If you do, let us know what happens, 'k? Send it as a story submission or (more likely to get posted) as a response to whatever the DConv story-of-the-day is.
("DConv", because I try not to call 'em DC. This may be shocking from a/. poster, but I have a little more respect for the US gov't than for these guys. Not that that's saying much...)
A lunar mining and manufacturing facility, and cheap & safe means of commuting to and from it. (Say, one of your laser-lifters.)
Building permits, plans, a construction crew (with equipment), and materials for a (mostly) residential arcology somewhere near Silicon Valley. (Preferably on the Pacific coast, away from any major flight paths or protected habitats, to give room to grow.)
A several-kw fusion power plant for my own house, so that I can stick a fang in PG&E and reverse their suction so long as I'm still on the grid. (Gotta love those "must buy cogenerated electricity" laws.)
What if you buy it, and they watermark it with your credit card? Encrypted, of course; only someone with a digital copy of what you purchased can extract it. Which is no one if you keep it to yourself, or the record company - and various crackers - if you distribute it.
(Obvious, maybe. Days late, maybe. But I'd still like to make the point, to the author of the post if to no one else, and I have no mod points at the moment...)
Actually, I've heard that ABCDF was implemented on top of an existing standard: EGSU (Excellent/Good/Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory), so they dropped E from ABCDF to avoid confusion between the two. Not sure where one would go to verify this, though.
Have you seen the Web sites with notes from various courses, widely derided as a "cheat" but still in use?
There's a reason that one stereotype of a hacker is a college student. They have the time, resources, and motivation to do this kind of stuff. How long it takes before this becomes reality is dependent on how many universities this system corrupts, and how oppressive the restrictions are (and thus, the greater practical utility that a student can gain from doing this, laws be damned).
I doubt there is any possible technological fix - even in theory, but definitely when one considers that, in practice, whoever the corporations assign to build such a fix would probably have less of an understanding of the systems than the students themselves would eventually gain. Furthermore, given that students can not be permanently "bought" in the same way as faculty and staff can (and even temporarily "buying" large numbers of students is difficult if one relies on money...which is the only resource the corporations usually know how to spend), the only effective way to stop this from happening may be to avoid having the "temporary use only" licenses in the first place. (Several years out of college, I still refer to the textbooks I bought at the time. If there'd been these kinds of licenses then, I'd be referring to hacked versions now.)
Makes me wonder why type of engineer, what type of geek, will create something like CSS, barking on command from a suit, without even giving it thought, without being ashamed.
Most likely someone long isolated from the reality that you and I face every day. Possibly even a suit who, after seeing his engineers quit rather than write what he asked them to do, taught himself basic programming and cobbled this together, since "engineers always throw kludges together to make working code". ("He who teaches himself has a fool for a teacher" may be inaccurate in many situations, but it would have been spot-on in this case.)
How many times has a newbie relative of yours sent you the cookie recipe?
Never. My relatives - and just about anyone who exchanges e-mail with me (and where I'm pretty sure they're not a spammer themselves) - know better, or they do after the first offense (usually from the volume of angry e-mail from my friends who they've CCed, before I even see their e-mail) if they don't already.
Re:Time for a visit from "Uncle" Vinnie
on
Gnutella Vs. SPAM
·
· Score: 1
Nice idea...unfortunately, that only applies if the spammers think there's a chance they can get caught. Look at the laws against, say, junk faxes and scams in the U.S., then see how many operations there are whose business models are what those laws were designed to prevent, and yet who operate (at a profit, even) thinking that they are perfectly legitimate - just disliked.
He didn't say just "modern" philosophers. He said philosophers, which presumably includes those who do allow for such things as objective truth.
(Pluswhich, depending on how you define it, science might not deal in "objective" truths, but rather in "we believe that this truth has been shown to be more true than other explanations of the same phenomena". Or something like that.)
"Somebody developed something and has the intellectual property rights to it. I want it. Why can't I have everything I want?"
It's getting pretty tired.
Try this restatement:
"Somebody developed something, has failed to make the best use of it, and is preventing others from doing better - or maybe from using it at all - in a manner that benefits nobody. How do I fix this situation?"
Which is more reasonable: that I've had a slump lately, or that everything I've done in my life has been some insane con game?
Umm...the latter? I mean, people pay me outrageous amounts of money to do stuff that, every time I check, they are mentally capable of doing themselves (maybe with a week's instruction, maybe less), except that they believe with all their heart that this field is fundamentally beyond them.;)
Same here. I can flit from issue to issue to issue, or I can sit down and map out a solid block of code for some major feature, but not both at the same time. Whenever I encounter a major problem, I make sure I have a single, not-likely-to-be-interrupted block of time, and wait until then to seriously start on it. If half my time for a given day will be taken up by meetings, especially if they're spaced an hour apart to give participants time to recover and do minor tasks, I accept that I won't be getting any non-trivial coding done that day, and plan around that.
This can be generalized to: for every major intellectual action, I prepare to do it then I do it, and that has to happen without any significant interruptions or breaks. (If some huge task would take 8+ hours, then I break it into smaller tasks, with the first one being to map out the general details of those tasks.) This does not apply just to programming, BTW: writing, building some physical object, and lots of other work where you are creating something respond well to this method, at least in my experience.
True, but from the viewpoint of the Europeans who stayed in Europe at that time, America was "unsettled", the natives little more than human beasts. The point is that, if those had been the only people in Europe, then European colonization of America would not have happened.
(Leaving all questions of morality aside: it is merely fact that those unwilling to give up their "civilized" life would not have come over without someone setting up a compatible civilization for them, and those who were there before the Europeans did not know how - and usually did not choose - to make their civilization compatible.)
Wouldn't that be treating the auctioneer as guilty until proven innocent?
...which is one of the problems people have with the DMCA.
Re:What disappoints me...
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 1
The PE is really a barrier to entry to keep the underskilled and poor test takers out. It serves as a means of reducing the population of engineers that can practice and thus keeping wages higher than otherwise.
Which is, ethics aside, why the PE approach for software developers won't work. There's far too much work to do to exclude anyone who wants to try, regardless of skill level. Yes, that does mean that some of the work will be outright crappy.
But we can borrow a similar idea. Underwriter's Laboratory was set up to do all kinds of consumer safety testing. (You might be suprised by the array of hardware their logo appears on.) Similar testing of software could be done by various independent parties; open source would allow this to be done better, since white box tests of algorithmic correctness could also be performed (switching from "the test cases don't reveal any bugs" to "this code correctly implements algorithm X, which has been proven impossible to fail"). Maybe someone could even ask UL if they want to get into certification of software as doing what it claims without major security or safety holes?
Slashdot Mirror
Since when are electrons on a hard disk not "fixed in a tangible medium"?
Instead of cypherpunks/cypherpunks try cpunks and cpunks.
Or cypherpunkss/cypherpunkss.
If you do, let us know what happens, 'k? Send it as a story submission or (more likely to get posted) as a response to whatever the DConv story-of-the-day is.
/. poster, but I have a little more respect for the US gov't than for these guys. Not that that's saying much...)
("DConv", because I try not to call 'em DC. This may be shocking from a
Maybe this can be the grand finale in the firework show when they burn up the Iridium satellites... :)
At first, I misread that as, "burn up with the Iridium satellites..."
Now, if you want to reciprocate:
That's easy. How about buying a house to put the BMW into before you're 30.
If you can't afford a house, buy a $50K car as a consolation present. Welcome to Silicon Valley.
Been there, done that. (Of course, mucho thanks to you for helping me with it...)
Then again, with $50K and some skill, one could buy an apartment manager some clue re: in-unit networking...
...with just one teensy problem I can see.
What if you buy it, and they watermark it with your credit card? Encrypted, of course; only someone with a digital copy of what you purchased can extract it. Which is no one if you keep it to yourself, or the record company - and various crackers - if you distribute it.
Actually, that's not too far off...if there were humans whose skulls were sufficiently resistant to bullets.
I hope people are at least reading this stuff!
Judging from the mod points, I'd say they are...
(Obvious, maybe. Days late, maybe. But I'd still like to make the point, to the author of the post if to no one else, and I have no mod points at the moment...)
Actually, I've heard that ABCDF was implemented on top of an existing standard: EGSU (Excellent/Good/Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory), so they dropped E from ABCDF to avoid confusion between the two. Not sure where one would go to verify this, though.
Have you seen the Web sites with notes from various courses, widely derided as a "cheat" but still in use?
There's a reason that one stereotype of a hacker is a college student. They have the time, resources, and motivation to do this kind of stuff. How long it takes before this becomes reality is dependent on how many universities this system corrupts, and how oppressive the restrictions are (and thus, the greater practical utility that a student can gain from doing this, laws be damned).
I doubt there is any possible technological fix - even in theory, but definitely when one considers that, in practice, whoever the corporations assign to build such a fix would probably have less of an understanding of the systems than the students themselves would eventually gain. Furthermore, given that students can not be permanently "bought" in the same way as faculty and staff can (and even temporarily "buying" large numbers of students is difficult if one relies on money...which is the only resource the corporations usually know how to spend), the only effective way to stop this from happening may be to avoid having the "temporary use only" licenses in the first place. (Several years out of college, I still refer to the textbooks I bought at the time. If there'd been these kinds of licenses then, I'd be referring to hacked versions now.)
Makes me wonder why type of engineer, what type of geek, will create something like CSS, barking on command from a suit, without even giving it thought, without being ashamed.
Most likely someone long isolated from the reality that you and I face every day. Possibly even a suit who, after seeing his engineers quit rather than write what he asked them to do, taught himself basic programming and cobbled this together, since "engineers always throw kludges together to make working code". ("He who teaches himself has a fool for a teacher" may be inaccurate in many situations, but it would have been spot-on in this case.)
Yes. Next question?
How many times has a newbie relative of yours sent you the cookie recipe?
Never. My relatives - and just about anyone who exchanges e-mail with me (and where I'm pretty sure they're not a spammer themselves) - know better, or they do after the first offense (usually from the volume of angry e-mail from my friends who they've CCed, before I even see their e-mail) if they don't already.
Nice idea...unfortunately, that only applies if the spammers think there's a chance they can get caught. Look at the laws against, say, junk faxes and scams in the U.S., then see how many operations there are whose business models are what those laws were designed to prevent, and yet who operate (at a profit, even) thinking that they are perfectly legitimate - just disliked.
Squeak on, brother! ;)
He didn't say just "modern" philosophers. He said philosophers, which presumably includes those who do allow for such things as objective truth.
(Pluswhich, depending on how you define it, science might not deal in "objective" truths, but rather in "we believe that this truth has been shown to be more true than other explanations of the same phenomena". Or something like that.)
"Somebody developed something and has the intellectual property rights to it. I want it. Why can't I have everything I want?"
It's getting pretty tired.
Try this restatement:
"Somebody developed something, has failed to make the best use of it, and is preventing others from doing better - or maybe from using it at all - in a manner that benefits nobody. How do I fix this situation?"
Which is more reasonable: that I've had a slump lately, or that everything I've done in my life has been some insane con game?
;)
Umm...the latter? I mean, people pay me outrageous amounts of money to do stuff that, every time I check, they are mentally capable of doing themselves (maybe with a week's instruction, maybe less), except that they believe with all their heart that this field is fundamentally beyond them.
For me its all about momentum.
Same here. I can flit from issue to issue to issue, or I can sit down and map out a solid block of code for some major feature, but not both at the same time. Whenever I encounter a major problem, I make sure I have a single, not-likely-to-be-interrupted block of time, and wait until then to seriously start on it. If half my time for a given day will be taken up by meetings, especially if they're spaced an hour apart to give participants time to recover and do minor tasks, I accept that I won't be getting any non-trivial coding done that day, and plan around that.
This can be generalized to: for every major intellectual action, I prepare to do it then I do it, and that has to happen without any significant interruptions or breaks. (If some huge task would take 8+ hours, then I break it into smaller tasks, with the first one being to map out the general details of those tasks.) This does not apply just to programming, BTW: writing, building some physical object, and lots of other work where you are creating something respond well to this method, at least in my experience.
True, but from the viewpoint of the Europeans who stayed in Europe at that time, America was "unsettled", the natives little more than human beasts. The point is that, if those had been the only people in Europe, then European colonization of America would not have happened.
(Leaving all questions of morality aside: it is merely fact that those unwilling to give up their "civilized" life would not have come over without someone setting up a compatible civilization for them, and those who were there before the Europeans did not know how - and usually did not choose - to make their civilization compatible.)
Watch if we don't get 400 comments on this one.
From the utterly-useless department:
Five days later, there's only 256 comments. (257, if you count this one.)
Wouldn't that be treating the auctioneer as guilty until proven innocent?
...which is one of the problems people have with the DMCA.
The PE is really a barrier to entry to keep the underskilled and poor test takers out. It serves as a means of reducing the population of engineers that can practice and thus keeping wages higher than otherwise.
Which is, ethics aside, why the PE approach for software developers won't work. There's far too much work to do to exclude anyone who wants to try, regardless of skill level. Yes, that does mean that some of the work will be outright crappy.
But we can borrow a similar idea. Underwriter's Laboratory was set up to do all kinds of consumer safety testing. (You might be suprised by the array of hardware their logo appears on.) Similar testing of software could be done by various independent parties; open source would allow this to be done better, since white box tests of algorithmic correctness could also be performed (switching from "the test cases don't reveal any bugs" to "this code correctly implements algorithm X, which has been proven impossible to fail"). Maybe someone could even ask UL if they want to get into certification of software as doing what it claims without major security or safety holes?
<muttered>I will preview my posts, I will preview my posts...