Slashdot Mirror

To be honest I wouldn't care about DRM if there was a universal standard for everything. [...] Saying you want new music to always be backwards compatible [...]

It's not just about being backwards compatible; it's also about being forwards compatible. Here's a comment I posted in Another Place explaining why:

One of the common rationales for some forms of DRM is that they're 'reasonable': they let you do most of the things you'd want to. But IMO that's just an illusion: no form of DRM is reasonable, and no form can ever be completely reasonable.

And yes, I do have a rational reason for thinking that, even though at present it seems to be an extreme position: the 'default' access to any copy-protected material will always be to prevent copying. And ultimately, it's that 'default' access which matters.

There are lots of ways you could try to access DRM-protected material: you could present it in a variety of applications on your desktop computer (media players, book readers, or whatever depending on the type of material); you could copy it to another machine; you could copy it to a handheld machine and try to present it there; you could convert it to a different format; and so on. And these access methods will always increase: people will always be coming up with new applications, devices, formats, ways of accessing the material. Therefore, any DRM scheme must not only address the current access methods, but also future ones too. So there are basically two possible types of DRM: those which allow access in specific ways and prevent everything else (the no-access default), and those which prevent access in specific ways and allow everything else (the full-access default).

Now, that second type is in practice unworkable, because it would then be possible to come up with a new access method, and use that to convert the material into another DRM-free form, effectively removing the DRM and rendering it useless. So, any practical DRM scheme must prevent all access other than that it specifically allows.

And that's what makes DRM so harmful. It's future-unproofed, blocking any cool new technologies which come along. It's inaccessible, blocking many (or all) existing technologies used by people with disabilities. It relies upon the company providing the right software and/or access codes. It's non-portable, blocking most other hardware platforms, operating systems, or devices. And it always will be so, because that's the nature of DRM: to block 'everything else'.

Take, for example, a form of DRM that's actually fairly reasonable and non-restrictive: Apple's FairPlay system, which is used for tracks bought from the iTunes Music Store. It lets you authorise up to 5 computers to play those tracks, along with all iPods synced to them. You can even burn copies to CD. Sounds pretty fair.

But it still has a no-access default (while it's working as designed, anyway). You can't use any other software to edit the tags. You can't split or join tracks. You can't play them on any other MP3 (or AAC) player. You can't convert them to lower-bitrate versions. You can't convert them to whatever cool new format comes along and offers the same sound quality at a fraction of the filesize. You can't do anything other than the few things they specifically allow, even though those other things might be completely legal and moral for you to do, or might become so at some point in the future!

This is why I think there can never be a completely 'reasonable' form of DRM. There will always be new forms of access that the creators didn't think of. And DRM will always block them. And we will all suffer. Sooner or later, people will learn this. I hope it's sooner.

New Orleans: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, perhaps the apotheosis of all New Orleans-based Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games?

I find the attemps of the so-called pro-science lobby to ridicule the ID argument in the form of the flying spaghetti monster very unscientific and cowardly. I realise that it helps them laugh, and helps them pursuade themselves that they personally have a sound basis for their own beliefs even though they have taken as little effort to validate them as they think the "religious fundamentalists" have for theirs.

In the end FSM is about using the same method of argument to arrive at odd conclusions. I personally don't find it terribly good at that - it isn't really a good mapping of ID style arguments. You can try this essay about gravity which maps very closely to ID arguments, and using the same methods manages to show that gravity is a flawed theory, and that we need to teach the controversy on that one too. If you can explain why that argument isn't valid, then you can explain why ID's arguments aren't valid.

Such a method of argument - deconstructing the oppositions argument and using it to demonstrate something absurd - is entirely valid. It's one of the better demonsatrations of why Plantinga's ontological argument for the existence of God is flawed - you can prove the existence of invisible tartan elephants by exactly the same method. Just because the FSM does a poor job of it doesn't mean it isn't a valid approach.

Jedidiah.

Honestly I don't know why more adults who smoke (and refuse to quit) don't switch to chewing tobacco?

When I switched from smoking cigarettes to chewing tobacco (Copenhagen snuff, oh yeah!) I didn't get colds so often, I didn't have lung/phlegm problems, I didn't smell like tobacco smoke, and I didn't have all the other health problems associated with smoking tobacco. Obviously there were risks involved (cancer, receding gums causing tooth loss, possible blood pressure oddities, etc.) but I experienced none of the above in the short time I chewed tobacco.

Sure, spitting tobacco may be seen as disgusting, but some of the methods employed within the delightful read "My world of Nicotine -- a HOWTO of chew" provides brief solutions.

With any tobacco product, it bears investigating what the manufacturers mix in with the tobacco. I've read that chewable snuff from Sweden is touted by many to be safer than brands coming from the U.S.A. I don't know all of the facts, but it seems like people who smoke tobacco end up dying quicker and more often than people who chew tobacco.

I fail to see any 'safe' cigarette being created until/unless someone has managed to eliminate the creation of nitrosamines via curing and burning.

That said, aside from nitrosamines, if the tobacco companies wanted to make a safer cigarette (I know production costs is an issue) why don't they grow organic tobacco, not add anything extra to it, and not dip/treat it with pesticides (hence organic)?

Hey, they could have come up with some nonsense about how the trilogy was really just pro-Nazi propaganda. I guess George gets things relatively easy.

Screen is great & not hard to use. See articles on kuro5hin or Wikipedia.

For a brief synopsis....
screen has a number of useful features, most of which you can access by prefixing a command with a command key, which by default is 'Ctrl-A' ('C-A' or '^A' if you prefer). To see some of the things screen can do, press 'Ctrl-A' and then '?'.

screen allows you to have multiple terminal windows in a single terminal session ("multiplexing"). This is REALLY useful if you spend a lot of time in a term (for example, when you're SSHing to other boxes). To create a new window, 'Ctrl-A' and then 'C'. To switch between windows, 'Ctrl-A' and then 'N' or 'P' for next & previous windows, or a number to switch to a specific window.

screen allows you to recover a session, so you can gracefully detach (or be rudely interrupted by a network outage) & reattach to see all of your processes again. To reattach to an existing screen, start screen with 'screen -r'. You can also forcibly detach an already-attached session by 'screen -Dr'. If you have multiple screen sessions, you can tell it which session to reattach to by typing in the process number after the '-r'.

You can also lock the screen if you are stepping away for a shor period ('Ctrl-A' and then 'X'), and even have a bigger scrollback buffer which is copy/pastable from the keyboard! ('Ctrl-A' and then '[' to enter copy mode. Use vi-movement keys, cursor keys, etc. to move the cursor, hit 'enter' to start a selection, use the same movement keys to expand it, hit 'enter' again to put it in the buffer. 'Ctrl-A' and then ']' to paste).

screen allows a lot of other useful things, such as sharing a session between two users (which makes for interesting pair programming or terminal-style "presentations").

It is definitely one of the first apps I install on any system.

Just as we must constantly update students' computers and books, updating science and core academic curriculum is essential. Keeping them in the dark with an antiquated, unproven teaching theory is impractical and unhealthy. The theory of evolution remains simply that, a theory...A newer, alternative view provides balance to the age-old argument, pitting creationism against evolution. It's called intelligent design.

Yes, but science isn't about "balance", it's about trying to find the best explanations for reality. If a view doesn't explain observable reality very well then science has little interest in trying to strike a balance with that view, it simply want to find a better explanation.

Intelligent design is not creationism or naturalism; it simply follows the empirical evidence of design wherever it leads.

The issue, really, is "what is the empirical evidence of design" because that is really the heart of the matter. In practice it amounts to "these are things which are not yet explained in the current theory". They are not, per se, things that are contrary to the current theory, just points that haven't yet been heavily scrutinised and explanations provided. How exactly do you know something was designed? Effectively you simply say "I cannot see how this could have evolved". That's not really the same thing as saying it can't have evolved - that is, saying that evolutionary theory specifically predicts such a thing cannot exist. It is not a falsification, but merely a lack of explanation.

It is actually surprisingly easy to take this same method of argument, of pointing to the gaps where explanation hasn't yet reached, and create a similar theory to Intelligent Design for any subject area in science - there's always something that has yet to be fully explained. Take, for instance, gravity. You can construct a reasonable sounding argument using exactly the same techniques as Intelligent Design and end up with a theory that, I'm quite sure, you could get not insignificant support for from various religious groups.

Intelligent design is accepted by religious and nonreligious academics and scientists; supported by microbiologists and mathematics. In a Natural History Magazine study, three proponents of intelligent design summarize their findings this way:

* Every living cell contains many ultra-sophisticated molecular machines.
* Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
* Darwin's finches and four-winged fruit fly theories cannot account for all features of living things.

And the "Uncaused Force" theory is supported by physics and mathematics (just check those journal articles cited in the essay: they are all real, and say exactly what the essay claims they do). You could summarise "Uncaused Force" findings this way:

* At various scale levels there are observable forces that have no observable cause.
* Interaction in our universe by somethign external to our universe leaves behind observable signatures.
* Einstein's relativity cannot account for the observed forces.

It's all just the same argument, so why do you not accept "Uncaused Force"?

You can't falsify a theory by noting that it hasn't yet explained something - it is interesting to note, but it is not a falsification. Claiming that a theory is flawed is not evidence for an alternate theory.

Jedidiah.

Some months ago, there was a great guide on Kuro5hin: How to Survive a Zombie Attack. Certainly worth a read.

How to Survive a Zombie Attack.

I think there should be a definate emphasis here that the US isn't in a dabate now over science in general, it's a debate about teaching controversial science in the classroom.

That's just a weak excuse - the debate, ultimately, is about science and the scientific method. The particular controversy of the moment is simply one example of that. It is entirely possible to use identical methods of argument to the ID people to create a controversy about any particular field of science. Here's one: it sounds every bit as serious, and scientific as ID arguments, and demonstrates the controvesy about gravity. If you can figure out why that essay doesn't mean that "uncaused force" is a valid point and that gravity is controversial science you'll also have figured out why ID isn't valid in scientific debate, and why evolution isn't really controversial science.

Jedidiah.

I wonder if they care? (not)

I dunno, /. users do tend to spend all their time between news posts playing WoW. That's a lot of subscriber money if they all decide to revolt, say to the kuro5hin MMORPG.

Please don't slow progress down for those of us who want to seek out new solar systems ... and wrap them with Dyson spheres.

As to your non-sequitor end quote, a line from the bible fits: "even the devil can quote gospel" -- in other words, a liar sometimes tells the truth, you cannot simply state "I don't like this person therefore I disagree with everything they say" and expect to be internally consistent.

And as to the book, there are many authors who make their living scaring the public. It appears this was one of them. Living forever is no way boring; perhaps it might have been 50 years ago, but we're now on the rapid stream of advances leading up to the singularity, and there's no way I'll be bored during that! Beyond the singularity there's so much more to know and learn and do as well; seeking out new universes as an escape measure for when this one suffers its heat death (we know it won't collapse, that was proven a few years ago). And overpopulation won't be a problem either, since we'll be able to create habitats in environments that are current unsuitable for life (deserts, underground, in the ocean, orbiting, in the asteroids, etc).

You should read this book: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" , which contains some of the same elements as the book you read (people killing each other in the future, for pleasure), but does so from the premise that we have backups, so "killing" someone (or even yourself!) does not mean the end of that person's experiences.

You mean like this?

oh noes, they're talking shit about you!! kekekeke

dude, they're talking shit about you! kekekekeke

*STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO ANDREW ORLOWSKI!*

Okay, that was six words. The point still stands. This "journalist" has never once had anything not-gratuitously-insulting to say about Wikipedia.

Don't give him any page hits. Just go straight to the two articles he's analyzing. The first of the two is the article that the main story probably should have linked to, even though it lacks Orlowski's choice, insulting quotes (and therefore makes it less important, as measured in page hits). The second seems to take Orlowski's "amateurs suck" mentality, but is a good deal more polite about it.

Sounds eerily familiar. Oh wait.

You really like the propaganda. You also like the repressed "you can do what you want, but don't let anyone know". How do gay people feel about seeing heterosexuals get sexy all over the place? Most probably don't care - which is how we feel about homosexuals doing the same when they, and we, are free. I can dig up examples of homosexual marriage - even among saints (like the story of the Roman soldiers at Jesus' crucifixion). But why? Who cares? We "redefined" the term "man" to include women and nonwhites, when we clarified that what we mean by "man" includes those people, too. Even though legally and traditionally, they had been excluded from voting etc, just like gays from marriage.

Judges only "legislate from the bench" in the terms of rightwingers taking over the government. While statistics show that Republican appointed (and registered, and self-identified) judges are more likely than others to overturn Congressional acts. You're arguing about "definition of marriage", when it is precisely the judicial responsibility to define terms when interpreting laws. This whole exercise by Card is part of orchestrated bigotry being enshrined in US law, along with religious preferences - even extending to Bush's current "religiously qualified" nominee to the Supreme Court. You really need to look more closely at your country. Because eventually these fascists get everyone - and you yourself are somewhere down the list.

I didn't say anything about someone being a nazi if they don't support gay marriage, as you claim. I said that Card was unreadable (by me), and an insane rightwing fanatic, because he is. There's plenty of other evidence that Card is, in fact, a Nazi. Not because of who he doesn't support, but because of who he does support, and who he attacks. Get a clue, or your relative acceptance of people different from you (as long as you don't know about it?) won't be an option any longer.

It's his basic attitude which is insane (impossible for me to relate to, or understand). But it's illustrated in lots of specific passages like

"Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all"

as justification for prohibiting homosexuals to marry, when even the law doesn't prohibit it, because some religious people believe that god demands their government enforce their morals on other people. It's about as insane as the (ironic) commentary on freedom and economics, "rich and poor alike are free to sleep under bridges in this country". It's true, but betrays such obstinate denial of the injustice that anyone sympathizing with its literal statement is obviously a propagandist. But of course Card wouldn't agree.

FWIW, when I read a more detailed examination of Card's fascist bent, I felt like my feelings about the guy were confirmed. Just because most Mormons are just decent people, like any Americans, doesn't mean that fundamentalist Mormons with theofascist agendas and "master race" sympathies aren't dangerous lunatics.

I am not trying to flame here, but what you are saying is that because you disagree with his ideas you cannot get past your own bigotry to enjoy admittedly good writing.

My beliefs are pretty "out there" myself and I learned at an early age to accept entertainment and knowledge from many different sources, even those who are opposed to my beliefs. The secret is to consider the material in its own light and realize that diversity of viewpoints is a good thing to be exposed to. Without diversity of viewpoints it is impossible to evaluate your own viewpoint without catastropic myopia.

If it is a novel/movie you are dealing with, enjoy the characters and the story. When you are done, if you are so inclined, deconstruct the novel in light of the writer's opinions to see if there are any agendas included, or characters that you think are embodiments of certain virtues, etc. Even more fun is to group those people who you consider to be "religious fanatics" and evaluate how they fare against their "non-fanatical" brethren. In this way you can derive even more pleasure from the work of someone who you intensely disagree with than from someone you have no opposition to.

Oddly enough I have found information about Card that I find even more disturbing than the religious beliefs you point to. This is what I am refering to. Regardless, it won't stop me reading his novels.

Art is art. The only person hurt by you not being able to enjoy his novels is you.

Read "Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat" over at Kuro5hin.

I wrote a Kuro5hin article documenting exactly this sort of problem some time ago. It's about Xanga, but it applies just as much to MySpace.

I'd say Rational Rose is what they sell you when you buy into RUP, not the other way around. "Like our process? Buy the matching software suite!" And don't forget Websphere Developer, only $2650 per seat. Nevermind it's based on Eclipse which is free and better maintained.

I've heard rumor that my current client paid about $500,000 for Rational kool-aid. A lot of good it does them too. Most of the packages are real albatrosses! Gigantic, unweildly, and obstructive. We basically just use ClearCase and ClearQuest for the equivalent of what you could do with Subversion and Bugzilla. I can't find one person in this company that uses these tools because it makes them more effective.

Yes, RUP is a step up from waterfall. But for most companies that "implement" RUP it's waterfall by another name. Anyone who's smart enough to use RUP properly probably isn't using RUP because they know there's something better .

And yes, IBM will be sending us their "consultants" for the next "iteration" of development.

And this:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/16/81428/8007

Goes into detail about how sports and exercise can make depression *worse* by feeding you too much adrenaline, which serves to aggravate the anxiety problem in your brain's chemistry. (That's part 2, you should read part 1 as well).

Nobody ever got screwed for working with IBM.

Haha, etc.

Dr. Hfuhruhurr: I don't find this amusing!

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/2/103735/275

Go read "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiidx.ht ml

p.s. Thank the gods that someone below posted this link. I was wracking my brain like crazy trying to remember the name of that book.

Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is both a good literary work and science fiction. There are, admittedly, few that are both. One of the reasons "scifi" fans praise many other books is because if they stuck to strictly literary science fiction they could read it all in a month.

Why?

Because writing good literary science fiction is hard. The people who are brilliant enough scientifically, creative enough in imagination, and able to pen a good story are few enough to begin with, and many of those that might fit the bill are busy being actual scientists. Carl Sagan wrote a decent piece of science fiction called Contact. I have a reasonably high belief that Stephen Hawking could write blisteringly good science fiction if he decided to pursue it.

I have high hopes for a book on my buy list called Building Harlequin's Moon by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper. Not that I haven't heard that there are flaws.

Of course, this may need to be tempered by the notion that I do like Mortal Passage quite a bit.

No.

It's pronounced "corrosion." See the FAQ. It means "lustful ferret" or something like that.

The short story was fun. He should never have tried to expand it though.

For good Card-bashing, I'll point you to: Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat. It's a great read.

Biography at Wikipedia

Personality critique at Kuro Five Hin

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect has an interesting take on the Singularity, Asimov's Three Laws, and what people might do for "entertainment" when faced with the boredom of immortality.

Note: it's not a story for the squeamish.

The Blurb:

Lawrence had ordained that Prime Intellect could not, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But he had not realized how much harm his super-intelligent creation could perceive, or what kind of action might be necessary to prevent it.

Caroline has been pulled from her deathbed into a brave new immortal Paradise where she can have anything she wants, except the sense that her life has meaning.

Now these two souls are headed for a confrontation which will force them to weigh matters of life and death before a machine that can remake -- or destroy -- the entire Universe.

I wouldn't go to the same trouble in terms of specifications and plans to slap together a doghouse as I would to build my own home. I would expect someone building a skyscraper to go to more trouble again. The same applies to software.

But really, why bother with *any* specifications - after all, God will just re-arrange the code through Uncaused Force (per you sig) and make it run well if you are a good person. And using the specs for determining the cause of any bugs is useless, I mean, if you can't determine why a bug is happening, then obviously it's because God wants the bug to happen ;)

I'm personally more apt to believe the FSM theory.

Specs should, in my opinion, be a language-independent description of the task - not implementation, but structures and interfaces only.

Exactly. Further to that point, here is a discussion on that very subject, including examples of implementation and spec, and how they differ, and what the spec offers that the implementation doesn't.

Jedidiah.

for those that think such an utopia is desirable, i'd like to introduce you to another book.

slashdot, meet The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

a bit far fetched, but not that far from what is suggested in the one under review here.

I'm convinced of this. Management at many companies likes to spend money, because to them it feels like an "investment." If they "invest" 200,000 dollars into OS purchases, there is a lot more percieved value than investing 0 dollars into OS purchases.

The famous economics example is the fur coat markup. A New York boutique got a lucky closeout and tried to pass that on to their customers. So they marked a rack full of fur coats at 400 dollars. Unfortunately none of these sold. So they shifted gears and marked the fur coats up to 2,000 dollars. Now they quickly sold out. Apparently, nobody wanted a cheap fur coat and everyone wanted a nice fur coat. And because none of these people knew how to judge a fur coat, the only thing they had to go on was the price.

The same thing is true of management at some companies and technology purchases. Office is 4x as expensive as Star Office, and infinitely more expensive as Open Office, so it must be substantially better. Right? Why cheap out on technology purchases when you are investing in your infrastructure and you have no idea what you're doing? Sign the big check... that will assure smooth sailing down the road.

Of course, down the road THEIR boss looks at that big check and wonders where all of that money went. And their infrastructure is unable to keep up with things so they feel the need to hire even more expensive consultants from IBM at 300 dollars an hour, and pour even more money into the most expensive solution they can find. If the 200,000 dollar NT webserver needs rebooting weekly, the solution must be the 400,000 dollar Win 2K webserver using all HP parts and solutions, right?

Unfortunately, sometimes the most expensive solution is the worst. Frequently in technology more expensive means more chefs in the kitchen, which leads to shoddy cohesion and ultimately shoddy construction. Additionally, the most expensive solutions are from companies that just want the money, and who will simply markup existing packages, overbill for time, and sell you hardware that is built at the cheapest Malasian refurb factories and that is guaranteed to die the moment the consultant steps out of your building with a check.

As a side note, I still find it shocking what I can bill for my time as a computer consultant. For that kind of money, just hire someone competent for your staff full-time. If you don't feel like you can do that, hire an outside consultant to hire someone for you.

Why should I produce good documentation anyway? So it's easier for you to fire me? What's in it for me?

I document the bare minimum and keep the rest in my head. My crib notes are so cryptic they might as well be Swahili to anyone else.

Oh, but the boss is insisting I write some documentation. No problem.

Theoretically you could use the linked article to help you write good documentation, but I've never seen it happen.

If you really want to capture the state of your IT department, you need to lock everyone in a room with a gigantic whiteboard and start diagraming your systems. Get someone to take notes or digicam pictures or something. Encourage questions and heckling.

Edit those notes into something useable and let everyone criticize them. Once everyone is happy, do it again for the next system.

The above takes way too much time, so no-one ever has a complete picture of what/where/why/when.

Bring a laptop so you can play this handy New Orleans based choose your own adventure:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/6/34041/87727

Thus allowing you to relax in between bouts of charity work.

Keep it really REAL.

A couple days worth of crack rocks and some Fiddy Cent CDs to listen to on a portable boom box.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 -- just be sure you have millions upon millions of dollars and at least twice the amount of time you really need. Other than that, it should be a simple deal!

Ich Bindawalross (London) - GNAA (NYSE: GNAA) President timecop released a statement today regarding the immediate Internet release of MacOS X for the x86 architecture, available on many BitTorrent networks. After making the statement, timecop yielded the stage to a second speaker at the press conference, Apple Computer co-Founder and CEO, Steve "Rim" Jobs, now fully recovered from his recent gender reassignment surgery to field questions from attending press members.

"We here at Apple Computerth [sic] have decided on a slightly different path for the upcoming version of the MacOS X," Jobs states before bursting out into high pitched giggles. "We have replaced our overpriced and bloated software with an efficient and easy-to-use interface. I would like to take this opportunity to announce a merger larger than a Zimbabwe nigger cock: GNAA and Apple Computer."

Returning to the podium, timecop began speaking again, while Steve Jobs submitted to orally pleasuring his ten inch nigger cock. "Dedicated faggots have been loyally purchasing the homosexual software and hardware abomination that is Macintosh computers. Apple has been striving to provide software customers with the most flambouyantly homosexual combination available. However, in recent days, this hasn't been enough.

"There has been increasing pressure from the disgustingly obese Lunix nerds and the socially well-adjusted and popular Windows users to convert, as well as pressure from OS X emulators to provide consumers with increasingly gay products. Apple Computer has decided to merge with GNAA in order to broaden the appeal and better serve the interests of all those who buy Macintosh products. Furthermore, we will adopt Apple's "Step 2 ???? PROFIT!" marketing model. This will also stop Apple from going out of business, which they probably would have otherwise."

At this point, timecop paused and deposited a quart of Gaynigger seed into Steve Jobs' mouth.

"GNAApple is committed to our new OS X86. Rather than give the user the difficulty of finding pornography themselves, we provide them with the classic hello.jpg, redundantly archived and brand labeled throughout the 950 MB DVD image, as well as a bundled copy of GPA (Gay Porn Avalanche). Now, greater efficiency in masturbatory pursuits can be provided to all."

"As Slashdot users, many of you might have been exposed to the pirated release, and information pertaining to it. We would like to thank Rob "CmdrCocko" Malda for running the first article, leading to the release of information about our upcoming merger. We would also like to extend our gratitude to thepiratebay.org and XiSO for helping us spread the release over the 'underground scene.' We thank you, the IRC channels who put it on their hacked .edu xdcc bots and fserves who hosted it on your dialup connections.

Steve Jobs, recovering from the large dosage of AIDS from the variety of syphilitic, festering sores of GNAA members, rose to his feet at this point during the press conference. "Our previous versions of OS X were released prematurely, and as a result the operating system was unstable and fragile. Our team of software engineers have also decided to abandon the weak and inefficient UNIX backside in favor of a more efficient and robust alternative: WinNT. The pirated version of our new operating system has had record acclaim from users of the Jewish-based internet news organization known as "Slashdot".

"Those doubting the superiority of our new release need only read user testimonials."

"The Torrent going around as: Mac OS X Tiger X86 READNFO-XISO It's a complete fake. When the image is booted it shows a picture of a guy showing off his Bu** H**e." - Anon Coward

"if you unrar, burn, and boot like the .nfo file says, it just

and Pudge for writing the code to convert 900k users, 60k stories, and 13 million comments to comply

Huh? By doing what, running them through HTMLTidy? Oh, the horror! What sort of "conversion" is required on the data, when we're just talking about changing the presentation layer?

Look, this conversion was done by A List Apart nearly two years ago. I'm not impressed. And don't give me some crap about how it's hard for Slashdot to change its code, because it's such a high-traffic site. Slashdot is miniscule compared to Wikipedia, (which runs entirely off donated hardware, to boot). If a bunch of volunteers at Wikipedia can write code which serves up validating HTML (and does a hell of a lot more complex work than Slashcode does), why did it take the well-paid proprietors of Slashdot two years to get there, when someone had already done the hard work for them?

Perhaps they're too busy posting dupes, abusing the moderation system and otherwise being petty emperors of their ever-shrinking (see above graph) realm?

At least Jon Katz has faded into well-deserved obscurity. "In our post-Katrina world, blah blah blah..."

"The /. synopsis leaves a bit out as usual. Google is going to some pretty good lengths to make sure the system is not exploited in any non-fair use ways."

Their ealier versions have already been exploited, any new version the come up with will as well.

"For instance, you can only read a few pages of the book related to your search. And even if you search multiple times, you can only read a few more pages. You can not use google to download the entire book for free."

Read this article to know better: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/7/95844/59875

"Also, google is cutting publishers in on the advertising for the pages their book is displayed on."

Publishers aren't pushing back on Google for the works they've agreed to share - they are for the ones Google is trying to back-door through the library system. It's up to the publishers to determine what money they receive for the works - not what Google decides to share through their advertising.

I've seen a lot of people floating this idea about "XML config files everywhere" for the last few months.

I'll come out and say that I don't think this would provide much benefit. For the sake of argument we'll just pretend that I like the idea.

The big practical problem here is that you've got a helluva lot of code to rewrite before we see any payoff.

Lots of folks will disagree with you about the value of rewriting $application's config files in XML. Are you prepared to fork (and maintain!) a version of cron-XML and named-XML and ssh-XML and sendmail-XML and qmail-XML and xntpd-XML and $deity knows what else?

That's just the big "server" stuff, what about all of my trivial "desktop" apps (slrn, xscreensaver, xmms, whatever) ?

I'm sure there are a ton of brain-dead apps/scripts that manually parse /etc/hosts or /etc/fstab or /etc/passwd instead of going through the appropriate system calls; you'll be breaking them too. Some of those brain-dead proggies are going to be big $$$ commercial apps whose vendors won't want to change, I almost guarantee it.

There is soooo much inertia here that it's going to be very hard to get the ball rolling. Certainly not impossible, but hard.

Hey, prove me wrong. Get in there and start coding. Next time I see you, I'll buy you a beer for every app/syscall that you XML-ize. :)

Uh, you mean kinda like Kuro5hin does?

Because that system works soooo well.

Uh, you mean kinda like Kuro5hin does?

Because that system works soooo well.

This is an urban legend which probably stems from Microsoft buying Hotmail (which was run entirely on FreeBSD) and the subsequent migration iterations. See this article from someone at Microsoft for explanation, assuming the article from kuro5hin is reliable :).

But along with Win2k, doesn't that break connectivity with WinXP too ? AFAIK WinXP also uses NTLM (v2 I guess).

Microsoft has been a company which actually puts extra code in their kernel to keep buggy software compatible with its new releases (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/779 5).

Its hard to believe microsoft would actually go to this extent. On the other hand, they might be taking a very fresh approach to their new OS

New Orleans may be rebuilt but there are good reasons to continue the trend and empty the cities. A pandemic in the coming weeks may make this all too obvious. Information technology has largely changed the neolithic basis of civilization and additional innovations will usher in a postcivil era of much richer human choice and sustainability. Postcivil society is coming. The transition will be rough. Empty the cities now to minimize human suffering during the transition...