Amen. Radians are used for number crunching, but Geographic Information Systems lean towards degrees, military systems measure depression in mils and the steepness of roads is measured as a gradient. And as you say, textbooks use degrees and that's what most people learn. Many people won't even know what a radian is. Given that and the target audience of Excel, I would have guessed Excel's trig functions to be in degrees. (They're actually radians).
A spec is supposed to call this stuff all out clearly. It's not supposed to be left as guesswork for the reader.
> From basic trigonometric functions that forget to specify units
Amazing. That's the sort of mistake you'd expect from a First Year Computer Science Major, but not from a Second Year. This isn't the first time Microsoft have done this. Even for the Windows API, the code trumped the documentation. The best way to find out what a feature did was to write test programs to poke at it. Heck. Until recently DirectX needed three pages of goobleydo-gook to start up. These people just don't get APIs, period.
In Microsoft Visual Studio when you press F1 Help it comes up with a list that includes "How to Write Good Code". Yes, by Microsoft. Even in the early hours of the morning, it gets a smirk if not a gufaw or a laugh. Microsoft are not good programmers. Haven't been for a long time. Anyone worth their salt will launch a Start Up, or at least join a company offering reasonable growth and prospects. Microsoft is like a Pyramid Scheme. The people that joined at the start did very well. As for the people that joined late... not a chance. Which makes you wonder about the ones that joined anyway. Read the Book "Microserfs".
> Ecma
Why didn't Ecma pick it up? These Standard Bodies are in-name only. When a "Member" wants to push something through, it gets pushed through. Then the Member's sales reps can go to the Government body and say "Look! We have an Ecma approved Standard" and t he Government worker ticks the "Uses Industry Standards" box on the tender.
One of the funnier "standards" was a simulation standard called HLA. It was approved before anyone had built a proof of concept. People bet their careers on it and the whole government was ordered to embrace it. The only problem: When they finally built it, it didn't work. *OUCH!*
Thanks very much! Was a little different when I got there, but this seemed to do it: The [Delete] button was greyed out for some reason my PC(!?), so selected it anyway, click [Advanced], [Remove], Sure? [yes]. The entry stays there, but now typeing firefoxurl://slashdot.org in IE says "No Program is associated with this".
Free Diease. Now pay for the Cure.
on
Firefox Quickies
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Firefox hasn't released a fix for this, and there is no mention of it on their web site.
The first is impractical. The second begs the question, "Sure, How?" Read on:
> Extended Solution: > The "Extended Solution" section is available for Secunia customers only. > Request a trial and get access to the Secunia Customer Area and Extended Secunia advisories.
So these guys are publishing zero day security flaws, then making you reach for your credit card. Very grubby.
The CNET article doesn't tell you what the fix is either. Google has nothing. Anyone?
I recently started using GIMP after listening to years of raptured ravings by the GIMP fantribe.
Got to say I was disappointed. It's very unwieldy. Windows everywhere, missing hotkeys (annoying absent on frequently used items), no easy way to add a macro (even if you have to do the same six steps on forty photos), unclear design (a bad mental model: often you're scratching your head... so what the hell do I do now?) If anyone says "but you can do this", they miss the point. GIMP is far too hard to use. The help isn't very good: few clear examples, and the only way to find help on something is to know how to do it. Maybe there are good books out there, but the ones I've looked at haven't been up to much.
The good news is GIMP does work and it's better (and cheaper!) than many of the alternatives. The GUI definitely needs an overhaul.
Re: Botnets. You raise a good point. Ok: So once the lusers computer is infected and if botmasters have done their homework they are more or less untracable. They can go through enough proxies, servers and countries that they're more or less untracable. This answered my next question: Most Spam is from Botnets. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,3916 7561,00.htm No reason not to try tracing them do. Criminals, at some point, drop the ball. That's when they get caught. If law enforcement is uninterested as they are now, the criminals don't have to be careful. If they were smart, they'd be doing something else. You'll get some of them (the dumb ones anyway).
Lusers: Education helps, but that applies with everything. Heard a thing recently on the radio about botnets. The journalist doing the story said he figured he had two botnets running on his PC. Now at that stage I'd scream and yank my comms cable out of its socket, but this guy was ambivalent. Can you educate the public? Surgeon General has been warning for years on the dangers of smoking and many people still smoke. Let's forget education.
ISPs: I was trojaned once. Called the ISP. They have customers PCs getting hijacked all the time: packets flying everywhere. Their care factor is low. Judging what I read of most ISPs customer service, you have no chance of motivating them to also police this sort of thing. They just don't care. Forget that.
Commerce: This has to be the best link in the chain to attack. They spam because they want your money. The flaw in spam is they *always* have to leave a way for you to contact them. Now they might do this through shady companies (like the companies that sell 'cold called' lists to mortgage brokers). At some point they have to get in touch with you to take your money. So get the feds to put a transaction through and see where the money trail leads. Or wait for the mortgage broker to call the agent who arrests them with using 'stolen contact details' or whatever the legislators want to call it.
Prosecution: If it's intra-country, easy. If it's in a country with a real legal system and extradition agreement, ok, there's the possibility. It could be done, but there would need to be a real political will. Can you imagine a European extradited to the US on spam charges? Yes. An American extradicted to Europe? Possible, or they'd prosecute them locally. Again, assumes a political will absent at the moment. (A Buddy wrote to his congressman via email. Congressman's gopher asked for a postal address to send the reply.) A Russian extradited to Britain. Yeah. Exactly.
Lobbyists: These guys sank the CAN-SPAM act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Spam_Act_of_2003 Lobbyists are part of the problem. You'll never stop spam while these guys are buying Congressmen. They make all the above discussion is moot.
Conclusion: Can't stop all spammers, but you can't stop all crime either. There are things the authorities could do if they were willing. At the moment, they're not. Let me phrase it this way: Spam isn't a technical problem. It's a political one.
I see it now. The spam is the lobbyist. The lobbyist is the spam.
How funny! If that much spam (29%) originates within the boundaries of the US, then the US has everything it needs to be able to fix it! Whether the spammer has a dynamic or static IP address, they will have records of which customer was using which line at that time. In the event that they're using dial up, there are phone records to go to as well. Now back that up with huge fines and jail terms.
Even a 29% cut in spam is worth pursuing. Re: Europe. The US has strong-armed much of the world into signing its absurd DMCA into their own law. They can do this for Spam too! Add that up... wow. That's a big cut in spam!
So there you have it. US Congressmen and Senators could stop this if they wanted to. Surely in this set of pork-barrelling lazy asses, there must be one or two with the brains to latch onto a sure vote winner? Now the direct marketing bodies would do the best to sink the bill a-la The CAN-SPAM Act. How do you deal with them?
> I would suggest 1 second in jail, for each single piece of spam, non-overlapping.
If you ever want to run for judge, I'm voting for you. Don't know where you live, but Judge 'No Pants' Pearson probably won't be contesting the next county election:-)
Technically, yeah, as the subject line said, impractical. It's meant as a political feint against those countries government. The problem with the net is people can harass you across country borders and there is nothing you can do about it. Ultimately only those countries governments can do that. A cutoff threat mightn't inconvenience the spammers, but it'd sure as hell inconvenience them, and that might push them to do something. A bigger problem is the US Government would never have the will to do anything on that scale, because as far as they're concerned, spam is a non-issue.
This is why practical measures the government *can* take aren't implemented either. Politically, spam is a non-issue, and in a democracy non-issues are ignored.
* Problem with Spam traffic from India and China? Fine. Make a declaration internet traffic from those countries will be served from the Internet within 21 days unless all Spam activity ceases. Impractical? Maybe, but I'll bet the Chinese Government can come down like a sledgehammer when it wants to! Same with this kind of threat to India. When the Indian Government smells its vast outsourcing revenues becoming unstuck, they'll have motivation to crack down on 'unscrupulous operators'
* 25 year jail and a $2M fine for those who use spammers. Tracking spammers is hard. Typical the fools that reply to spam give their details to a spammer web site, who sells a call list to a mortgage agency, who then calls you, supposedly unaware of the source. Some journalists have done this and followed the trail. Now if journalists can do it, maybe the FBI can do it? If the FBI aren't up to the task, bounty hunters maybe?
* Same thing: Have law enforcement respond to spam, trace the payment and throw the lowlife on the other end into the slammer: 25 years jail and a $2M fine.
* Conan the Barbarian has some advice here: "Savages are more polite than so-called civilized men, because a civilized man knows he can insult someone without getting his skull split". The reason spammers do it isn't just because it can make money, but because they know they can get away with it. The chance of getting prosecuted at the moment is next to nothing. Give them a fair chance of getting imprisoned, and they'll change their tune.
Comes down to the same thing: Congress drafting laws and supplying the funds to enforce it. Do I hear a Presidential Candidate with an anti-Spam policy?
S3 has been done before and often and like Amazon's previous patents, this one has a high "Duh" factor. But Amazon must know that. The problem with patents and laws in general is that big companies and government know they can do something wrong and get away with it for a long time. Even if it's reversed in the distant future, mission accomplished.
I dream of a day where computing systems are designed by computer scientists, not lawyers.
The Glasgow (for want of a better word) "bombers" suffered more lack of knowledge than stupidity: They were doctors, who managed to get British accreditation. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/02/britain-b ombings.html Fair to assume they're capable of intelligence. In this case, they were operating (no pun indented) outside their field. I think we've seen the last 'A-Team Propane Tank' attack. Presumably those that go in their footsteps won't make the same mistake. If they'd been able to source and use dynamite, then yeah the "Explosive School" probably isn't a great idea. That's the worry.
Agree wholeheartedly with Bruce's narrative on Security Theater. While it seems crazy that we're not allowed to carry more than 100 mL of water per bottle on a plane, yet "Explosive School" doesn't raise an eyebrow, the bad news is we're an open society. If they're determined and smart, they can get the information they need from elsewhere, but maybe the FBI is smarter than we give them credit.
PS. Whoever modded my original post a "Troll": Read your moderator guidelines. If you've got a contrary opinion, post it.
Training Domestic Terrorists: Dumb
on
Explosives Camp
·
· Score: 1, Informative
> You don't exactly need any special training to set off explosives in a suicide bomb attack (making explosives on the other hand would need special expertise).
Yes you do. Bruce Schneier ("Secrets and Lies") says the reason the Glasgow Attacks were a failure was because the terrorists didn't know how to use them: "putting a propane tank into a car and driving into a building at high speed is the sort of thing that only works in old episodes of The A Team. On television, you get a massive, extensive explosion. In real life, you only get a small localized fire." http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/terr orist_speci_1.html
Yeah. "Explosives Camp" seems cool and funny, until someone uses what they learn to blow something up, then there will be an outcry, "Why didn't anyone see this coming?" and finally Congress will pass some bill with a stupid name "The Proud to be an American Bill" to soothe the jittery public. The fact that I have to justify why this is dumb, and that people say it isn't, amazes me. I mean, how stupid can the human race get?
It's not like Domestic Terrorism isn't without Precedent, and at that, on a large scale. $450 and proof of American Citizenship. McVeigh was an American Citizen. Dumb.
> They've so captured the law as to make it illegal to promote boycotts! Do you have a link for that? Heard rumors. Can't believe they did it.
The law has become a complete ass. The legislators: wrote the Copyright Extension Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extens ion_Act was a favor for Disney, robbing the public of their public domain rights. The courts: happy to choose the President for us: Guess they think they're much smarter than us. The executive: regularly lets convicted criminals like Libby and Nixon walk free (not unusual: Clinton favored 157 pardons on his last day). Congress and the courts no longer represent the people, but at the same time they don't write laws that cause riots in the streets. Instead they write these gray things that people won't break out of fear, and leave it at that.
Amen!!!!! Imagine one week if Sony sold absolutely nothing across the whole US. Ouch! They'd freak out, and Howard Stringer's head would be served to shareholders on a platter. Hey, you don't even need to boycott them all. Pick them off one by one. Causes division in the ranks: While one suffers the others shrug.
In the past consumer boycotts have rarely if ever worked, because most consumers either don't know or don't care, or think what's the use. So form a message and target it. Spread it on Myspace and Youtube: The sort of people where those that buy SONY guy congregate. Reach out. Let them know why to hate the RIAA, no, call them by their real names Sony, Universal Music, EMI etc. Better yet, list the artists since most kids won't know which artist _belongs_ to which record company. Sure some won't go along with it, but so long as SONY see dropping sales, the message will get across.
20 years ago my Biology teacher told our class a great way to protect anything is to wrap it in a large bag of fluid. He used pregnancy as an example. Sorry SONY, but a lot of prior art there! Wonder if my old Biology teacher can sue you? If it doesn't, it still falls under obvious.
SONY, stick to what you're good at: Incompatible Consumer Electronics, rootkits, exploding batteries, and your stake in the RIAA Mafia.
USPTO: Yeah, well, We'd expect nothing less from you.
Printer Companies are getting worse at this. My Canon Laser Printer locked up because the 'toner had exceeded it's lifetime'. Note the weasel words. Quite different from being out of toner! I had been using Toner Saver mode so expected a higher page couut, but nope, after I printed the predetermined number of pages it went into lockdown and refused to print anything more. The cartridge still has toner in it, a fair bit by the sounds of it, but a smartchip detects it being reinserted. Buy a new one. Others report on the web that Canon cartridges typically have 10-20% toner in them when they "reach their lifetime."
The message claims that continuing to use the printer would damage it. Rubbish. Remember laser printers and photo copies before the DMCA allowed this smart chip chikanery? They'd get faint, and you'd replace the toner, and all would be ok.
Will your printer do this? It's hard to tell, because reviewers don't print enough pages to find out. This isn't declared anywhere on the advertising material. It's unethical on Canon's part, and should be illegal. But as we saw with the Sony Rootkit, big companies can break the law on a whim and not get prosecuted.
I've an ex-nVidia who came over to ATI. Why? Crap Drivers. There's one called the "nv4_disp Infinite Loop Bug" that's been around for years. It's across generations of nVidia hardware. The really bad thing is you can't talk to nVidia about it (and yeah, there have been petitions and web pages galore, all to no avail). nVidia don't accept user feedback, period.
Anyway, got sick of the lockups so kissed nVidia goodbye and couldn't be happier. Now using a new ATI x1950 card now. Nice card, includes Shader 3.0 support, and the driver is rock stable on my system. Not a single lockup, bug, hang, glitch or anything. Heard criticism of ATI's drivers (from a buddy feeing ATI for nVidia!) which worried me, but took the gamble and couldn't be happier. At least you *can* make a support request to ATI. nVidia won't talk to you. That was a factor.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=nv4_disp+%22infi nite+loop BTW the bug only affects certain configurations (nobody knows what), sporadic and sometimes it goes away and comes back. At its worst, your system will hang 4 times a day. Sadly, no, it hasn't been fixed!
BTW on Shader 4.0 John "Doom n' Quake" Carmack says take your time: Shader 3.0 is great, but developers are only just getting around to that as it is. There's really no need for Shader 4.0, which only runs under Vista anyway. (oh Microsoft, will you ever learn?)
They said the trial subjects were only shown the test results, but they could have easily picked out Google and Yahoo anyway. They're the one's not mentioning the Tianamen Square Killings.
Hint for aspiring web search companies: The Wayback Machine is not your "Cache"
David Parnas, a Software Scientist, who formerly served on SDI Committees and who had no moral qualms about death and destricion ended up quitting SDI and debunking it when he realized the whole program wasn't plausible and a huge waste. It still isn't BTW, but politicians don't get science: billions of dollars regularly flushed down the toilet after it.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's start a petition: I promised my kids a baby Mammoth ride.
Amen. Radians are used for number crunching, but Geographic Information Systems lean towards degrees, military systems measure depression in mils and the steepness of roads is measured as a gradient. And as you say, textbooks use degrees and that's what most people learn. Many people won't even know what a radian is. Given that and the target audience of Excel, I would have guessed Excel's trig functions to be in degrees. (They're actually radians).
A spec is supposed to call this stuff all out clearly. It's not supposed to be left as guesswork for the reader.
> From basic trigonometric functions that forget to specify units
Amazing. That's the sort of mistake you'd expect from a First Year Computer Science Major, but not from a Second Year. This isn't the first time Microsoft have done this. Even for the Windows API, the code trumped the documentation. The best way to find out what a feature did was to write test programs to poke at it. Heck. Until recently DirectX needed three pages of goobleydo-gook to start up. These people just don't get APIs, period.
In Microsoft Visual Studio when you press F1 Help it comes up with a list that includes "How to Write Good Code". Yes, by Microsoft. Even in the early hours of the morning, it gets a smirk if not a gufaw or a laugh. Microsoft are not good programmers. Haven't been for a long time. Anyone worth their salt will launch a Start Up, or at least join a company offering reasonable growth and prospects. Microsoft is like a Pyramid Scheme. The people that joined at the start did very well. As for the people that joined late... not a chance. Which makes you wonder about the ones that joined anyway. Read the Book "Microserfs".
> Ecma
Why didn't Ecma pick it up? These Standard Bodies are in-name only. When a "Member" wants to push something through, it gets pushed through. Then the Member's sales reps can go to the Government body and say "Look! We have an Ecma approved Standard" and t he Government worker ticks the "Uses Industry Standards" box on the tender.
One of the funnier "standards" was a simulation standard called HLA. It was approved before anyone had built a proof of concept. People bet their careers on it and the whole government was ordered to embrace it. The only problem: When they finally built it, it didn't work. *OUCH!*
Thanks very much! Was a little different when I got there, but this seemed to do it: The [Delete] button was greyed out for some reason my PC(!?), so selected it anyway, click [Advanced], [Remove], Sure? [yes]. The entry stays there, but now typeing firefoxurl://slashdot.org in IE says "No Program is associated with this".
Firefox hasn't released a fix for this, and there is no mention of it on their web site.
Now this blows:
http://secunia.com/advisories/25984/
> Solution:
> Do not browse untrusted sites.
> Disable the "Firefox URL" URI handler.
The first is impractical. The second begs the question, "Sure, How?" Read on:
> Extended Solution:
> The "Extended Solution" section is available for Secunia customers only.
> Request a trial and get access to the Secunia Customer Area and Extended Secunia advisories.
So these guys are publishing zero day security flaws, then making you reach for your credit card. Very grubby.
The CNET article doesn't tell you what the fix is either. Google has nothing. Anyone?
I recently started using GIMP after listening to years of raptured ravings by the GIMP fantribe.
Got to say I was disappointed. It's very unwieldy. Windows everywhere, missing hotkeys (annoying absent on frequently used items), no easy way to add a macro (even if you have to do the same six steps on forty photos), unclear design (a bad mental model: often you're scratching your head... so what the hell do I do now?) If anyone says "but you can do this", they miss the point. GIMP is far too hard to use. The help isn't very good: few clear examples, and the only way to find help on something is to know how to do it. Maybe there are good books out there, but the ones I've looked at haven't been up to much.
The good news is GIMP does work and it's better (and cheaper!) than many of the alternatives. The GUI definitely needs an overhaul.
Re: Botnets. You raise a good point. Ok: So once the lusers computer is infected and if botmasters have done their homework they are more or less untracable. They can go through enough proxies, servers and countries that they're more or less untracable. This answered my next question: Most Spam is from Botnets. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,3916 7561,00.htm No reason not to try tracing them do. Criminals, at some point, drop the ball. That's when they get caught. If law enforcement is uninterested as they are now, the criminals don't have to be careful. If they were smart, they'd be doing something else. You'll get some of them (the dumb ones anyway).
Lusers: Education helps, but that applies with everything. Heard a thing recently on the radio about botnets. The journalist doing the story said he figured he had two botnets running on his PC. Now at that stage I'd scream and yank my comms cable out of its socket, but this guy was ambivalent. Can you educate the public? Surgeon General has been warning for years on the dangers of smoking and many people still smoke. Let's forget education.
ISPs: I was trojaned once. Called the ISP. They have customers PCs getting hijacked all the time: packets flying everywhere. Their care factor is low. Judging what I read of most ISPs customer service, you have no chance of motivating them to also police this sort of thing. They just don't care. Forget that.
Commerce: This has to be the best link in the chain to attack. They spam because they want your money. The flaw in spam is they *always* have to leave a way for you to contact them. Now they might do this through shady companies (like the companies that sell 'cold called' lists to mortgage brokers). At some point they have to get in touch with you to take your money. So get the feds to put a transaction through and see where the money trail leads. Or wait for the mortgage broker to call the agent who arrests them with using 'stolen contact details' or whatever the legislators want to call it.
Prosecution: If it's intra-country, easy. If it's in a country with a real legal system and extradition agreement, ok, there's the possibility. It could be done, but there would need to be a real political will. Can you imagine a European extradited to the US on spam charges? Yes. An American extradicted to Europe? Possible, or they'd prosecute them locally. Again, assumes a political will absent at the moment. (A Buddy wrote to his congressman via email. Congressman's gopher asked for a postal address to send the reply.) A Russian extradited to Britain. Yeah. Exactly.
Lobbyists: These guys sank the CAN-SPAM act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Spam_Act_of_2003 Lobbyists are part of the problem. You'll never stop spam while these guys are buying Congressmen. They make all the above discussion is moot.
Conclusion: Can't stop all spammers, but you can't stop all crime either. There are things the authorities could do if they were willing. At the moment, they're not. Let me phrase it this way: Spam isn't a technical problem. It's a political one.
I see it now. The spam is the lobbyist. The lobbyist is the spam.
mod parent interesting.
Fascinating numbers!
How funny! If that much spam (29%) originates within the boundaries of the US, then the US has everything it needs to be able to fix it! Whether the spammer has a dynamic or static IP address, they will have records of which customer was using which line at that time. In the event that they're using dial up, there are phone records to go to as well. Now back that up with huge fines and jail terms.
Even a 29% cut in spam is worth pursuing. Re: Europe. The US has strong-armed much of the world into signing its absurd DMCA into their own law. They can do this for Spam too! Add that up... wow. That's a big cut in spam!
So there you have it. US Congressmen and Senators could stop this if they wanted to. Surely in this set of pork-barrelling lazy asses, there must be one or two with the brains to latch onto a sure vote winner? Now the direct marketing bodies would do the best to sink the bill a-la The CAN-SPAM Act. How do you deal with them?
> I would suggest 1 second in jail, for each single piece of spam, non-overlapping.
:-)
If you ever want to run for judge, I'm voting for you. Don't know where you live, but Judge 'No Pants' Pearson probably won't be contesting the next county election
Technically, yeah, as the subject line said, impractical. It's meant as a political feint against those countries government. The problem with the net is people can harass you across country borders and there is nothing you can do about it. Ultimately only those countries governments can do that. A cutoff threat mightn't inconvenience the spammers, but it'd sure as hell inconvenience them, and that might push them to do something. A bigger problem is the US Government would never have the will to do anything on that scale, because as far as they're concerned, spam is a non-issue.
This is why practical measures the government *can* take aren't implemented either. Politically, spam is a non-issue, and in a democracy non-issues are ignored.
* Problem with Spam traffic from India and China? Fine. Make a declaration internet traffic from those countries will be served from the Internet within 21 days unless all Spam activity ceases. Impractical? Maybe, but I'll bet the Chinese Government can come down like a sledgehammer when it wants to! Same with this kind of threat to India. When the Indian Government smells its vast outsourcing revenues becoming unstuck, they'll have motivation to crack down on 'unscrupulous operators'
* 25 year jail and a $2M fine for those who use spammers. Tracking spammers is hard. Typical the fools that reply to spam give their details to a spammer web site, who sells a call list to a mortgage agency, who then calls you, supposedly unaware of the source. Some journalists have done this and followed the trail. Now if journalists can do it, maybe the FBI can do it? If the FBI aren't up to the task, bounty hunters maybe?
* Same thing: Have law enforcement respond to spam, trace the payment and throw the lowlife on the other end into the slammer: 25 years jail and a $2M fine.
* Conan the Barbarian has some advice here: "Savages are more polite than so-called civilized men, because a civilized man knows he can insult someone without getting his skull split". The reason spammers do it isn't just because it can make money, but because they know they can get away with it. The chance of getting prosecuted at the moment is next to nothing. Give them a fair chance of getting imprisoned, and they'll change their tune.
Comes down to the same thing: Congress drafting laws and supplying the funds to enforce it. Do I hear a Presidential Candidate with an anti-Spam policy?
> a Amazon Simple Storage Service.
In Computing, Simple == Obvious. Patents should be new, useful, novel and not-obvious. http://www.bitlaw.com/patent/requirements.html
S3 has been done before and often and like Amazon's previous patents, this one has a high "Duh" factor. But Amazon must know that. The problem with patents and laws in general is that big companies and government know they can do something wrong and get away with it for a long time. Even if it's reversed in the distant future, mission accomplished.
I dream of a day where computing systems are designed by computer scientists, not lawyers.
> Still. It's good that religious nuts don't believe in experimentation.
:-)
That would require Scientific Method, and you never know where that lead
> The school with a 3-1 male/female ratio.
Going to go to an explosive school to meet chicks? Guess that rules out Osama.
The Glasgow (for want of a better word) "bombers" suffered more lack of knowledge than stupidity: They were doctors, who managed to get British accreditation. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/02/britain-b ombings.html Fair to assume they're capable of intelligence. In this case, they were operating (no pun indented) outside their field. I think we've seen the last 'A-Team Propane Tank' attack. Presumably those that go in their footsteps won't make the same mistake. If they'd been able to source and use dynamite, then yeah the "Explosive School" probably isn't a great idea. That's the worry.
Agree wholeheartedly with Bruce's narrative on Security Theater. While it seems crazy that we're not allowed to carry more than 100 mL of water per bottle on a plane, yet "Explosive School" doesn't raise an eyebrow, the bad news is we're an open society. If they're determined and smart, they can get the information they need from elsewhere, but maybe the FBI is smarter than we give them credit.
PS. Whoever modded my original post a "Troll": Read your moderator guidelines. If you've got a contrary opinion, post it.
> You don't exactly need any special training to set off explosives in a suicide bomb attack (making explosives on the other hand would need special expertise).
r orist_speci_1.html
Yes you do. Bruce Schneier ("Secrets and Lies") says the reason the Glasgow Attacks were a failure was because the terrorists didn't know how to use them: "putting a propane tank into a car and driving into a building at high speed is the sort of thing that only works in old episodes of The A Team. On television, you get a massive, extensive explosion. In real life, you only get a small localized fire." http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/ter
Yeah. "Explosives Camp" seems cool and funny, until someone uses what they learn to blow something up, then there will be an outcry, "Why didn't anyone see this coming?" and finally Congress will pass some bill with a stupid name "The Proud to be an American Bill" to soothe the jittery public. The fact that I have to justify why this is dumb, and that people say it isn't, amazes me. I mean, how stupid can the human race get?
It's not like Domestic Terrorism isn't without Precedent, and at that, on a large scale. $450 and proof of American Citizenship. McVeigh was an American Citizen. Dumb.
> They've so captured the law as to make it illegal to promote boycotts!
s ion_Act was a favor for Disney, robbing the public of their public domain rights. The courts: happy to choose the President for us: Guess they think they're much smarter than us. The executive: regularly lets convicted criminals like Libby and Nixon walk free (not unusual: Clinton favored 157 pardons on his last day). Congress and the courts no longer represent the people, but at the same time they don't write laws that cause riots in the streets. Instead they write these gray things that people won't break out of fear, and leave it at that.
Do you have a link for that? Heard rumors. Can't believe they did it.
The law has become a complete ass. The legislators: wrote the Copyright Extension Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Exten
Amen!!!!! Imagine one week if Sony sold absolutely nothing across the whole US. Ouch! They'd freak out, and Howard Stringer's head would be served to shareholders on a platter. Hey, you don't even need to boycott them all. Pick them off one by one. Causes division in the ranks: While one suffers the others shrug.
In the past consumer boycotts have rarely if ever worked, because most consumers either don't know or don't care, or think what's the use. So form a message and target it. Spread it on Myspace and Youtube: The sort of people where those that buy SONY guy congregate. Reach out. Let them know why to hate the RIAA, no, call them by their real names Sony, Universal Music, EMI etc. Better yet, list the artists since most kids won't know which artist _belongs_ to which record company. Sure some won't go along with it, but so long as SONY see dropping sales, the message will get across.
To the SONY web watcher reading this: eat me
> Henning blames a rogue business unit
Uhhh yeah. That would be your "Industrial Espionage Division."
20 years ago my Biology teacher told our class a great way to protect anything is to wrap it in a large bag of fluid. He used pregnancy as an example. Sorry SONY, but a lot of prior art there! Wonder if my old Biology teacher can sue you? If it doesn't, it still falls under obvious.
SONY, stick to what you're good at: Incompatible Consumer Electronics, rootkits, exploding batteries, and your stake in the RIAA Mafia.
USPTO: Yeah, well, We'd expect nothing less from you.
mod parent useful. Even if it doesn't work with Canon, useful for anyone with HP!
Printer Companies are getting worse at this. My Canon Laser Printer locked up because the 'toner had exceeded it's lifetime'. Note the weasel words. Quite different from being out of toner! I had been using Toner Saver mode so expected a higher page couut, but nope, after I printed the predetermined number of pages it went into lockdown and refused to print anything more. The cartridge still has toner in it, a fair bit by the sounds of it, but a smartchip detects it being reinserted. Buy a new one. Others report on the web that Canon cartridges typically have 10-20% toner in them when they "reach their lifetime."
The message claims that continuing to use the printer would damage it. Rubbish. Remember laser printers and photo copies before the DMCA allowed this smart chip chikanery? They'd get faint, and you'd replace the toner, and all would be ok.
Will your printer do this? It's hard to tell, because reviewers don't print enough pages to find out. This isn't declared anywhere on the advertising material. It's unethical on Canon's part, and should be illegal. But as we saw with the Sony Rootkit, big companies can break the law on a whim and not get prosecuted.
ATI have crap drivers? So do nVidia!
i nite+loop BTW the bug only affects certain configurations (nobody knows what), sporadic and sometimes it goes away and comes back. At its worst, your system will hang 4 times a day. Sadly, no, it hasn't been fixed!
. 0109.1737.15034.htm
I've an ex-nVidia who came over to ATI. Why? Crap Drivers. There's one called the "nv4_disp Infinite Loop Bug" that's been around for years. It's across generations of nVidia hardware. The really bad thing is you can't talk to nVidia about it (and yeah, there have been petitions and web pages galore, all to no avail). nVidia don't accept user feedback, period.
Anyway, got sick of the lockups so kissed nVidia goodbye and couldn't be happier. Now using a new ATI x1950 card now. Nice card, includes Shader 3.0 support, and the driver is rock stable on my system. Not a single lockup, bug, hang, glitch or anything. Heard criticism of ATI's drivers (from a buddy feeing ATI for nVidia!) which worried me, but took the gamble and couldn't be happier. At least you *can* make a support request to ATI. nVidia won't talk to you. That was a factor.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=nv4_disp+%22inf
BTW on Shader 4.0 John "Doom n' Quake" Carmack says take your time: Shader 3.0 is great, but developers are only just getting around to that as it is. There's really no need for Shader 4.0, which only runs under Vista anyway. (oh Microsoft, will you ever learn?)
Carmack's interview: http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200701/N07
They said the trial subjects were only shown the test results, but they could have easily picked out Google and Yahoo anyway. They're the one's not mentioning the Tianamen Square Killings.
Hint for aspiring web search companies: The Wayback Machine is not your "Cache"
David Parnas, a Software Scientist, who formerly served on SDI Committees and who had no moral qualms about death and destricion ended up quitting SDI and debunking it when he realized the whole program wasn't plausible and a huge waste. It still isn't BTW, but politicians don't get science: billions of dollars regularly flushed down the toilet after it.
e rs/parnas_acm_85.pdfd /
http://klabs.org/richcontent/software_content/pap
http://www.wordyard.com/2007/01/05/parnas-sdi/fee