clawrencewenham
Joined 17 years ago
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1,024
Submissions
129
Member since
Jul 11
Writer, programmer, freelancer.
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Comment · 8 years ago
Almost all of the software I've written is as useless outside of the company as air pockets taken out of a loaf of bread.
The big-rectangle diagram of what I do is fetch data from A, apply B(A), and send the result to Z. This is great when A is a proprietary API delivered over long-poll HTTP, B(A) converts it into a vocabulary common to just our products, and Z is Websockets to a mobile app. When we add a new customer who uses A2 all I do is write B2() and the rest stays the same.
Outside of the company, it's useless. There are thousands of products that do the same thing for different flavours of A, B and C. However, we can get our particular product to our target markets a year earlier than someone starting from scratch.
Compulsorily licensed to a competitor, they'd barely be able to install it because it's not packaged like a product. There's an old database that has evolved over more than a decade that's as crusty as an old fishing boat's keel. If a "good compulsory licensing scheme" would compensate the company for packaging it and writing manuals for it, then it's looking at millions of dollars just in the opportunity costs of taking the lead developers off other projects.
Comment · 13 years ago
> Much of Boston is not the same as "a large portion of New England."
Alright, much of Boston is not "a large portion of New England" but to use your figures, even 600 thousand is still huge. Does it really disprove my point that this manhunt will have enormous economic consequences? Even if our economy can absorb it, we must address the fact that the cost was staggering in proportion to what it cost the bombers to conduct their attack.
> In any event, extraordinary events require an extraordinary response.
Bruce Schneier pointed out, once, that airport security was brittle because it couldn't contain an event to the gate: it had to shut down a whole terminal and often--such as with the LAX evacuations after 9/11, an entire airport. This event shut down the work of perhaps 600,000 for the price of some pressure cookers and black powder.
If it cost a few hundred dollars to shut down 600,000 hosts or terminals on the Internet, we would be looking at ways to improve security and protocols so that such an inexpensive attack could not force such enormous losses.
I think we should brainstorm ways to block this vulnerability. It should not be possible for two guys, 26 and 19 years old, to freeze a major city.
Comment · 13 years ago
I don't know what 128 is, but I know of people who were taking Amtrak to Connecticut but had to get off at NYC and travel uptown to Grand Central Station to get on a commuter train. They weren't going to Boston. Amtrak service was halted north of NYC because of this manhunt.
I do know that much of Boston had no choice but to take a day off on Friday. I know the Bruins game was cancelled, and that Comic Con was "postponed" and likely cancelled because of the difficulty of re-booking the conference center anytime before next year.
Not even considering the salaries and overtime of the officers involved, it is not wrong to say that this manhunt may have cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in economic losses. For example, some of the speculation from The Washington Post this afternoon:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/t...
This is as if an entire city went into anaphylaxis.
Comment · 13 years ago
The ending to The Blues Brothers seems prophetic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2quc-iQ96R0
To edit and elaborate: they shut down a large portion of New England, affecting millions of people. Amtrak service, for example, was suspended north of New York City at 12:30pm today. Private taxi service in the Boston Metro area shut down until 11am. Other public transit, such as the T, shut down for most of the day. People didn't go to work.
I know it sounds callous, considering how many died or were maimed, but we now have to consider that a couple of pressure cookers are on par with hurricanes, blizzards and power blackouts when it comes to anesthetizing the North East corridor. I think we should think about this.
Comment · 13 years ago
Yes, they can be subdivided by up to eight decimal places.
Comment · 14 years ago
That part is cool, but it's also "FaceTime with a head-mounted camera". They spent most of their time showing something that is better but not unique. I was under the impression that Glass is supposed to put a UI in your field of vision, yet the entire presentation focused on the camera.
Comment · 14 years ago
All they really showed in the skydiving stunt was that they were wearing head-mounted cameras.