Don't like the ability of the government to track their whereabouts, or
Don't want to enable the government to surrepititiously monitor their conversations, even when they're not talking on the phone.
Don't feel like being part of the my-employer/wife/etc-has-me-on-a-leash culture.
I only reluctantly got a cellphone a few years ago. AFAIC, they're as close to a travesty as one can get; they've got more computing power than a PC did a decade ago, but are even less usable than the GI Joe walkie talkies I played with as a child. (I believe the audio was clearer.)
Michael Behe, for one, is Roman Catholic, which is a far cry from a fundamentalist Christian. In case you didn't know, the Church in Rome does not require one to reject evolution to be Catholic; the position is that the truth is never a threat to valid theology. Problem is, evolutionary theory does have some serious logical problems, which Michael Behe is correct to point out. And yes, he's a scientist, for those who insist on the ad hominem defense of evolution.
...for instance finding fossils or animals with unevolvable features would do nicely, and be incredibly exciting for the scientific community so you can be sure there are plenty of people looking.
As a matter of fact, this is precisely what one of the ID proponents attacked. There existed certain biological mechanisms (such as the flagellum(sp?) rotor) for which evolution had no satisfactory explanation. There was no intermediate series of steps which would have produced a useful structure; it either had to be produced all at once (which would have involved an astronomically improbably coincidence of molecules), or created by an intelligent designer. While this particular example has been shown evolutionarily plausible, some other parts of the biological world (such as the formation of amino acids) are still a long way off. With what we know now, it is much more plausible that amino acids were formed by an intelligent agent than a serendipitous series of random events. Perhaps some mechanism will be discovered explaining the initial formation of amino acids, but at the current time, it is just not plausible.
Is that Darwin's original theory of Natural selection was mathematically sound. The theories of evolution which sprang from it, unfortunately, were not. It would be another 100 years before mainstream biology would recognize that "random chance" was just another way of saying, "And magic happens here..." Even today, Darwin's original theory of Natural Selection is still the only testable major evolutionary hypothesis, which says a lot about the dismal state of evolutionary theory today.
ID - as articulated - could mean that life on this planet was not the result of God, but rather, intelligent space aliens. Thus, it was not simply Creationism warmed over - which was more a tool for evangelism than anything else...
One need not give up atheism to accept ID. That's how.
Think of it this way: Atheism is for those skeptical of God. ID is for those skeptical of evolutionary biologists. In both cases, the skeptics are trying to convince others that some unseen magic is responsible for the current state of the universe. Just as the proponents of ID can't predict the next actions of the Intelligent Designer, neither can evolutionary biologists predict how evolution will change life in the future. The difference, however, is that ID actually improves science by pointing out the flaws in evolutionary theories, where evolutionary biologists pointing out the flaws in ID will only kill it. In a religious sense, ID is the holocaust offering made for the revelation of truth and improvement of science. Without it, biology would be stuck in the intellectual dark ages.
That's the worst misunderstanding of ID I've seen yet in this discussion.
ID isn't science. It's philosophy of science. You'd think that the average geek would understand the difference, but here on/., every time ID is mentioned, someone goes out of their way to say that it's not science.
Okay, Captain Obvious, we get it. ID is not science. But the fundamental premise of ID is that it is not mere random changes of evolution which gave rise to the diverse features of living things, but rather, an Intelligent Designer. (Okay, now I'm Captain Obvious, but bear with me here...) ID doesn't say anything about who this could have been - it could have been aliens, for all we know. (Though I must admit that religious types often think it means God, but such an interpretation is not strictly necessary). What ID most effectively addresses is the problem with the biological sciences is that even today, the intellectuals in biology are not doing work on evolutionary theory. The intellectual rigor is just not there. Typically, evolutionary theory argues from the same a posteriori perspective you mention:
Look! this animal is well adapted to its environment. It's wings allow it to escape predators better than other species...
Evolution must have conferred an advantage on winged animals, hence, it has wings.
Look! - this animal seems well adapted to its environment. It's fast legs allow it to escape predators.
Evolution must have conferred an advantage to fast runners.
So which is it? Does evolution favor wings over legs, and if so, why aren't all species winged/legged?
ID'ers have grown sick of the circular reasoning which so-called scientists have used to defend their pet theories. Nothing of this sort could ever get past peer review in physics or chemistry, yet we routinely see each and every interesting animal trait, (and even human behavior!) attributed to evolution, in spite of the fact that no evolutionary theory has ever correctly predicted the traits which specific environmental pressures would favor. It's akin to the old double-standard, A.) When times are good, God is blessing us; B.) When times are bad, "He moves in mysterious ways..." The truth is a little bit of both, but mostly it is a way of disguising the speakers ignorance. But the universe does have some semblance of order, and if biologists would get off their collective asses - and learn some logic and math - we might actually be able to make progress in our understanding of evolution. As it stands, evolutionary theory is at about the same state Astronomy was 2 millenia ago, with a bunch of intellectuals gazing at the universe, but not able to say anything very intelligent about it. Every variation in behavior is somehow, magically explainable by evolution, yet no biologist can explain precisely how. None involved in evolutionary theory actually go so far as to make predictions, let alone accurate ones, about how global warming will affect the evolution of species. Will it favor warm or cold blooded animals? Our purveyors of evolutionary theory simply don't know. Contrast this with modern astronomer who can predict - with a substantial amount of certainty - where the Earth and Moon will be on any given date.
But... ID does make some good points, and has made science better in the process. A little healthy skepticism never hurt anyone, you know. And ID has some much, much stronger mathematical and logical underpinnings than a lot of theories which pass for science these days. Evolution (that is, what happened before history) is pretty much mere speculation. Just like ID, it's not a falsifiable theory - that is, there's no set of conditions for which one could say, "Well, that proves evolution didn't happen..." There's a lot of alternative explanations which would be supported by the same data we know today. To argue about what happened in the past -
It's not that I fear a jaywalking wino will be charged with terrorism, but that I wanted to point out just how absurd the PATRIOT act really is.
You know, it's like the RICO debacle. Originally intended to shut down the mafia, RICO was later used by pro-abortion groups to bankrupt pro-life protesters. You know, people exercising their free speech rights. Bad laws are bad for society, regardless of whether or not you think anyone will actually be convicted based on them. All it takes is an overzealous prosecutor to ruin someone financially. Sure, they'll eventually be vindicated, but they'll be bankrupted in the process.
In the case of the pro life demonstrators, they eventually won on appeal. But the process took nearly a decade of the their lives away and cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Had RICO not existed, the case would not have come to trial. What the whole affair showed was that free speech is only a right for those who can afford lawyers.
When I was in grad school for programming my instructor taught us how to search for the code we needed on the web.
Hopefully, he taught you more than that. I can understand using another programmer's libraries and code snippets for research purposes, but hopefully you learned something more in school than just how to copy and paste...
Moreover in my professional career as a programmer I ran into several stumbling blocks where I couldn't figure something out. I'd google for code...
Oops. Apparently not. At this point I don't know if you're deliberately trolling or honestly clueless. I'm hoping that you googled for code to find the details you didn't know, rather than searching for code which solved your problem.
I'm paid for results, not for originality. If people provide code on the web as tutorial purposes or just as a friendly piece of help then I would be going against my job to not use it.
Well, if your employer is the shady type, then your statement is correct. But there's an important, legal distinction between using someone else's code for educational or tutorial purposes and passing it off as your own. It's called copyright infringement, and it is very much illegal, and very possible that doing so will land you in jail. Especially if monetary gain is involved.
Most employers expect to own the copyright on the code you write for them. If you are a consultant, and have an agreement as such, you might retain the copyright. But what you're suggesting is quite unethical given current copyright law. Your employer has a reasonable expectation that you will follow the law, and that he will have legal right and title to the code you produce. Some employers even have such statements in the employment contracts, i.e., that you agree not to bring into their company any code which you did not create, and that you explicitly assign the copyright to them.
Moreover, I ask: If you bought a book on, say, ASP and it had sample code that did exactly what you wanted, would you then rewrite that code so it was not what was in the book? Of course you wouldn't!
Well, you might not, but I certainly would:
For starters, I don't want my project to become the subject of a copyright infringement lawsuit, which would most certainly delay the release, and cost my company untold dollars to defend.
I also wouldn't want to face personal liability for copyright infringement. Not only could my employer sue me for breach of contract, but the copyright hold could also sue me personally for copyright infringement.
If there is monetary gain involved (i.e. you're getting paid), copyright infringement can become a criminal matter. Even if the publisher didn't sue, you could still be prosecuted under federal copyright statutes, some of which carry prison terms.
Granted, this ends up with me reinventing the wheel quite a bit, but that's the price paid for the current legal situation with respect to copyright. Employers understand this, and they're not trying to change the law. They want to own the code you produce, not lease it from someone else.
I understand that programming is occasionally challenging, but you don't learn how to solve complicated problems by googling for code. Furthermore, if you can't understand how to create a solution to your particular problem, how can you verify the code you copy actually solves the problem? If you can't understand the code, you don't know if it contains bugs or not.
I could probably rant for quite some time on sloppy programmers, but I'm optimistic that you aren't the type of programmer whose code consists of an unmaintainable, buggy, hodge-podge of code pasted from various sources. You are hopefully the type that takes the time to think about the problem, and if you can't solve it on your own, seeks to learn how by consulting a more educated reference. I'm confident that your googling for code
Just because it's on the web, even without any particular license, doesn't mean it's free for the taking.
It's kind of like the online magazine. Sure, you can view their web pages, but try republishing them and you'll find yourself in quite a bit of legal hot water.
The author might not think his code is worth that much, but as soon as it shows up in a commercial product, he might change his mind. Because he hasn't granted the company explicit permission to use it, he could sue for copyright infringement.
Granted, IANAL, but it seems like a rather foolish thing to expose yourself to a potential $150,000 in statutory damages for a mere 200 lines of code. Most competent coders could rewrite that in a week, if not a day.
If not, what's the best way to deal with this kind of situation? Since I'm now the only person working on this code, there's no practical way to report the situation confidentially.
First, do your research. Is it possible the code on the web was stolen or leaked from your employer? You might want to show the lead developer the web page.
If you should determine that the code was lifted from the web, the best response might be to simply rewrite the code, since it is only about 200 lines. Look for bugs in the existing code, which you could use to justify the rewrite to management, should they become curious, or worse, be of the shady type.
It might be helpful - after the rewrite - to send an email to all of the developers, the lead developer, and possibly his boss, saying something similar to this:
"During routine maintenance, I recently discovered some code in our codebase which was identical to code found on the web. To save the company from copyright infringement liability, I have taken the initiative to rewrite that portion of code. My concern is that there might be some among us who do not know that all code is copyrighted, and that copying code from others exposes the company - as well as the individual - to potential copyright infringement liability. If you, or someone you know, has done this in the past, please take the appropriate steps to rectify the situation."
It is important to highlight that you have just saved the company money and reduced their liability, and make sure to address no one individual in particular. Do not come across as accusing any one person, but rather, try to express a helpful attitude.
Now, understand that you are new here, and do not yet know the culture. If your employer has a culture of copyright infringement, it would probably be in your best interest to find another employer. Typically, when such companies are found out, they find a scapegoat on which to hang the guilt, and because you're the new guy, that would probably be you.
Actually, I was under the impression that the Israelis were proud of the fact that they killed a person with this technique. I mentioned it because I anticipated that there would be those who would claim that a cellphone was too small to contain enough explosive to kill anyone, not because I wanted to start an Israeli-Palestinian flame fest.
Hmmm... But now that I think about it, is it possible to suicide-bomb an internet discussion? Could someone flame in such a flagrant manner as to destroy their karma to the extent that they no longer virtually exist? Would getting your IP banned from/. count? Or could it be argued that because/. banned you, that it wasn't true virtual suicide, but rather, virtual homicide? I digress...
That in Boston, jaywalking is a terrorist offense, that is, if you are carrying whiskey or other hard liquor (greater than 120 proof).
In fact, it's a terrorist offense anywhere in the world. The USA PATRIOT act makes 'disruption of public order.... involving a flammable liquid' a terrorist offense. Technically, double parking is a terrorist offense because it involves a flammable liquid (the gasoline in your tank) and a disruption of public order.
It is also possible that he was struck by a piece of heavy equipment, which, in addition to breaking his spine and ribs, also ruptured the cell phone battery. The ruptured battery then shorted out and melted.
I find it very difficult to believe that a cell phone battery could contain sufficient pressure break a person's spine and ribs. Unless, of course, said battery was packed with explosives. (And yes, this has been done before - by the Israelis).
You'll be able to squeeze in a trip to Starbucks between reboots. And this in the early morning, rush hour traffic.
Seriously, the most problematic part about today's user experience is that the majority of the computers run Windows, and more slowly than they did 20 years ago. Sure, you get nice, pretty graphics, but when you're actually trying to get work done, you'd rather have a responsive machine.
That was true before digital audio. Basically, anything with analog input and output - microphones, headphones, speaker cable, etc... is subject to signal degradation from corrosion. But even aluminum contacts do not corrode in normal residential environments, which makes it a little pointless. Still, when it comes to low power applications like microphones and headphones, you want the best contact you can get, and gold usually isn't that much more expensive. It happens to be better than copper with respect to electrical conductivity, and unlike copper, is more corrosion resistant.
However, we're seeing cables with gold plated connectors used for digital data - like monitors, digital video, etc... In these circumstances, it really doesn't make that much of a difference - the connectors tend not to corrode in the first place, and in the second, digital data transmission is much more tolerant of error than analog. By the time corrosion corrupts a digital signal, your connectors will have rusted to the jack...
Because they are promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs, that's why. They see the connection between the shoddy evidence gathering of the RIAA and the possibility that merely possessing certain software programs will be considered as evidence of infringement.
The FSF has a policy against using proprietary software; it's not as if they are defending the illegal downloading of copyrighted material. Rather, it seems they are concerned, and rightly so, that a judicial precedent may establish the mere possession of file sharing programs as a de facto evidence of guilt, regardless of whether or not any infringement actually occurred.
Think about that for a moment. The whole Web is just one large, distributed, filesharing program. Imagine the consequences if everything was outlawed because of what it could be used for, rather than outlawing the specific act it might be used for. Even though the RIAA cases deal with copyright, it is more of a war on technology than anything else, and it has far-reaching implications for even those who do not infringe copyright. The real problem that the RIAA is fighting is filesharing itself - it could completely supplant them as the arbiter of music; their very survival depends on keeping individuals from sharing music - copyrighted or not - amongst themselves. The RIAA knows very well that once musicians discover publishing via filesharing, their stranglehold on the industry is over.
So what does the RIAA want? That's right - to control your computer, and dictate which software you are allowed to run. That's the only way to protect their content monopoly, and you can bet their going to try any means possible to accomplish it, consumer rights notwithstanding.
Okay, sure, you didn't give out your public key. But say you want to correspond, securely, with me, and say also, that the Feds are tapping the phone.
Here's how it plays out: I go get my own public/private key pair. I email you my public key, but in the process, the Feds intercept the email, and alter it so that it's their public key, not mine. The reverse key exchange goes the same way. Then, when you send a message to me, they decrypt it, read it, and encrypt it with their public key. Then they forward the mail to me. Because I've accepted your public key (which is really the Fed's key), I think it is legitimately from you. And I trust you. Problem is, the Feds can now read all of our emails, even though we think they're securely encrypted.
What's the solution? Oh, you could publish your public key, but how would I know that the html I'm receiving is really from your website, and not altered by a proxy? Or you could call me and recite your public key, but then we may as well be using private key encryption anyway.
Security is not as straightforward as merely following the directions.
There is actually a much easier, more secure way than you mention.
The stand alone encryption utility and attending keys on read-only, removable media. I suppose for the less paranoid, a USB drive would work as well.
Rather than using special mailers, setting up servers, etc..., you could do the following:
Use a yahoo, hotmail, or gmail account.
Distribute your private keys via sneakernet, UPS, FedEx, etc... to your cohorts.
Use a standalone encryption program to encrypt and base-64 encode your messages. Copy and paste them into the mailer of choice.
Granted, you have to do copy and paste for every send and receive, but there are a lot fewer potential compromises in this scenario than the one you mention. Even if you are using Putty, you still run the risk that someone has a keylogger installed on the public computer - having SSL or SSH functionality won't do you any good in those circumstances.
So what, really, does this buy you:
For one, you have fewer areas of possible compromise. As with any machine, a keylogger can foil the whole scheme, but aside from that, you don't have to worry about vulnerabilities in your browser, your mail client, your SSH client, the host OS, or anything beyond that.
Should someone obtain physical access to your server, your secrets could be compromised. It's much easier to hide/destroy a USB stick without detection than to destroy an entire server; with the first, the attacker may not even know that it exists, whereas the second is likely to be seized in a raid, and will be the primary target of any investigation, regardless of the legitimacy of such. Attackers don't demand keys to data they don't have. The best defense against compromise is to plausibly deny the existence of any data, rather than depend on their inability to break encryption.
Public key encryption is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. It is not necessary to break the encryption to intercept messages because it is possible to impersonate a trusted entity. You have no way of knowing if the person with whom you are corresponding is who they say they are; any weaknesses in the chain of trust can extend to the entire chain below. A CA compromised by an attacker could easily be used to insert hostile entities which appear trustworthy.
Granted, private key cryptography seems like more work; however, this is not actually the case when you consider that it provides both authentication and encryption. Because you use a side channel for key distribution, you are better able to verify the identity of correspondents. Contrast this with public key methods, where you have to develop a chain of trust, and any weak link breaks the trustworthiness of the entire chain. Private key methods allow you to cut off a compromised individual without necessarily breaking the entire chain (actually, the chain is only one link long).
The difficulty in encryption nowadays is that you either go with something secure and less convenient, or you go with convenience over security. With encryption, though, if you don't get it right the first time, you might not get a second chance.
However, I could more thoughtfully comment on this if the article revealed just what patents Microsoft believes Kyocera to be violating. It could have nothing to do with Linux; moreover, it could very well be a patent on some method of printing which is specific to the Kyocera hardware and just happens to be implemented as a Linux driver.
Looks more like FUD against Linux than anything else.
Ironically, I have relatives who worked for such services.
But, as a famous musician once sang, "Callin' it your job don't make it right." The fact is, these people make a living by annoying far more people than those to whom they sell. They deliberately leech time away from you and your family for the sake of their financial gain. They shift the true cost of their sales from the company to the country as a whole. They are the white-collar equivalent of the power plant that makes money by burning garbage and polluting the air; they pass the cost of their operations onto the public as a whole, while pocketing all of the profit for themselves.
The problem is that the true cost of the telemarketer is spread across the entire country's economy, so it is barely noticed. But think about this: a telemarketer making $400 a week will drain at least $10,000 of lost productivity from the economy as a whole. So, instead of improving the economy and the GDP, they actually make it worse. Yes, they deserve what they get, because they shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Even for the cases in which they do not directly interrupt working hours, the case can be made that they cause even greater impact because the family's time together is more valuable than the employee's time at work.
Now maybe Vista is to blame, but the whole system will hang now and then for 10 secs or more.
No, that's the Windows Vista Minus Pack - first introduced on Windows 98, the Minus Pack includes assorted features such as:
Hang Computer for 10 seconds for no reason. (Much improved since Windows 98, where it was only 2 seconds - a fivefold improvement!)
UAAM - Use All Available Memory. Get what you paid for! Use all of the memory you bought - Windows Vista will ensure that it uses all of your memory.
Mandatory Upgrade Option - Experience the joy and frustration of having to buy a NEW computer to do the same things you did before, only now you'll have more time to prepare coffee during bootup, with the added benefit of trying to find drivers which work with Vista.
Just when you actually got your computer to work right, the Minus Pack brings the look and feel of the SHINY! NEW! computer back.
I usually just hang up if there's no answer. But sometimes, I'll play their game. They invade my privacy, I figure I'm within my rights to ask a few questions:
Who is calling?
What is your name?
Most people have a last name, too. What is it?
Do I know you?
Haven't we met before somewhere?
(sometimes) DRUNKEN COLLEGE KID VOICE: I swear you sound just like that chic I met last night. (Also useful for male callers, but in an even worse way...)
Please wait while I Google your name.
Are you pregnant?
Boy or a girl? You must be so proud! Congratulations! (for added effect, I'll pretend to tell my wife in a loud voice: Hey Honey, so-and-so is having a...)
Are you a college student?
At this point, I'll ask if they'd like to play a game of 20 questions.
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?
Do you believe in the theory of evolution?
Are you a Democrat or Republican?
etc...
Now, understand that these people are paid by the hour. I'm not wasting their time, I'm wasting their employers time.
Telemarketing is profitable because most of the people who don't want to buy will just hang up the phone. If everyone they called insisted on having a nice, cordial, and polite conversation about political topics, the business model would fail entirely. So, if you hate telemarketing, use the calls as a nice way of promoting your favorite political party, religious position, human rights advocacy, etc... You might even explain to them such topics as:
Why DRM is bad for consumers.
Why torture is immoral. Remember, the revenues they make are supporting the current administration through taxes, so it is most certainly relevant to the discussion of any sale they might make.
The difficulty of using Windows Vista.
The importance of privacy.
Remember, it's a captive audience. Don't be afraid to speak your mind - people need to know!. Don't be intimidated by them. Rather, use the opportunity for political activism!
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Who choose not to have a cellphone because they:
I only reluctantly got a cellphone a few years ago. AFAIC, they're as close to a travesty as one can get; they've got more computing power than a PC did a decade ago, but are even less usable than the GI Joe walkie talkies I played with as a child. (I believe the audio was clearer.)
for copyright infringement as well.
Now that would be poetic justice.
Michael Behe, for one, is Roman Catholic, which is a far cry from a fundamentalist Christian. In case you didn't know, the Church in Rome does not require one to reject evolution to be Catholic; the position is that the truth is never a threat to valid theology. Problem is, evolutionary theory does have some serious logical problems, which Michael Behe is correct to point out. And yes, he's a scientist, for those who insist on the ad hominem defense of evolution.
As a matter of fact, this is precisely what one of the ID proponents attacked. There existed certain biological mechanisms (such as the flagellum(sp?) rotor) for which evolution had no satisfactory explanation. There was no intermediate series of steps which would have produced a useful structure; it either had to be produced all at once (which would have involved an astronomically improbably coincidence of molecules), or created by an intelligent designer. While this particular example has been shown evolutionarily plausible, some other parts of the biological world (such as the formation of amino acids) are still a long way off. With what we know now, it is much more plausible that amino acids were formed by an intelligent agent than a serendipitous series of random events. Perhaps some mechanism will be discovered explaining the initial formation of amino acids, but at the current time, it is just not plausible.
Is that Darwin's original theory of Natural selection was mathematically sound. The theories of evolution which sprang from it, unfortunately, were not. It would be another 100 years before mainstream biology would recognize that "random chance" was just another way of saying, "And magic happens here..." Even today, Darwin's original theory of Natural Selection is still the only testable major evolutionary hypothesis, which says a lot about the dismal state of evolutionary theory today.
ID - as articulated - could mean that life on this planet was not the result of God, but rather, intelligent space aliens. Thus, it was not simply Creationism warmed over - which was more a tool for evangelism than anything else...
One need not give up atheism to accept ID. That's how.
Think of it this way: Atheism is for those skeptical of God. ID is for those skeptical of evolutionary biologists. In both cases, the skeptics are trying to convince others that some unseen magic is responsible for the current state of the universe. Just as the proponents of ID can't predict the next actions of the Intelligent Designer, neither can evolutionary biologists predict how evolution will change life in the future. The difference, however, is that ID actually improves science by pointing out the flaws in evolutionary theories, where evolutionary biologists pointing out the flaws in ID will only kill it. In a religious sense, ID is the holocaust offering made for the revelation of truth and improvement of science. Without it, biology would be stuck in the intellectual dark ages.
That's the worst misunderstanding of ID I've seen yet in this discussion.
ID isn't science. It's philosophy of science. You'd think that the average geek would understand the difference, but here on /., every time ID is mentioned, someone goes out of their way to say that it's not science.
Okay, Captain Obvious, we get it. ID is not science. But the fundamental premise of ID is that it is not mere random changes of evolution which gave rise to the diverse features of living things, but rather, an Intelligent Designer. (Okay, now I'm Captain Obvious, but bear with me here...) ID doesn't say anything about who this could have been - it could have been aliens, for all we know. (Though I must admit that religious types often think it means God, but such an interpretation is not strictly necessary). What ID most effectively addresses is the problem with the biological sciences is that even today, the intellectuals in biology are not doing work on evolutionary theory. The intellectual rigor is just not there. Typically, evolutionary theory argues from the same a posteriori perspective you mention:
ID'ers have grown sick of the circular reasoning which so-called scientists have used to defend their pet theories. Nothing of this sort could ever get past peer review in physics or chemistry, yet we routinely see each and every interesting animal trait, (and even human behavior!) attributed to evolution, in spite of the fact that no evolutionary theory has ever correctly predicted the traits which specific environmental pressures would favor. It's akin to the old double-standard, A.) When times are good, God is blessing us; B.) When times are bad, "He moves in mysterious ways..." The truth is a little bit of both, but mostly it is a way of disguising the speakers ignorance. But the universe does have some semblance of order, and if biologists would get off their collective asses - and learn some logic and math - we might actually be able to make progress in our understanding of evolution. As it stands, evolutionary theory is at about the same state Astronomy was 2 millenia ago, with a bunch of intellectuals gazing at the universe, but not able to say anything very intelligent about it. Every variation in behavior is somehow, magically explainable by evolution, yet no biologist can explain precisely how. None involved in evolutionary theory actually go so far as to make predictions, let alone accurate ones, about how global warming will affect the evolution of species. Will it favor warm or cold blooded animals? Our purveyors of evolutionary theory simply don't know. Contrast this with modern astronomer who can predict - with a substantial amount of certainty - where the Earth and Moon will be on any given date.
But... ID does make some good points, and has made science better in the process. A little healthy skepticism never hurt anyone, you know. And ID has some much, much stronger mathematical and logical underpinnings than a lot of theories which pass for science these days. Evolution (that is, what happened before history) is pretty much mere speculation. Just like ID, it's not a falsifiable theory - that is, there's no set of conditions for which one could say, "Well, that proves evolution didn't happen..." There's a lot of alternative explanations which would be supported by the same data we know today. To argue about what happened in the past -
It's not that I fear a jaywalking wino will be charged with terrorism, but that I wanted to point out just how absurd the PATRIOT act really is.
You know, it's like the RICO debacle. Originally intended to shut down the mafia, RICO was later used by pro-abortion groups to bankrupt pro-life protesters. You know, people exercising their free speech rights. Bad laws are bad for society, regardless of whether or not you think anyone will actually be convicted based on them. All it takes is an overzealous prosecutor to ruin someone financially. Sure, they'll eventually be vindicated, but they'll be bankrupted in the process.
In the case of the pro life demonstrators, they eventually won on appeal. But the process took nearly a decade of the their lives away and cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Had RICO not existed, the case would not have come to trial. What the whole affair showed was that free speech is only a right for those who can afford lawyers.
When I was in grad school for programming my instructor taught us how to search for the code we needed on the web.
Hopefully, he taught you more than that. I can understand using another programmer's libraries and code snippets for research purposes, but hopefully you learned something more in school than just how to copy and paste...
Moreover in my professional career as a programmer I ran into several stumbling blocks where I couldn't figure something out. I'd google for code...
Oops. Apparently not. At this point I don't know if you're deliberately trolling or honestly clueless. I'm hoping that you googled for code to find the details you didn't know, rather than searching for code which solved your problem.
I'm paid for results, not for originality. If people provide code on the web as tutorial purposes or just as a friendly piece of help then I would be going against my job to not use it.
Well, if your employer is the shady type, then your statement is correct. But there's an important, legal distinction between using someone else's code for educational or tutorial purposes and passing it off as your own. It's called copyright infringement, and it is very much illegal, and very possible that doing so will land you in jail. Especially if monetary gain is involved.
Most employers expect to own the copyright on the code you write for them. If you are a consultant, and have an agreement as such, you might retain the copyright. But what you're suggesting is quite unethical given current copyright law. Your employer has a reasonable expectation that you will follow the law, and that he will have legal right and title to the code you produce. Some employers even have such statements in the employment contracts, i.e., that you agree not to bring into their company any code which you did not create, and that you explicitly assign the copyright to them.
Moreover, I ask: If you bought a book on, say, ASP and it had sample code that did exactly what you wanted, would you then rewrite that code so it was not what was in the book? Of course you wouldn't!
Well, you might not, but I certainly would:
I understand that programming is occasionally challenging, but you don't learn how to solve complicated problems by googling for code. Furthermore, if you can't understand how to create a solution to your particular problem, how can you verify the code you copy actually solves the problem? If you can't understand the code, you don't know if it contains bugs or not.
I could probably rant for quite some time on sloppy programmers, but I'm optimistic that you aren't the type of programmer whose code consists of an unmaintainable, buggy, hodge-podge of code pasted from various sources. You are hopefully the type that takes the time to think about the problem, and if you can't solve it on your own, seeks to learn how by consulting a more educated reference. I'm confident that your googling for code
Just because it's on the web, even without any particular license, doesn't mean it's free for the taking.
It's kind of like the online magazine. Sure, you can view their web pages, but try republishing them and you'll find yourself in quite a bit of legal hot water.
The author might not think his code is worth that much, but as soon as it shows up in a commercial product, he might change his mind. Because he hasn't granted the company explicit permission to use it, he could sue for copyright infringement.
Granted, IANAL, but it seems like a rather foolish thing to expose yourself to a potential $150,000 in statutory damages for a mere 200 lines of code. Most competent coders could rewrite that in a week, if not a day.
If not, what's the best way to deal with this kind of situation? Since I'm now the only person working on this code, there's no practical way to report the situation confidentially.
First, do your research. Is it possible the code on the web was stolen or leaked from your employer? You might want to show the lead developer the web page.
If you should determine that the code was lifted from the web, the best response might be to simply rewrite the code, since it is only about 200 lines. Look for bugs in the existing code, which you could use to justify the rewrite to management, should they become curious, or worse, be of the shady type.
It might be helpful - after the rewrite - to send an email to all of the developers, the lead developer, and possibly his boss, saying something similar to this:
It is important to highlight that you have just saved the company money and reduced their liability, and make sure to address no one individual in particular. Do not come across as accusing any one person, but rather, try to express a helpful attitude.
Now, understand that you are new here, and do not yet know the culture. If your employer has a culture of copyright infringement, it would probably be in your best interest to find another employer. Typically, when such companies are found out, they find a scapegoat on which to hang the guilt, and because you're the new guy, that would probably be you.
Actually, I was under the impression that the Israelis were proud of the fact that they killed a person with this technique. I mentioned it because I anticipated that there would be those who would claim that a cellphone was too small to contain enough explosive to kill anyone, not because I wanted to start an Israeli-Palestinian flame fest.
Hmmm... But now that I think about it, is it possible to suicide-bomb an internet discussion? Could someone flame in such a flagrant manner as to destroy their karma to the extent that they no longer virtually exist? Would getting your IP banned from /. count? Or could it be argued that because /. banned you, that it wasn't true virtual suicide, but rather, virtual homicide? I digress...
That in Boston, jaywalking is a terrorist offense, that is, if you are carrying whiskey or other hard liquor (greater than 120 proof).
In fact, it's a terrorist offense anywhere in the world. The USA PATRIOT act makes 'disruption of public order.... involving a flammable liquid' a terrorist offense. Technically, double parking is a terrorist offense because it involves a flammable liquid (the gasoline in your tank) and a disruption of public order.
It is also possible that he was struck by a piece of heavy equipment, which, in addition to breaking his spine and ribs, also ruptured the cell phone battery. The ruptured battery then shorted out and melted.
I find it very difficult to believe that a cell phone battery could contain sufficient pressure break a person's spine and ribs. Unless, of course, said battery was packed with explosives. (And yes, this has been done before - by the Israelis).
You'll be able to squeeze in a trip to Starbucks between reboots. And this in the early morning, rush hour traffic.
Seriously, the most problematic part about today's user experience is that the majority of the computers run Windows, and more slowly than they did 20 years ago. Sure, you get nice, pretty graphics, but when you're actually trying to get work done, you'd rather have a responsive machine.
That was true before digital audio. Basically, anything with analog input and output - microphones, headphones, speaker cable, etc... is subject to signal degradation from corrosion. But even aluminum contacts do not corrode in normal residential environments, which makes it a little pointless. Still, when it comes to low power applications like microphones and headphones, you want the best contact you can get, and gold usually isn't that much more expensive. It happens to be better than copper with respect to electrical conductivity, and unlike copper, is more corrosion resistant.
However, we're seeing cables with gold plated connectors used for digital data - like monitors, digital video, etc... In these circumstances, it really doesn't make that much of a difference - the connectors tend not to corrode in the first place, and in the second, digital data transmission is much more tolerant of error than analog. By the time corrosion corrupts a digital signal, your connectors will have rusted to the jack...
That the President has proposed defining pi as exactly 3, to ease the burden on elementary math teachers.
Because they are promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs, that's why. They see the connection between the shoddy evidence gathering of the RIAA and the possibility that merely possessing certain software programs will be considered as evidence of infringement.
The FSF has a policy against using proprietary software; it's not as if they are defending the illegal downloading of copyrighted material. Rather, it seems they are concerned, and rightly so, that a judicial precedent may establish the mere possession of file sharing programs as a de facto evidence of guilt, regardless of whether or not any infringement actually occurred.
Think about that for a moment. The whole Web is just one large, distributed, filesharing program. Imagine the consequences if everything was outlawed because of what it could be used for, rather than outlawing the specific act it might be used for. Even though the RIAA cases deal with copyright, it is more of a war on technology than anything else, and it has far-reaching implications for even those who do not infringe copyright. The real problem that the RIAA is fighting is filesharing itself - it could completely supplant them as the arbiter of music; their very survival depends on keeping individuals from sharing music - copyrighted or not - amongst themselves. The RIAA knows very well that once musicians discover publishing via filesharing, their stranglehold on the industry is over.
So what does the RIAA want? That's right - to control your computer, and dictate which software you are allowed to run. That's the only way to protect their content monopoly, and you can bet their going to try any means possible to accomplish it, consumer rights notwithstanding.
Okay, sure, you didn't give out your public key. But say you want to correspond, securely, with me, and say also, that the Feds are tapping the phone.
Here's how it plays out: I go get my own public/private key pair. I email you my public key, but in the process, the Feds intercept the email, and alter it so that it's their public key, not mine. The reverse key exchange goes the same way. Then, when you send a message to me, they decrypt it, read it, and encrypt it with their public key. Then they forward the mail to me. Because I've accepted your public key (which is really the Fed's key), I think it is legitimately from you. And I trust you. Problem is, the Feds can now read all of our emails, even though we think they're securely encrypted.
What's the solution? Oh, you could publish your public key, but how would I know that the html I'm receiving is really from your website, and not altered by a proxy? Or you could call me and recite your public key, but then we may as well be using private key encryption anyway.
Security is not as straightforward as merely following the directions.
There is actually a much easier, more secure way than you mention.
Rather than using special mailers, setting up servers, etc..., you could do the following:
Granted, you have to do copy and paste for every send and receive, but there are a lot fewer potential compromises in this scenario than the one you mention. Even if you are using Putty, you still run the risk that someone has a keylogger installed on the public computer - having SSL or SSH functionality won't do you any good in those circumstances.
So what, really, does this buy you:
The difficulty in encryption nowadays is that you either go with something secure and less convenient, or you go with convenience over security. With encryption, though, if you don't get it right the first time, you might not get a second chance.
I used to be an embedded Linux developer.
However, I could more thoughtfully comment on this if the article revealed just what patents Microsoft believes Kyocera to be violating. It could have nothing to do with Linux; moreover, it could very well be a patent on some method of printing which is specific to the Kyocera hardware and just happens to be implemented as a Linux driver.
Looks more like FUD against Linux than anything else.
Ironically, I have relatives who worked for such services.
But, as a famous musician once sang, "Callin' it your job don't make it right." The fact is, these people make a living by annoying far more people than those to whom they sell. They deliberately leech time away from you and your family for the sake of their financial gain. They shift the true cost of their sales from the company to the country as a whole. They are the white-collar equivalent of the power plant that makes money by burning garbage and polluting the air; they pass the cost of their operations onto the public as a whole, while pocketing all of the profit for themselves.
The problem is that the true cost of the telemarketer is spread across the entire country's economy, so it is barely noticed. But think about this: a telemarketer making $400 a week will drain at least $10,000 of lost productivity from the economy as a whole. So, instead of improving the economy and the GDP, they actually make it worse. Yes, they deserve what they get, because they shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Even for the cases in which they do not directly interrupt working hours, the case can be made that they cause even greater impact because the family's time together is more valuable than the employee's time at work.
Ironic, that the answering machine is the savior of my family's dinner time.
Now maybe Vista is to blame, but the whole system will hang now and then for 10 secs or more.
No, that's the Windows Vista Minus Pack - first introduced on Windows 98, the Minus Pack includes assorted features such as:
Just when you actually got your computer to work right, the Minus Pack brings the look and feel of the SHINY! NEW! computer back.
I usually just hang up if there's no answer. But sometimes, I'll play their game. They invade my privacy, I figure I'm within my rights to ask a few questions:
Now, understand that these people are paid by the hour. I'm not wasting their time, I'm wasting their employers time.
Telemarketing is profitable because most of the people who don't want to buy will just hang up the phone. If everyone they called insisted on having a nice, cordial, and polite conversation about political topics, the business model would fail entirely. So, if you hate telemarketing, use the calls as a nice way of promoting your favorite political party, religious position, human rights advocacy, etc... You might even explain to them such topics as:
Remember, it's a captive audience. Don't be afraid to speak your mind - people need to know!. Don't be intimidated by them. Rather, use the opportunity for political activism!