1. insane law, sane security practices 2. sane legislators, insane security lapses I can't believe that you are a proponent of laws to fix technical issues, but that does appear what you're going for with this post.
ok, fine. well an insane law like this is the only thing that will get us such a world. i'm sorry, but that's the truth It is my belief that as soon as laws catch up with technology this will be true, uh, wait! the law will never catch up with technology! So you end up with a bunch of insane laws and insane security lapses. Wonderful.
The only good thing about a law like this is that it gives the government one more thing to put the hammer down on a large subset of the population and provide politicians (and I certainly include DA's in this category) the ability to show they are "doing something" about "XYZ". Oh wait, that doesn't sound so good for the average person. Hmm.
i'm not saying this dichotomy is correct, i am just saying it is reality I'm saying that you're trying to tell us that a law based solution to technical issues will actually solve it when it is widely understood that it cannot, and that's reality.
Unless, of course, we go quite a bit farther into a controlled society, such as licenses to have a (government approved) computer chock full of "Trusted Computing". I believe that laws mandating this could provide the platform for a solution to our computer security woes but I'm pretty sure many people here would be against that.
So does the physical adage survive translation to a digital adage? If you give up your freedom for security...
Seems to be a lot of people slightly upset over this. But I think this is a good thing. They already have the ability to stop search engines from indexing at all. Now they have much more fine grain control. They can also make their results more useful by setting expiry dates. Presumably they'll also be able to be more specific about what he summary says, and might actually be more useful.
Now some sites will probably want to over control, but they'll lose out. Why should we want them to have "more fine grain control". Do you really think that they are doing this to provide you with more useful results? Do you really believe that if Google was forced to follow ACAP dictates on every page that this wouldn't turn out to be a huge mess?
I can't believe that anyone on slashdot really believes that giving content providers more control over what they provide would be a good thing. Is anyone here naive enough to believe that the this would be used for something else besides a new way to drive revenue at the expense of everyone else?
Oh, here's the driver, from TFA:
"The free riding deprives AP of economic returns on its investments," Yeah, this will turn out well. I personally think that the Parent's sentiment that "some sites will probably want to over control, but they'll lose out." is too optimistic.
I also don't expect this to take off without laws backing it up. It's really the only way it would work. Anything that one search engine does voluntarily to hamstring their search results will only lead to users bailing to another search engine that fits their needs better. Unless this metadata is a clear benefit to an end user, legal threats are probably the only way to get search engines to accept a degradation in their results.
It seems the ultimate end play is that the T&C provided on the corp sites would be ultimately a binding contract and a machine readable version of that would be encoded - something like the ACAP proposal. Also that by accessing the web page, the user or machine agrees to be bound by those T&C.
If this seems reasonable, think for a second about EULAs and then get back to me.
Ok, so I've seen where people have quit doing IRC, as far back as '93 and are surprised anyone uses it anymore and others who say that IRC still has lots of vibrant communities.
So, for those people who do IRC, what types of communities are you involved in that are vibrant on IRC? I won't ask you to name channels or nodes unless you want a bunch of people to come looking, but at least what type of community is it?
Just curions...
And more on topic, people have had some pretty childish, disgusting, nasty, brutish... ahem, conversations in IRC one must imagine. So, how many would like those posted with real names instead of nicks? I imagine it would be at least quite embarrassing to a "few".
But I suggest you get it quickly. I believe that as soon as some "killer" encryption app that is user-friendly(for non-techies) and secure comes along, we will see efforts to outlaw private, personal use of encryption.
Sure, I'm a paranoid, but that doesn't change the fact that the corporate authoritarians who are running our government are engaged in a full-court press to take away our freedom and our privacy. And they are succeeding at an unprecedented rate. I don't quite understand how this would happen.
We would need a law that differentiated "corporate" and "personal" encryption, because I can tell you right now that there is no way any multinational is going to hand over their encryption keys to the US government or go unencrypted. It's simply not in their best interest to do so.
I also believe that such a law differentiating classes of encryption users {corporate, personal} would be almost impossible to enact and if enacted would be challenged immediately.
It seems to me that if they want usable encryption we get it too.
This outlook is probably only good for 20-50 years, however. I can certainly imagine dystopias where technology provides the ultimate chains instead of creating space for essential freedoms in that time period.
This is not to say that we are not already some ways down that path but I can't see anything like what you propose happening anytime soon (i.e 20 years)...
People have been doing worse things than this to one another for centuries, usually in the name of one God or another, and you are taking the existence of a zombie cockroach as your final proof of a Godless universe? Is there a justification here I'm just not seeing? Well, for those so inclined, here's a general breakdown of this train of thought:
1) Humans have "free will" and thus are not subject to "God's Laws" in the here and now while
2) Animals do not have as much "free will" and are thus controlled much more directly by the Divine
3) The behaviours in question appear freakish, "morally" reprehensible and certainly not benevolent - from the standpoint of a Human Being.
4) God also has the same set of morals and uses the same set of critera as the Human Being in 3).
5) If God were to exist, we would not find these types of behaviours IRL due to 2) and 4). Maybe we wouldn't be able to think about them either, not sure...
5) Thus, God can't exist because it would be an inherent contradiction since we do see this happening.
YMMV, but that doesn't appear to be a very good argument to me, either.
Now, I may not be a physicist, but I'll play one here on Slashdot.
I really don't see how this can detect eavesdropping. Of course, my definition of eavesdropping is that it is a passive activity, listening if you will, but not talking.
Since this technology appears to predicated on receiving a signal from the "eavesdropper" the real world equivalent would be the eavesdropper butting into your conversation to ask you a question or to tell you something.
Not that it isn't interesting or cool but perhaps the claim is a just a bit wide. Imagine that...
In a very narrow sense you are correct. The exploit is in Quicktime. However, in a general sense you are wrong because there are other browsers that, through their design and security models, do not allow this to happen. They shut down the offending code.
It does not really matter that the 'actual' vulnerability is in Quicktime. Firefox is the application that controls whether this vulnerability will affect the user, since it is obvious that is it possible to have code in Firefox that stops this exploit from working.
It is also a Firefox problem because any other plugin of this type is equally vulnerable using Firefox. From a secure coding point of view, is it your problem if you create an avenue whereby an exploit can occur? Damn straight! In this case, perhaps running the plugins in a controlled and monitored sandbox would be a good design change, instead of forking another process...
Even in your simple example of the bunch of papers "in a stack" is 3D. Just because the Z axis is "heavily restricted" doesn't mean there isn't one. Our brains have clearly evolved for 3D because that is the world they evolved in!. Well, if you discount time, and use a spherical physicist.
Now, if we were in Flatland you could say our brains evolved for 2D but that does not appear to be the case (except for those possible higher level beings listening in, they would certainly see us in Flatland).
Our eyes of course also only see 2D view of the world, sure a little depth mixed in, but nothing close to full 3D. What? So, now you're saying that we don't see in "full 3D"??!? What, to you, is "full 3D"?
If we would be build for 3D we wouldn't get dizzy when playing Descent, but quite frankly, most do. Quite frankly, I believe this is because our brains have evolved for a 3D world. When the rest of the body's sensors don't match the visual input many people get dizzy. Because they are used to a 3D world, where changes in direction visually are matched by other cues, whether it be on the X, Y or Z planes.
It is interesting to note that players of PacMan don't get dizzy, even though that little yellow dot runs crazily through the maze. If our brains weren't evolved for a 3D world, one might expect many people to get dizzy from that game as well. As long as we're talking weird theories, and all.
Think about this in other terms. When I push the "power wash" button on my dishwasher, I can reasonably expect to know what is going to happen. When I push the "OK" button on a random dialog I only know that I have caused some action to happen. For almost all of the times where I might have to push an "OK" button I know that what I think is going to happen coincides with what actually happens (oops, excepting any, you know, bugs).
The GP says:
The number one problem is all the idiots who are too stubborn/stupid to learn how to use their tools. If these people knew as little about hammers and they do about computers, there wouldn't be a round thumb left in the whole goddamn world. Just because it's a computer doesn't mean you have to turn off your brain. If hammers were as complicated as computers, I suspect that the accident rate in their use would be staggering and there would be no round thumbs left. That and no one standing in front or behind the hammer since the heads tend to fly off in use. In fact people (with access to both) probably know more about how to use their computers than how to hammer a nail. In terms of knowledge, there is just so much more knowledge that is relevant and essential to using a computer than using a hammer.
The advice I would give to someone sitting at an "Ok to continue" prompt varies greatly depending on what I know about what they are doing. That is, not all "OK" buttons are created equal - one could show you pr0n of Natalie Portman while another could wipe your disk of erm... pr0n of Natalie Portman. They could even be the same program!
Now, lets try this with a hammer analogy. So you go buy this hammer because you want to put a thermometer on the tree outside (weather bug anyone?). While securing the thermometer to the tree, your house falls down into a pile of rubble. Your hammer caused it. Wha...?
Yes, people have an obligation to use their brains when using technology, but a general purpose computer is still a complicated high tech instrument and the current generation of tools is not sufficiently advanced to resolve that complexity for the average person. If computers were as simple as hammers to use the issue would be resolved already.
One can always blame the users for the shortcomings of computers or for the shortcomings of programmers or the UI experts. However, one is likely to have an easier time shaping the tools than the users of those tools. All well and good to call them idiots, stupid and stubborn, but they can damn well use a hammer (as well as their TV remote, car, cell phone, etc.) without issues.
The question is how to best resolve that complexity so that it is more like a hammer from craftsman rather than from Acme as it appears now.
Linux as it is now will NEVER be any sort of viable replacement to Windows. The biggest problem Linux has is its lack of a central authority. There are too many distributions with low standardization.
Linux could most certainly power a strong desktop client but with the direction it has at the moment and always has had that won't happen. I am not so sure of that.
Here's a plausible scenario that you should think about.
People are looking at alternatives to Windows, and the ones that do so convince more other people to do so as well. It doesn't really matter why -- you might as well call it "osmosis", i mean, with such a high "concentration" of windows computers, with even partially viable alternatives available one would expect a certain pressure to cross the brane.
What will happen, and is starting to, is that OS consumers (people who just want to do stuff, not mess around with it) that switch will aggregate toward certain flavors of linux that are easy for them to use. All that needs to happen is for ONE distribution to get big enough and power laws take over. Think of the craze of social networking sites and the ones that made it, out of the thousands that well, didn't - except with OS's.
Everyone makes their choices of distributions, the ones an average computer user runs will be the ones they like and I imagine it will settle down to a few. Three maybe, two is more likely. It's not like the other distros will go away or anything i imagine they will fill the places they already do and try to expand their ecological niche.
That's your standardization. De facto, just the way it should be in this case, I think.
Not to say that there won't be copies of those, but is someone going to get Ubuntu or Foobuntu, really?
Now to bring this ON topic,;)
If people wait for the next MS OS, it seems likely that in actuality a higher percentage of them will actually switch to Linux instead, between now than then than if they had gone ahead and bought Vista. Just statistically, this seems like it would be the case.
The thing that happens when you're 18 or older, though, is that you then have to be responsible for your decisions. When you're less than 18, the consequences get handled by society at large.
That's the difference that sets the line for smoking at 18. Doesn't have anything to do with health issues except for who has to pay the majority to fix those issues. (Here's a hint: what tax burden is paid by those younger than 18?) Oh really? The consequences of smoking by those less than 18 get handled by society at large? And what consequences would you be thinking of, then? Where is responsibility being shirked by those nasty teens, and what slack and cost is society picking up for these smokers while they are still under 18? I don't have any stats but I would be surprised to see the health issues caused by smoking for those under 18 amount to any real burden on society.
In fact, I might go further and say that the real consequences of smoking are paid by the person who, you know, actually smoked. That people who smoke are being almost fully responsible for their actions (with the caveat of second hand smoke). Things like cancer, perhaps or heart disease. Or perhaps, for particular person there are (gasp!) no real consequences. They may have even been under 18 when they started.
So, if you could, please enumerate what consequences society has to pay for when someone is under 18 and smoke that magically are transferred to them when they turn 18 and smoke.
While there may be reasons why we ban minors from certain things, society being responsible for the consequences doesn't appear to be a good one.
However, it might make a good argument why we would ban smoking period (if you're into that kind of thing), as generally it does tend that society pays more to fix health issues from smokers than nonsmokers.
Then why would slashdot post a computer security expert talking about counter-terrorism or law enforcement when he has no experience whatsoever in that field? You seem to have missed the major point of what Bruce is on about. He's talking about counter-terrorism and law enforcement from a systems level. And on that level, what they are trying to do just won't work. It really has little to do with the underlying application, or with the specific details. And I don't believe that he is laking the experience to make the critique at the level he is going for, his argument seems to stem from the application os systems thinking to a real world situation, that's all.
Basically, you have an undamped feedback loop. That is, nothing is damping out the noise except those counter-terrorism or law enforcement individuals who decide that "X" is not a threat and drop it. Yet the system is set up such that the risk involved damping is magnitudes more than the risk or escalation. At least for the individual LEO.
What's cool (from a certain perspective) is that we have already had this experiment play out, and the results are very much like Bruce's assessment of what would happen from a systems standpoint. Boston ring a bell?
As another poster pointed out, the campaigns to get people to report anything suspicious only serve to heighten suspicion, thus while more unusual stuff gets pointed out a larger percentage is chaff. It's not like people don't report suspicious activity already, but encouragement lowers the bar on what gets considered reportable.
So, the combination of increasing reports, ease of escalation and false positives mean many more non-terrorists are going to be, uh, "inconvenienced".
It Just Don't Look Right" is a time-tested law enforcement mantra. True. However, how it is currently being applied will not make us safer because this mantra is being utilized in a different system than what it was designed for. When most everything "just don't look right" to someone and there is little filter to prevent escalation (and in fact a large incentive to do so) it breaks down.
When the chances of someone being a filesharer is greater then 50% if someone is chosen at random, it becomes difficult to celebrate this person's innocence. What? Are you saying that it's okay to go after a random person because the probability is that they are guilty? Or that you choose not to celebrate the fact they are innocent? or?
I can see no real way for MS to go after a company that only sells support Real software support is generally one of a few things - system integration, system configuration or code modifications. The other thing that is sometimes wrapped up in 'support' is new releases, but that would certainly be right out.
So, this would get very tricky if the support company does any internal code modifications for customer issues. It could get tricky even if any of the support issues involving code are taken care of by the "non-profit" side with the support company just supplying the details of the issue.
So, your for-profit support company may not be able to do any bug fixes to the software. It may have to rely on volunteers to actually fix the problems - that is people it does not pay in any way. It may not even be able to submit patches. I don't imagine that would fly very well, as most OSS support companies main strengths is the ability to get a fix to the customer or add a feature for a customer.
Huh. Where's that persinger helmet? I need a jolt in my optimism centers!
Further this will also raise the pain threshold of the users, once they get used to this level of pain, they will not see anything wrong with Vista. Now, there's some forward thinking. Keep pushing out updates to XP, slowly yet continually make the user experience worse and worse. After a year, it could be worse than Vista - if they work at it. They don't need to improve Vista, they just need to hobble XP!
Well, your kids (and grandkids) are lucky bastards, because I know of no other line of work where your kids are getting paid for something you did when you were alive, while the kids are doing nothing themselves to earn it (besides being your kids). every other form of inheritance?
After all, just because you don't distribute the old version anymore doesn't mean squat. The old version is distributable by anyone who manages to have the source.
There wouldn't be a suit. No one would sue the company. People who cared about it would just use and continue to modify the gpl3 version.
Now, if you're claiming that the Company will sue everyone over using or distributing the gpl'd version... well, I'm sure that some other company with-ring-wearing-lawyers might just be up to defending the license they've build a business model around... After all, such a thing would be an attack on the license itself.
Geez, with how horrible you make MS Word sound, it's a wonder anyone uses it at all! The productivity of those that do must be pretty awful as well... I mean, with 99% of people not able to do anything but plain text it seems like businesses are SOL, what with the proprietary lockin and all.
Back in reality, most of the time MS Word is fine, as in good enough for most of the jobs typically thrown at it. If you want more control use LaTeX=>pdf. However, I wouldn't try and mandate everyone at a Co. learn and use LaTeX. Heh. Talk about flying chairs!
It's not that I think the MS formats are the cat's pajamas - they're not. But at the same time, exaggerating their shortcomings discredits your points.
Disclosure: I use OO.o saved as.odf(internal use) and additionally as.doc (iff I need to share && receive edits) or.pdf (read only) for all small stuff (more work than just saving and sending a version in.doc. I guess I'm not enough of a zealot (at least on this issue) to continuously make more work for myself if I can avoid it.
Let's pick apart your post as well, just for fun.
There's no evidence that google is in any way, shape, or form, trying to acquire information specifically on the public. Well, I don't really know what to say about this. Are you implying that google is not trying to acquire information "specifically on the public"? Sure, they want to collect information "specifically on corporations" and "specifically on governments and institutions" but their main thrust does seem to be acquiring and utilizing information specifically on the public, doesn't it?
This little modifier makes it seem like google's ultimate goal is to know everything about everyone, regardless of the price paid. Well, yes, google's ultimate goal is to have all data on everyone it seems. I don't think that they will do so regardless of the price paid, but overall this does appear to be the trend.
Google's real searching goal is to collect as much publicly available information on all subjects as possible. First, how do you manage to reconcile this with your earlier statement? First you stated that there was no evidence that google was doing this, now you say the exact opposite. I know we're all ADD here at Slashdot, but don't you think someone might notice this?
Next, are your documents, emails, search history and now medical records, considere "publicly available information"? I would hope not, yet google seems to be wanting to collect this information as well. Hmmm.
it really makes you question their ultimate goals and wonder about how such a young company got so much funding so quickly to become the monolith they are.
I can't even begin to fathom what they are suggesting here. Maybe that the NSA somehow funds google and there's some covert CIA plan to use google to take over the world? I think the ultimate gist of the quote is somehow google gets secret funding from some entity that ultimately wants total control over the world. First, I think it's generally accepted that there are certain TLA's that fund research (and possibly even have stock in!) google. Second, information is Power if you can turn it into actionable knowledge. Those TLA's realized this very very long ago.
Google has a lot of information, thus a lot of latent Power. If you don't see how this could become a problem then you don't have enough imagination (or you are not as sick and twisted as the rest of us).
If you don't think that governments want to use the latent power they see in Google for their own various purposes then you do not know the ways of Power - it's like flame to a moth. If you don't think the governments will exercise these Powers despite various bars (laws, Constitutions, human dignity) you haven't been paying attention.
I don't quite get what you are attempting to communicate, due to my obstinate nature I guess.
First, you claim that 1 click shopping is not obvious. Then (in the same paragraph even!) go on to say that it's been done in the "non-online" world as a "business practice". I would agree that as a business practice it is unpatentable. BUT, I would also say that even if didn't fall under that category, it's obvious. I mean, how much more obvious can you get than - "Dude, someone's already doing that!"
And, no, teh answer is not "But THIS is using a computer!1!!! OMG ponies!".
It's as if there is this mysterious divide between "being done with a computer" and "being done without a computer", which seems to me completely specious yet so pervasive that even someone such as yourself seems to fall for it.
Well, that definition isn't going to work very well unless we get to redefine mainframe computer , is it? Clusters are definitely out then, so what does that leave use as far as 'supercomputers'?
Other than that, the defn' seems pretty good. I don't get this need to quantify so precisely. "Among" seems a perfectly good term.
For example, let's say you have a bona fide super computer, - one of the top 100. A guy down the street has #193 but it doesn't make much sense to say that his isn't a supercomputer unless you want to get into a pissing match.
On the other hand, no one claims in seriousness that a cluster of 8 PS3's is "among" the largest, fastest or most powerful available. Thus it is not a supercomputer.
I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but I take issue with the underlying assumption that is stated here:
Life can be dangerous. As a surfer, former bicycle courier, skater and road racing cyclist, believe me, I know (check my id). But I would never purposefully risk anyone else's life. If you drive a car, you are purposefully risking other people's lives. You purposefully decided to drive. There is a non-zero probability that if you drive you will kill someone. This is the very definition of risking other people's lives.
Sure, the risk is probably rather lower than someone driving like a bat out of hell across the country but I don't think anyone who drives should be as sanctimonious as to say i would never purposefully risk anyone else's life because it's just not true - you do every time you drive.
Well, yes, someone can point to the disclosed prior inventions if in fact your own patent isn't actually all that unique, innovative or different from the disclosed patent. Just because it is disclosed doesn't mean it can't be counted towards prior art that can sink you.
Otherwise I'm going to get a patent on every existing patent by disclosing it in my application. Mine will then be good, since I disclosed the prior patent. I'll be rich!
Re:*sigh* ... still no outline mode in OOo Writer.
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OpenOffice.org 2.3 Review
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· Score: 5, Insightful
...and for most people that's true too - they don't come near LaTeX either!
It might be bizarre to many/.'ers, but not everyone wants to learn a programming language to be able to create a document.
How are you screwed? If you have your original box and the IMEI, I am assuming that by Monday we will find a hack which can restore the original IMEI.
If that is all they are using to tell if a phone has been unlocked then i don't see the problem.
I am still confused, though. I have heard conflicting stories.
a) The phone is only relocked and can still actually be fully used. This is consistent with a firmware upgrade. Wipe out the old and put the new one on.
b) The phone has new firmware but is actually unusable. This is consistent with malice, or profits. I don't really see much difference between the two anymore in corporate world. Either that or stupidity. How can you upgrade a phone to be in an unstable state? No, the hacked functionality may not work anymore (since its GONE) but the phone should be usable as any other upgraded phone. jeez.
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1. insane law, sane security practices
2. sane legislators, insane security lapses I can't believe that you are a proponent of laws to fix technical issues, but that does appear what you're going for with this post. ok, fine. well an insane law like this is the only thing that will get us such a world. i'm sorry, but that's the truth It is my belief that as soon as laws catch up with technology this will be true, uh, wait! the law will never catch up with technology! So you end up with a bunch of insane laws and insane security lapses. Wonderful.
The only good thing about a law like this is that it gives the government one more thing to put the hammer down on a large subset of the population and provide politicians (and I certainly include DA's in this category) the ability to show they are "doing something" about "XYZ". Oh wait, that doesn't sound so good for the average person. Hmm. i'm not saying this dichotomy is correct, i am just saying it is reality I'm saying that you're trying to tell us that a law based solution to technical issues will actually solve it when it is widely understood that it cannot, and that's reality.
Unless, of course, we go quite a bit farther into a controlled society, such as licenses to have a (government approved) computer chock full of "Trusted Computing". I believe that laws mandating this could provide the platform for a solution to our computer security woes but I'm pretty sure many people here would be against that.
So does the physical adage survive translation to a digital adage? If you give up your freedom for security...
Now some sites will probably want to over control, but they'll lose out. Why should we want them to have "more fine grain control". Do you really think that they are doing this to provide you with more useful results? Do you really believe that if Google was forced to follow ACAP dictates on every page that this wouldn't turn out to be a huge mess?
I can't believe that anyone on slashdot really believes that giving content providers more control over what they provide would be a good thing. Is anyone here naive enough to believe that the this would be used for something else besides a new way to drive revenue at the expense of everyone else?
Oh, here's the driver, from TFA: "The free riding deprives AP of economic returns on its investments," Yeah, this will turn out well. I personally think that the Parent's sentiment that "some sites will probably want to over control, but they'll lose out." is too optimistic.
I also don't expect this to take off without laws backing it up. It's really the only way it would work. Anything that one search engine does voluntarily to hamstring their search results will only lead to users bailing to another search engine that fits their needs better. Unless this metadata is a clear benefit to an end user, legal threats are probably the only way to get search engines to accept a degradation in their results.
It seems the ultimate end play is that the T&C provided on the corp sites would be ultimately a binding contract and a machine readable version of that would be encoded - something like the ACAP proposal. Also that by accessing the web page, the user or machine agrees to be bound by those T&C.
If this seems reasonable, think for a second about EULAs and then get back to me.
Ok, so I've seen where people have quit doing IRC, as far back as '93 and are surprised anyone uses it anymore and others who say that IRC still has lots of vibrant communities.
So, for those people who do IRC, what types of communities are you involved in that are vibrant on IRC? I won't ask you to name channels or nodes unless you want a bunch of people to come looking, but at least what type of community is it?
Just curions...
And more on topic, people have had some pretty childish, disgusting, nasty, brutish... ahem, conversations in IRC one must imagine. So, how many would like those posted with real names instead of nicks? I imagine it would be at least quite embarrassing to a "few".
We would need a law that differentiated "corporate" and "personal" encryption, because I can tell you right now that there is no way any multinational is going to hand over their encryption keys to the US government or go unencrypted. It's simply not in their best interest to do so.
I also believe that such a law differentiating classes of encryption users {corporate, personal} would be almost impossible to enact and if enacted would be challenged immediately.
It seems to me that if they want usable encryption we get it too.
This outlook is probably only good for 20-50 years, however. I can certainly imagine dystopias where technology provides the ultimate chains instead of creating space for essential freedoms in that time period.
This is not to say that we are not already some ways down that path but I can't see anything like what you propose happening anytime soon (i.e 20 years)...
1) Humans have "free will" and thus are not subject to "God's Laws" in the here and now while
2) Animals do not have as much "free will" and are thus controlled much more directly by the Divine
3) The behaviours in question appear freakish, "morally" reprehensible and certainly not benevolent - from the standpoint of a Human Being.
4) God also has the same set of morals and uses the same set of critera as the Human Being in 3).
5) If God were to exist, we would not find these types of behaviours IRL due to 2) and 4). Maybe we wouldn't be able to think about them either, not sure...
5) Thus, God can't exist because it would be an inherent contradiction since we do see this happening.
YMMV, but that doesn't appear to be a very good argument to me, either.
Now, I may not be a physicist, but I'll play one here on Slashdot.
I really don't see how this can detect eavesdropping. Of course, my definition of eavesdropping is that it is a passive activity, listening if you will, but not talking.
Since this technology appears to predicated on receiving a signal from the "eavesdropper" the real world equivalent would be the eavesdropper butting into your conversation to ask you a question or to tell you something.
Not that it isn't interesting or cool but perhaps the claim is a just a bit wide. Imagine that...
In a very narrow sense you are correct. The exploit is in Quicktime. However, in a general sense you are wrong because there are other browsers that, through their design and security models, do not allow this to happen. They shut down the offending code.
It does not really matter that the 'actual' vulnerability is in Quicktime. Firefox is the application that controls whether this vulnerability will affect the user, since it is obvious that is it possible to have code in Firefox that stops this exploit from working.
It is also a Firefox problem because any other plugin of this type is equally vulnerable using Firefox. From a secure coding point of view, is it your problem if you create an avenue whereby an exploit can occur? Damn straight! In this case, perhaps running the plugins in a controlled and monitored sandbox would be a good design change, instead of forking another process...
Even in your simple example of the bunch of papers "in a stack" is 3D. Just because the Z axis is "heavily restricted" doesn't mean there isn't one. Our brains have clearly evolved for 3D because that is the world they evolved in!. Well, if you discount time, and use a spherical physicist.
Now, if we were in Flatland you could say our brains evolved for 2D but that does not appear to be the case (except for those possible higher level beings listening in, they would certainly see us in Flatland). Our eyes of course also only see 2D view of the world, sure a little depth mixed in, but nothing close to full 3D. What? So, now you're saying that we don't see in "full 3D"??!? What, to you, is "full 3D"? If we would be build for 3D we wouldn't get dizzy when playing Descent, but quite frankly, most do. Quite frankly, I believe this is because our brains have evolved for a 3D world. When the rest of the body's sensors don't match the visual input many people get dizzy. Because they are used to a 3D world, where changes in direction visually are matched by other cues, whether it be on the X, Y or Z planes.
It is interesting to note that players of PacMan don't get dizzy, even though that little yellow dot runs crazily through the maze. If our brains weren't evolved for a 3D world, one might expect many people to get dizzy from that game as well. As long as we're talking weird theories, and all.
Think about this in other terms. When I push the "power wash" button on my dishwasher, I can reasonably expect to know what is going to happen. When I push the "OK" button on a random dialog I only know that I have caused some action to happen. For almost all of the times where I might have to push an "OK" button I know that what I think is going to happen coincides with what actually happens (oops, excepting any, you know, bugs).
The GP says: The number one problem is all the idiots who are too stubborn/stupid to learn how to use their tools. If these people knew as little about hammers and they do about computers, there wouldn't be a round thumb left in the whole goddamn world. Just because it's a computer doesn't mean you have to turn off your brain. If hammers were as complicated as computers, I suspect that the accident rate in their use would be staggering and there would be no round thumbs left. That and no one standing in front or behind the hammer since the heads tend to fly off in use. In fact people (with access to both) probably know more about how to use their computers than how to hammer a nail. In terms of knowledge, there is just so much more knowledge that is relevant and essential to using a computer than using a hammer.
The advice I would give to someone sitting at an "Ok to continue" prompt varies greatly depending on what I know about what they are doing. That is, not all "OK" buttons are created equal - one could show you pr0n of Natalie Portman while another could wipe your disk of erm... pr0n of Natalie Portman. They could even be the same program!
Now, lets try this with a hammer analogy. So you go buy this hammer because you want to put a thermometer on the tree outside (weather bug anyone?). While securing the thermometer to the tree, your house falls down into a pile of rubble. Your hammer caused it. Wha...?
Yes, people have an obligation to use their brains when using technology, but a general purpose computer is still a complicated high tech instrument and the current generation of tools is not sufficiently advanced to resolve that complexity for the average person. If computers were as simple as hammers to use the issue would be resolved already.
One can always blame the users for the shortcomings of computers or for the shortcomings of programmers or the UI experts. However, one is likely to have an easier time shaping the tools than the users of those tools. All well and good to call them idiots, stupid and stubborn, but they can damn well use a hammer (as well as their TV remote, car, cell phone, etc.) without issues.
The question is how to best resolve that complexity so that it is more like a hammer from craftsman rather than from Acme as it appears now.
Linux could most certainly power a strong desktop client but with the direction it has at the moment and always has had that won't happen. I am not so sure of that.
Here's a plausible scenario that you should think about.
People are looking at alternatives to Windows, and the ones that do so convince more other people to do so as well. It doesn't really matter why -- you might as well call it "osmosis", i mean, with such a high "concentration" of windows computers, with even partially viable alternatives available one would expect a certain pressure to cross the brane.
What will happen, and is starting to, is that OS consumers (people who just want to do stuff, not mess around with it) that switch will aggregate toward certain flavors of linux that are easy for them to use. All that needs to happen is for ONE distribution to get big enough and power laws take over. Think of the craze of social networking sites and the ones that made it, out of the thousands that well, didn't - except with OS's.
Everyone makes their choices of distributions, the ones an average computer user runs will be the ones they like and I imagine it will settle down to a few. Three maybe, two is more likely. It's not like the other distros will go away or anything i imagine they will fill the places they already do and try to expand their ecological niche.
That's your standardization. De facto, just the way it should be in this case, I think.
Not to say that there won't be copies of those, but is someone going to get Ubuntu or Foobuntu, really?
Now to bring this ON topic,
If people wait for the next MS OS, it seems likely that in actuality a higher percentage of them will actually switch to Linux instead, between now than then than if they had gone ahead and bought Vista. Just statistically, this seems like it would be the case.
That's the difference that sets the line for smoking at 18. Doesn't have anything to do with health issues except for who has to pay the majority to fix those issues. (Here's a hint: what tax burden is paid by those younger than 18?) Oh really? The consequences of smoking by those less than 18 get handled by society at large? And what consequences would you be thinking of, then? Where is responsibility being shirked by those nasty teens, and what slack and cost is society picking up for these smokers while they are still under 18? I don't have any stats but I would be surprised to see the health issues caused by smoking for those under 18 amount to any real burden on society.
In fact, I might go further and say that the real consequences of smoking are paid by the person who, you know, actually smoked. That people who smoke are being almost fully responsible for their actions (with the caveat of second hand smoke). Things like cancer, perhaps or heart disease. Or perhaps, for particular person there are (gasp!) no real consequences. They may have even been under 18 when they started.
So, if you could, please enumerate what consequences society has to pay for when someone is under 18 and smoke that magically are transferred to them when they turn 18 and smoke.
While there may be reasons why we ban minors from certain things, society being responsible for the consequences doesn't appear to be a good one.
However, it might make a good argument why we would ban smoking period (if you're into that kind of thing), as generally it does tend that society pays more to fix health issues from smokers than nonsmokers.
Basically, you have an undamped feedback loop. That is, nothing is damping out the noise except those counter-terrorism or law enforcement individuals who decide that "X" is not a threat and drop it. Yet the system is set up such that the risk involved damping is magnitudes more than the risk or escalation. At least for the individual LEO.
What's cool (from a certain perspective) is that we have already had this experiment play out, and the results are very much like Bruce's assessment of what would happen from a systems standpoint. Boston ring a bell?
As another poster pointed out, the campaigns to get people to report anything suspicious only serve to heighten suspicion, thus while more unusual stuff gets pointed out a larger percentage is chaff. It's not like people don't report suspicious activity already, but encouragement lowers the bar on what gets considered reportable.
So, the combination of increasing reports, ease of escalation and false positives mean many more non-terrorists are going to be, uh, "inconvenienced". It Just Don't Look Right" is a time-tested law enforcement mantra. True. However, how it is currently being applied will not make us safer because this mantra is being utilized in a different system than what it was designed for. When most everything "just don't look right" to someone and there is little filter to prevent escalation (and in fact a large incentive to do so) it breaks down.
hmm.
So, this would get very tricky if the support company does any internal code modifications for customer issues. It could get tricky even if any of the support issues involving code are taken care of by the "non-profit" side with the support company just supplying the details of the issue.
So, your for-profit support company may not be able to do any bug fixes to the software. It may have to rely on volunteers to actually fix the problems - that is people it does not pay in any way. It may not even be able to submit patches. I don't imagine that would fly very well, as most OSS support companies main strengths is the ability to get a fix to the customer or add a feature for a customer.
Huh. Where's that persinger helmet? I need a jolt in my optimism centers!
I really don't see how that would work.
After all, just because you don't distribute the old version anymore doesn't mean squat. The old version is distributable by anyone who manages to have the source.
There wouldn't be a suit. No one would sue the company. People who cared about it would just use and continue to modify the gpl3 version.
Now, if you're claiming that the Company will sue everyone over using or distributing the gpl'd version... well, I'm sure that some other company with-ring-wearing-lawyers might just be up to defending the license they've build a business model around... After all, such a thing would be an attack on the license itself.
Geez, with how horrible you make MS Word sound, it's a wonder anyone uses it at all! The productivity of those that do must be pretty awful as well... I mean, with 99% of people not able to do anything but plain text it seems like businesses are SOL, what with the proprietary lockin and all.
.odf(internal use) and additionally as .doc (iff I need to share && receive edits) or .pdf (read only) for all small stuff (more work than just saving and sending a version in .doc. I guess I'm not enough of a zealot (at least on this issue) to continuously make more work for myself if I can avoid it.
Back in reality, most of the time MS Word is fine, as in good enough for most of the jobs typically thrown at it. If you want more control use LaTeX=>pdf. However, I wouldn't try and mandate everyone at a Co. learn and use LaTeX. Heh. Talk about flying chairs!
It's not that I think the MS formats are the cat's pajamas - they're not. But at the same time, exaggerating their shortcomings discredits your points.
Disclosure: I use OO.o saved as
Next, are your documents, emails, search history and now medical records, considere "publicly available information"? I would hope not, yet google seems to be wanting to collect this information as well. Hmmm. it really makes you question their ultimate goals and wonder about how such a young company got so much funding so quickly to become the monolith they are. I can't even begin to fathom what they are suggesting here. Maybe that the NSA somehow funds google and there's some covert CIA plan to use google to take over the world? I think the ultimate gist of the quote is somehow google gets secret funding from some entity that ultimately wants total control over the world. First, I think it's generally accepted that there are certain TLA's that fund research (and possibly even have stock in!) google. Second, information is Power if you can turn it into actionable knowledge. Those TLA's realized this very very long ago.
Google has a lot of information, thus a lot of latent Power. If you don't see how this could become a problem then you don't have enough imagination (or you are not as sick and twisted as the rest of us).
If you don't think that governments want to use the latent power they see in Google for their own various purposes then you do not know the ways of Power - it's like flame to a moth. If you don't think the governments will exercise these Powers despite various bars (laws, Constitutions, human dignity) you haven't been paying attention.
I don't quite get what you are attempting to communicate, due to my obstinate nature I guess.
First, you claim that 1 click shopping is not obvious. Then (in the same paragraph even!) go on to say that it's been done in the "non-online" world as a "business practice". I would agree that as a business practice it is unpatentable. BUT, I would also say that even if didn't fall under that category, it's obvious. I mean, how much more obvious can you get than - "Dude, someone's already doing that!"
And, no, teh answer is not "But THIS is using a computer!1!!! OMG ponies!".
It's as if there is this mysterious divide between "being done with a computer" and "being done without a computer", which seems to me completely specious yet so pervasive that even someone such as yourself seems to fall for it.
Well, that definition isn't going to work very well unless we get to redefine mainframe computer , is it? Clusters are definitely out then, so what does that leave use as far as 'supercomputers'?
Other than that, the defn' seems pretty good. I don't get this need to quantify so precisely. "Among" seems a perfectly good term.
For example, let's say you have a bona fide super computer, - one of the top 100. A guy down the street has #193 but it doesn't make much sense to say that his isn't a supercomputer unless you want to get into a pissing match.
On the other hand, no one claims in seriousness that a cluster of 8 PS3's is "among" the largest, fastest or most powerful available. Thus it is not a supercomputer.
Sure, the risk is probably rather lower than someone driving like a bat out of hell across the country but I don't think anyone who drives should be as sanctimonious as to say i would never purposefully risk anyone else's life because it's just not true - you do every time you drive.
Well, yes, someone can point to the disclosed prior inventions if in fact your own patent isn't actually all that unique, innovative or different from the disclosed patent. Just because it is disclosed doesn't mean it can't be counted towards prior art that can sink you.
Otherwise I'm going to get a patent on every existing patent by disclosing it in my application. Mine will then be good, since I disclosed the prior patent. I'll be rich!
...and for most people that's true too - they don't come near LaTeX either!
/.'ers, but not everyone wants to learn a programming language to be able to create a document.
It might be bizarre to many
How are you screwed? If you have your original box and the IMEI, I am assuming that by Monday we will find a hack which can restore the original IMEI.
If that is all they are using to tell if a phone has been unlocked then i don't see the problem.
I am still confused, though. I have heard conflicting stories.
a) The phone is only relocked and can still actually be fully used. This is consistent with a firmware upgrade. Wipe out the old and put the new one on.
b) The phone has new firmware but is actually unusable. This is consistent with malice, or profits. I don't really see much difference between the two anymore in corporate world. Either that or stupidity. How can you upgrade a phone to be in an unstable state? No, the hacked functionality may not work anymore (since its GONE) but the phone should be usable as any other upgraded phone. jeez.