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Slashback: Eldred, Cruise, SOAP
And then we saw the sharks. a9db0 writes "Part II of Doc Searl's travelogue recounting his experiences on the Geek Cruise has been posted here by the fine folks over at the Linux Journal"
In an earlier report from Geek Cruise, Linus predicted 2.6 by June 2003. If you liked the list of features being considered for 2.6, you can thank puriots0 for "the list of what's been included in time for the feature freeze for Linux 2.6", as found at kernelnewbies.org.
Peel back your eyelids and let these images flood your brain. strredwolf writes "I think we had half the story when Cartoon Network said they were going to remove Zoids and G Gundam in their Toonami block. It was more like remove Zoids, move G Gundam to Midnight Run with GI Joe, put HeMan and Transformers on full weekdays, and double up on DB and DBZ. The website and broadcast prove it now. (This report was done while watching to Toonami live.)"
And Stalke writes "Recently, rumours about Stargate SG1 7th season included it both being renewed as well as speculation that it might be cancelled. MGM and Scifi put those rumours to rest today by officially announcing a 7th season. It will begin filming next year with a full 22 episodes ordered. No word about Daniel Jackson returning though :("
Cracking down on alien fraudsters. yep writes "Administrators of the alien-hunting distributed computing experiment SETI@home have announced they will crack down on cheats who rort statistics on computing power lent to the project. The announcement follows a united protest from the chief contributors. SETI@home director David Anderson announced SETI@home would do its best to investigate users returning suspiciously high amounts of work and delete their accounts if it uncovered solid evidence of cheating."
Sure they're not. tiltowait writes "The Hartford Courant article "The FBI Has Bugged Our Public Libraries" has been retracted (this was mentioned here - but the older article has been removed). Even if the retraction can be trusted, this doesn't change the fact that the FBI can still bug libraries as freely as the CIA can assasinate with impunity, or that more McCarthyism is on the way."
This story retracts the claims of bugging made in the previous one. Since the FBI has little incentive to tell the truth on this count, I don't see what incentive anyone has to believe their denial.
Cleaning up the future for SOAP. Makarand writes "A major hurdle in finalizing the SOAP 1.2 specification has been removed. Both Epicentric, a subsidiary of Vignette, and WebMethods, which makes integration software, had said in earlier statements that they may have patents that cover the technology used in the SOAP 1.2 specification which would have made SOAP 1.2 non royalty-free hindering approval by W3C. Epicentric has now amended its earlier statement saying they no longer believe they hold any such patents, and even if they did, they are interested in making them available on a royalty-free basis. WebMethods has made no comments yet."
If I were you guys I'd probably avoid Slashdotting the Supreme Court...
;-)
Just a thought, though, not a sermon
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
It all makes sense folks. The truth is out there.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
Free cruises are a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.
Free cruises are a matter of the vacationers' freedom to sail to, study, change and improve cities all across the globe. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the cruise:
- The freedom to ride on any ship, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the ship works, and adapt it to your vacationing needs (freedom 1).
- The freedom to redistribute free cruise passes so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the cruise, and release your improvements to the event coordinator, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3).
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Because what MANY of the cheats are doing is to take an *almost* finished work unit, then distribute that to a whole bunch of machines to finish and subsequently report. Thus, they flood back a tremendous number of identical (and valid) work units and get credit for many more work units than could possibly be done with the actual hardware that they have.
These cheats aren't diluting the validity of the results, only getting credit for huge quantities of work units. (Though one could argue that they are disrupting things by chewing up bandwidth) Credit is one of the reasons that folks volunteer to do SETI@Home, so this could also cause people to loose interest and drop out if not corrected.
Of course, having read this, Ashcroft's Ashellians will require licenses on mail servers....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Let's see... the FBI says the report wasn't true, the city librarian says the report wasn't true, the reporter says the report wasn't true, and the reporter's two anonymous sources say the story wasn't true. And the delusional /. editor's response? "Since the FBI has little incentive to tell the truth on this count, I don't see what incentive anyone has to believe their denial."
Un-fucking-believable.
Allright I work at a university research library so I can possibly answer this for you. For one, no we haven't had the FBI knocking on our door so that is good. But, as to how they would do this i have a few theories.
I doubt they would run anything on the computers themselves using a program or a keylogger, mainly because it is too much work and ALOT of people would have to know about. I mean, we have 176 public computers and around 200 staff computers throughout all our branches they would have to bug. And to do that they would have to involve at least 3 people PLUS the student techs who administer the machines and work in the labs. I would doubt they would bother with it, considering the work to log 500 some machines. Doesn't seem worth their time.
Instead, and much more likely, they would track the people's book browsing habits. Our library uses a third-party system called IRIS (innovative research something something) to handle our online card catalog, which happens to be our only card catalog. Now things become more interesting. Since all queries (seaching for books, journals, etc, etc) are tracked by IP and logged automatically by the IRIS machine in the first place - to see interests in books and what we can keep or send to storage, not part of some grand conspiracy - all the FBI would have to do is ask for the logs. Then, assuming they know which computer the suspect was at, match the IP's with the queries. Also if they wanted stuff like book checkout records, etc, etc, they could just grab it from the IRIS machine. Basically, this would be relatively easy for them and only 1-2 people who have to know. And, even better, the general public would be oblivious. You could also set up the database to only report certain queries for books, and the like. I mean the infrastructure is there, all they have to do is turn it on/customize it to what they need.
The only way you could find out about it is if you had access to the IRIS machine. And, sorry guys, that ain't going to happen unless you work there. So don't go to your local library looking for key loggers you aren't going to find any. Now, personally, I am a lowly student computer tech so I have absolutely no say in this but it is somewhat scary to think of.
Also, they could just deploy packet sniffers, etc, etc on the LAN.
"..hey man, nice shot!" - Filter
Read this, particularly the part about the three peasants.
What if someone were to turn around and declare you a terrorist?
Still finding it such a good idea?
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Not at all.
First of all, it's difficult to tell which way the Justices are leaning from the questions. They've done their homework and read all thr briefs. They know Lessig's argument. What they are doing in the questioning is testing the argument to find its weaknesses. The stronger the argument, the harder the questions.
When you get down to SG Olsen's questioning, you'll see how thoroughly they demolish his position. "Whatever limit Congress sets as long as its finite" is a non-starter. Later on the Justices joked about theatre boxes in England being leased for 900 years. It's finite in mathematical terms, but unlimited in practical terms.
The real question for the court is how too define appropriate limits to Congressional powers that give meaning to the phrase "limited times" without usurping the Congressional function of setting the limit. They don't want to be in a position of having to say x years is OK, but y years is too long. Lessig has offered them a meaningful place to put that limit. SG Olsem has not.
They are also concerned that the argument which defeats the CTEA defeats the 1976 act as well. Lessig's own brief distinguishes the two and the clerks know this if the Justices don't.
Reading the transcript gave me hope. Several of the Justices got the point that Lessig was making. There is a real liklihood of a positive outcome. Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Breyer are likely yesses. There's only one more needed.
It's a little more informative to read the transcript which was posted to the web a few weeks ago. Someone put in the names of the Justices which this official transcript lacks. Also read Lessig's blog. I think he has real reasons to feel confident.
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor