleaning up a “data spillage” – classified information that got placed an unclassified network – costs $11,800 per incident. In 2008, the Navy paid about $5 million to wipe the data from 432 compromised computers. That’s “almost 10 times the cost of simply destroying the affected machines and replacing them with new ones,” the Washington Times reported."

Security incidents are expensive. The Navy sets the protocol for how these incidents are handled, you can't simply dump a computer into an incinerator and certify that the data is destroyed. Well, I suppose you could, but running an incinerator at the level of heat required to completely destroy data is FREAKING EXPENSIVE, TOO.

In the several parts of the article that they mention lack of what sounds like quality response tie and botched security updates/software roll outs there isn't enough evidence on the incidents to make any comment. Those incidents are asserted in a manner that is hear-say rather than official reports.

I've been really disappointed with Danger Room's tech in National Security reporting.

This is the part of the obituary that I found the most powerful:

Though inventing filled his working hours, Mr. Gundlach was enthralled with canoeing, hiking, skiing — activities he pursued avidly most of his lifetime. When he was in his 50s, feeling the need for a new hobby, he took up windsurfing. He also made sure to be home from work in time to play ball or build a bicycle jump, his children recalled.

“He had what we would call today a work-life balance,” said Eric Gundlach. “He was the kind of man who left work behind.”

Ohlife reminds me of a prettier, and less clever version of 100words. http://www.100words.com/

There's some really interesting creative work coming out of 100words based on folk's every day experiences. I'd recommend that HN folk check it out and that the OhLife founders take a particular look at it to see how they might attract and retain their own customers.

Note that the course's textbook, which is also called Street Fighting Mathematics, is available via Creative Commons Noncommercial Share Alike:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...

Its a link on the left side under the picture.

Anyone have a verifiable citation on this credit to Dyson? Initially my spider sense tingled when something so perfunctory was attributed to a CEO of Coca Cola (a common theme to chain emails).

Some quick Googling credits a 1996 Commencement Address at Georgia Tech. However, another source says it's from the book, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas.

Does anyone have a source at Georgia Tech that can confirm/deny 1996's commencement address?

O'Sensei's thought and style evolved throughout his life. In his younger days, pre-WWII, yes, he was rough and tumble. Movements were sharper and more direct. Break bones, crush your enemy. He did this frequently while in the Japanese military while serving in China as a bodyguard.

As he grew older, post-WWII, his philosophy and style became much softer and more spiritual than the styles he studied in his younger days. This was due, in part, to his age (changing perspective and physical decline) and the influence of the Omoto-kyo. In these later days, the purpose of training with weapons were twofold: help students learn body dynamics and learn to defend oneself against an armed attacker. The purpose wasn't to be armed and gut your enemies, the purpose was to understand the mindset of an armed aggressor, know their movements, and meet their movements without being gutted yourself.

They did, in fact, destroy the missile. The articles about this event are badly worded. From the original MDA Press Release:

At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.

However, the fact that they were able to do it from the ALTB during the boost phase of the missile launch (first two minutes!) is worthless. To do this during an actual ICBM attack would require /many/ ALTBs to be flying over enemy territory at the time of launch. This is because of simple physics. The earth is round. ICBM launches take place on the other side of the earth. The ICBM will no longer be in the super vulnerable boost phase when we can target them with the ALTB platform.

The immediate reaction is that satellites would solve this problem. But, there are two problems with that idea. First, to make a laser powerful enough to destroy/disable an ICBM requires a lot of space (there's a reason they use a 747 and it's not sex appeal). Satellites just aren't big enough or powerful enough or reliable enough to be effective platforms.... and we'd need /a lot/ of satellites. Second, there are treaties about weapons in space that no one wants to break. Modern society (particularly the United States) are too heavily invested in delicate satellites for communications, commerce, etc. Once weapons are allowed up there... back to the industrial era we go.

I understand your frustration, but from a different perspective, I think this helps bolster the case for moving on. Since iPhone apps store data locally, making it easy to steal, your iPhone secret sauce can't be the database or database scheme. The secret sauce has to be what you do with that data.

All that said, if you really feel that this is something that you want to do something about in the future, apps like 1password encrypt local data. I haven't done it, and other people have said it's a PITA because documentation is lacking... so YMMV. But, think of it this way, put that anger into learning how to encrypt/decrypt things on the iPhone. You'll gain a great skill while at the same time getting to code a project that allows you to mutter, "Let's see that stupid muppet steal THIS data..."

* Did I really mention that I like the word muppet? :D

Don't waste your time on legal action on this iphone app. Yes, notify Apple and publicize it. But, your energy is better spent innovating and hacking. While screen-scraping is hard work it doesn't bring success and other good programmers can re-implement your work without stealing it. Hell, this might be a good opportunity to open source your screen scraper. Publicize it so that others will collaborate on improving it. Then you can focus on more interesting work. Data gathering is hard work, more people doing it make it easier.

What can you do with your app that isn't so easily stolen (and reproduced) and turned into a carbon copy? As you've already seen, public transit apps are a dime a dozen. How about a bigger/better itinerary application that includes trains, planes, and automobile times so that one can put an itinerary together of vacation travel across all of Ireland? Add hotel info, confirmation info, etc, etc, etc...

I don't have the links handy put there have been other articles on HN about lessons from stolen work. Big lesson: it rarely matters because the people stealing ideas and work don't have the skillset to do it themselves. In the long term they can't compete with the new features and directions that you'll go.

What I'm trying to say is, use that energy from your anger to create something fcking awesome that that stupid muppet won't be able to compete with.

* I'm from the US. Yesterday, I learned about the use of the word muppet over on that side of the pond. BRILLIANT!

The biggest problem I've encountered with Apple in a business setting is Open Directory. You give it the evil eye and it gets corrupted; requiring restoration from backup (You have a backup, right?). BerkleyDB just doesn't cut it. Apple's documentation and KB could use some major overhauls, too...

In contrast, I can drop kick a Windows 2003 server out the 12th Floor Window and Active Directory keep running, and if I do have problems the KB can at least give me a lead on finding a solution.

I agree with your assessment of the value, but disagree with your conjecture of the solution. It'll take too long to create products that leverage the network and are profitable.

A better short term solution is to sell the data on the user base to mailing houses and other companies that are looking to find more information on their customers. Example target customers are political campaigns, nonprofits, associations, and magazines looking for new subscribers. This is an old fashioned business that has been around for years. It's proven, it works.

FB is headed this way with Connect, but Connect is too muddied, unproven, and relies too much on cooperation with 3rd parties.

A second set of customers, which in retrospect may be what you are referring to, are universities. The alumni network websites of schools are inactive wastelands. Facebook should be marketing walled garden solutions to Universities. Why build your own network from scratch (or expensive off-the-shelf vendor software) when you can just subscribe to a service from Facebook that will instantly give a University access to a huge percentage of their self-identified alumn...