Considering the fact that for nearly 2,000 years, the best scientific thinkers thought the Earth the center of the Universe, if not flat, a healthy skepticism in Darwinism is warranted. If it turns out to be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time science has been wrong on such a fundamental question.
Yes, science corrects itself. Eventually.
Problem is, most people, many slashdotter included, have a penchant for truth. We'd rather know for certain that something is true than believe in a tentative explanation which could be later shown false through the discovery of additional data. And for questions such as the meaning of life and mankind's role in the universe, and in relation to each other, science has no answers, indeed, it cannot answer such questions. The issue of creation is important to religion, because our understanding of how we came to be influences how we think of ourselves and our sense of purpose. A "coming into being" without the involvement of an almighty God implies that human existence is futile, a mere utilitarian existence without any binding morality whatsoever; the actions of mankind cannot be judged according to what is right and wrong, but rather, what is most expedient.
That is why creationism matters. And also why some people so vehemently object. The debates is less about science than it is about our perceived relationship to God, and even to the subject of God's very existence.
Now, some of us who have considered the problem do not find a problem with a God who directs evolution, or even one who *designed* evolution to produce human beings (wouldn't it be smarter for God to have let matter do the work for him?). However, in the interest of those less well informed, we do no one any favors by continuing to beat the drum of evolution in the faces of those who do not have the capacity to properly evaluate ideas beyond those espoused by authority. Believe it or not, many people believe Creationism not because of reasoned evaluation, but rather, because their gut feeling tells them evolutionists are out to destroy their religion; they have been so poorly educated that they trust not their own reason, but only the reason of others to provide them with their own opinions. And sadly, on the first count (that is, evolutionists out to destroy religion), they are right more often than not. In the end, the debate only damages the credibility of science and religion alike, and, like most internet discussions, often generates more heat than light.
They wouldn't have qualified. And my id is not that low.
It seems that Google wants the startups to go with someone, or rather, something else - which is not a bad idea until you consider the fact this practice will eventually cut Google out of a large portion of the market. Why would a well-established website, with its own marketing staff, cater to Google? Once you've hired marketing staff (as opposed to just using Google), there's going to be a resistance to change. Sure, you can fire them, but I'm thinking that ~100,000 views/day point, the operation is still on first-name-basis scale, and nobody likes firing their friends.
I was thinking of buying a powerbook. But after this, it's apparent that both Apple and Microsoft have their interests at heart more than those of the consumer.
I'll stick with my Linux laptop instead. No reason to buy from a closed company, anyway. Why, yes, I expect to use my hardware in the way I intend to, not the way the manufacturer "lets" me. <SARCASM> How gracious of Apple to let you play music on hardware you've bought. We should all feel so lucky that Apple allows us this priveledge. </SARCASM>
They call themselves the RIAA, but really, they represent companies like Sony, UMG, Time-Warner, etc... The RIAA moniker is used to keep their activities from reflecting poorly on the sponsoring companies.
You know what's interesting? When I was younger, I had heard things about pop music being evil, then rock music being evil, and certainly, gangsta rap was evil. I just kind of dismissed them, thinking, how could listening to music be evil?
Turns out, I was asking the wrong question. The problem wasn't in listening to the music, so much as it was that my paying for music was funding evil things, directly and indirectly. Sure, rappers talking about killing cops isn't a good thing, but it wasn't as nearly as bad as what music purchasers were doing by feeding the record companies:
I didn't think about it at the time, but the record companies indirectly supported things like drug addiction, misogynism, and even satanism through the bands they promoted.
I didn't know that I was financing the exploitation of musicians. It wouldn't be until years later that I would learn that record company contracts often leave the band in debt to the record company, as the record company makes record revenues off the music.
I didn't know that the money I used to buy CD's would later be used to sue single mothers and teenagers.
I can't remember the last time I bought a CD. In fact, I'm probably one of those lost sales the RIAA blames on piracy. The thought that someone might not buy their music because they object to their lack of morality and common decency doesn't even occur to them. They think everyone else is just like them - greedy, money grubbers who can't stand the notion of actually paying for music. (After all, the RIAA member companies do their best to avoid paying the musicians).
You don't need to explain why you don't patronize the RIAA member companies like Sony, etc... Instead, ask the question, "What good has the RIAA done for music, musicians, and society in general?"
More likely, you'll have to pay $19.95 to download Windows Ad Supported.
If you want to get rid of most of the ads, you'll have to pay an additional $189.95. After paying this fee, you'll only see the Microsoft Premiere Vendor(TM) ads. And only every other day.
To go completely ad-free, you'll have to buy a Premier Partner Subscription, with a one-time activation charge of $399.95 and monthly subscription fee of $19.95.
The thing that gets me is that Wikipedia seems to know more about the ATI chips than ATI. Of course this can't actually be the case, but I think it is somewhat telling that ATI is not the authoritative reference for even their own hardware. There seems to be some uneasiness with releasing the full product specs, which suggests to me that they don't have a real committment to openness.
Well, if I can't get specs, my next video card will be an nVidia. Why should I suffer because my HW vendor wants to hide something from me? Do they really believe that non-functional hardware gains them any marketshare?
With Windows hopelessly insecure, my only real option is to either buy a Mac, which is too expensive for my taste, or to use Linux. Which means that if ATI doesn't provide the documentation that I - or somebody - needs to write open drivers, I'm just not going to buy their HW. Period. That super-secret, proprietary graphics pipeline won't sell ATI cards if no one can use it. Do they really think that I'm going to run Windows just to get video to work?
For those of us who have an ATI X1250, that's not much good.
I'm reading these, stuck wondering to which products they actually apply (as in, Marketing Names(TM)). It would be nice if they mentioned the products by name. Also, there's no high level overview, so you just have to guess how the registers work.
Hopefully someone can provide a link to more documentation, because this is just trickle compared to what the OEMs must get from ATI. Normally, you'd get a datasheet, a register reference, a technical reference manual, and programmer's guide. ATI provides one of these, and people are ecstatic? This is hardly open.
Re:Why bother keeping corporate policies up to dat
on
When Ethics and IT Collide
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Because it:
keeps corporate policymakers and HR people employed, and
Gives them the ability to fire someone who violates the policy, and
Allows them the leeway to fire someone whom they don't like, by so narrowly defining the Acceptable Use Policy to the point where the average employee has violated at least one of its provisions.
That's why. Whenever you don't understand a corporate decision, just ask yourself, "Who benefits from this?", and soon the reason will become obvious. It's not that corporations make non-sensical decisions; rather, that corporate decisions are often motivated more by internal politics and the need to maintain a semblance of professionalism than anything else.
This is odd. I thought free speech in America only applied to those opinions with which a significant portion of the general public agrees.
For the site to be back up suggests that at least someone in America values free speech to the extent that they would tolerate an opinion with which they disagree.
Of course, I have a 5 year old Dell. People think they can buy whatever hardware they want and just have it work. No.
Not to troll, but Windows users have been able to do this for the past 15 years. People who know nothing about hardware, engineering, recompiling kernels, or editing config files have been able to install hardware in Windows since Windows 95. Granted, a lot of the cheap hardware had buggy drivers, but they could at least get it to work for a while.
What gets me is that the Linux community still believes, in 2007, that auto-detection of hardware isn't worth the effort. At least X got it right a few years ago - I shouldn't have to know which video HW I'm running; if you don't recognize the specific HW, you can at least default to the standard VESA modes. But a large part of driver installation on Linux is a manual process; on my 2003 Toshiba laptop, I end up recompiling the kernel to get the sound to work. I haven't been able to upgrade to 2.6 series, either, because there's some bug with the power management and I don't have the time to look into it.
And just recently, I bought an ASUS motherboard, and tried to install Slackware 12.0 on it. And you know what happened? The kernel hangs after reporting the serial driver message. Sure, I could trace through the code to find the likely culprit (I used to do Linux dev, and have a pretty good idea of where it is hanging...), but it's just not worth the effort. The interesting part is that Slackware 10.1 and 10.2 boot just fine.
So even those of us who do our research on HW sometimes get burned. Remember how ATI said they were going to open up their graphics chipsets? I figured I'd buy a motherboard with an ATI chipset, because Linux support had been good in the past. And yet come to find out that they really didn't open up their platform, and now I'm stuck with a Linux-incompatible motherboard, even though I actually did a fair amount of research before buying it. I'm not going to spend $5000 worth of my time to buy a $100 Linux compatible motherboard, only to find that it doesn't work because I missed the latest slashdot article detailing ATI's malfeasence.
As an embedded engineer, I've encountered numerous cases where power cycling RAM did not alter the contents.
In fact, I've seen systems boot and run even after the power was cut for several seconds. Some types of SRAM and SDRAM have the ability to retain an (imperfect) memory image even at very low voltage levels. Sure, it's not guaranteed to be accurate by the manufacturer, but RAM "images" are a pretty well known phenomenon. In some cases, the contents of memory can be reconstructed even after the computer has been powered off and removed to a forensic laboratory.
This is not random at all. In fact, it's more likely to produce an easily exploitable RNG than anything else; I would not be at all surprised if the standard UNIX random number generator provided better security.
Just like patents, we in America need a profit-making monopoly to encourage progress in the useful arts and sciences. Because, everyone knows that businesses won't invest in technology unless they can turn it into a profit-making monopoly and shut out the competition.;-)
Some people think of progress as something that enriches all of humankind. Obviously, these people don't work for the Justice Department - whose notion of progress is measured by how much money is being made from things formerly given away for free. Apparently, progress isn't progress unless you can put a dollar value on it and sell it. It's called Market Creation(TM), and it is considered a Good Thing(TM) by those who believe Corporate America(SM) is the savior of the working classes.
After all, every politician drools at the prospect of creating jobs out of thin air. The rights of the consumer, OTOH, don't seem so important.
Now is the time for us to raise our concerns with our elected officials. Write or call a senator. Send them an email before it becomes "premium content" and subject to an additional surcharge.
I've heard this before from ATI, but have yet to see any real progress. Okay, I just bought an ASUS motherboard, and they were kind enough to include the Linux drivers - in binary. But a Google search for "ATI Radeon Datasheet" reveals no datasheets, only sad commentary on how ATI has failed to live up to its promises.
The second main cultural difference we would like to point out is the lack of more in-depth technical information on ATI products written in clear language available to the public. On a press presentation held on September, 2005, ATI spokesperson said that from that date on all ATI would fully disclosure all the technical details (like block diagrams and in-depth explanations, for example) of their architecture, but this never hit the web, what contrasts with AMD philosophy. AMD and all other microprocessor manufacturers always made available their datasheets with in-depth information about their products. For us that work in a highly technical media, not having access to the technical information right away is really bad.
As someone who has ported Linux framebuffer drivers to different ARM platforms, I would not have much of a problem writing Linux drivers for the ATI chips. I could probably do it in a few weeks of part time effort (at least as far as the FB is concerned), maybe a little more if I wanted to include special features. (Read: reinvent the 3D rendering wheel.)
The problem is, though, that I bought this ASUS motherboard thinking that it was open; that I could write the drivers for the video card if need be. Now that I can't get a datasheet, I'm dependent on the good graces of ATI.
Every single one of them are either retold stories, discredited frauds, explainable phenomena, within statistical ranges
You do realize you just described all of modern science, right? Unless you personally have repeated and verified all of the experiments done in physics, chemistry, biology, etc... you are merely believing what someone else has told you. Someone could simply make up a phenomenon, publish bogus experiments, and you would be none the wiser.
The interesting thing is that far more people have personally verified God's existence than the science which routinely makes the papers. God's existence is one of the few topics which has been more thoroughly reviewed than any other subject in human history.
Why then would you be an atheist? Miracles have been observed for the past 4,000 years. Man's notion of God's existence is the longest held tenet in the written history of our existence. It would seem that if it were incorrect, we would have found out by now.
The interesting thing is that other methods of knowing - such as scientific discovery - have not only been wrong, but spectacularly so. From the Golden Age of Greece until the Renaissance, it was held that the Earth was the center of the universe. Imagine if one's eternal destiny had been contingent on knowing the correct answer to this question.
Yes, science does correct itself - eventually. But you never know if what you believe today will be shown wrong tomorrow by the discovery of additional material. People want to know the truth, not something that *may* be true until later shown false. Logic can assist, but it is only as good as the assumptions on which it is predicated. Divine revelation, OTOH, is known to be true by virtue of the authority from which it is given. And interestingly, is often confirmed through miracles.
If you want to believe in a tentative explanation which could be true, listen to science. If you want to know eternal truth that has been verified true throughout the centuries, listen to divine revelation. (Of course, for questions of the physical environment, you're stuck with science, but on these matters it's usually a pretty safe bet, global warming and other politically sensitive subjects excepted.)
Yes, they'll tighten up their security, but it is possible that they were going to do it silently, anyway.
I mean, if you're going to do research in this area - that is, expend effort looking at security - it's really a cop out to claim that you can't be bothered to contact the embassies individually. You were neither required, nor asked, to evaluate their security. Instead, you take it upon yourself to expend the effort to do the research, and then claim that you can't expend the additional effort to do responsible disclosure?
This guy had a reasonable expectation that he was going to find vulnerabilities, and should have known from the start that doing the research would incur the responsibility of either keeping them secret, or disclosing them in a responsible way. He did neither.
In the local jail. Why else would anyone do something so boneheaded?
Honestly, I can't think of any better way to get jailed than to embarrass and irritate the high-level diplomats of 100 countries.
Yes, it was easier than turning the list over to authorities, or contacting each of the embassies. So what? It could easily be argued that he had a duty of confidentiality with his client that he failed to observe.
Furthermore, he has actually made security worse by disclosing in this matter. Who knows how many embassies were already aware of the problem, and were in the process of tightening security? It is also likely that at least some of the embassies would have discovered the vulnerabilities independently of this consultant through internal audits, and would have fixed them silently.
Now, while this guy has stirred up a hornet's nest, he hadn't really done anything to improve the security of these embassies. Sure, they have to fix it now, but they might have done it anyway.
And what if the Swedes were aware of this and using this information for intel gathering? I don't think anyone is happy he did this.
To think about how they would solve the problem of compensating those involved in media production, and if lawsuits would be an ethically appropriate part of your business model.
Interestingly, if you look at the parent directory of the referenced "corrected" data, you get a much different picture.
Sure, the blogger did find a Y2K anomaly, but this doesn't discredit global warming the least; it just shows that the US isn't warming quite like the rest of the world.
That it is not in the health insurance company's best interest for employees to know how likely they are to get sick.
If people knew their relative risk, only those likely to get sick would bother buying health insurance. At which point, the whole basis of affordable health insurance would go out the window.
By charging extra fees for the "unhealthy" indicators, this company is basically telling those who don't get charged that they don't need health insurance. At which point those people will begin to ask themselves, "Why should I be paying money for health insurance, when my healthcare bills are less than my premiums, and even the insurance co. thinks I'm not likely to get sick?"
Yes, but the actual people involved in making a film - the writers, actors, grips, stagehands, etc... would probably not call for the arrest of someone making a 20 second film clip. They'd probably look at the situation, see that no harm was done, and just dismiss it.
It is when corporations get involved that you see the extremes. A corporation fiduciarily responsible to its shareholders cannot let the little things slip that ordinary people would just ignore.
It's not the pursuit of profit that is wrong; it is the pursuit of profit above all else. Things like tolerance, forgiveness, and human rights get lost when money becomes the sole reason for the existence of a corporation.
Seriously, how long will it take before people realize that crimes such as murder and rape are much less severe than threatening the profits of a corporation?
Look, we're a capitalist country here. Money is everything. Nobody cares about your so-called rights unless there's a dollar to be made from it. If you don't like it, I'm sure there's some socialist country up north that you could move to. After you serve your year in jail.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the fact that for nearly 2,000 years, the best scientific thinkers thought the Earth the center of the Universe, if not flat, a healthy skepticism in Darwinism is warranted. If it turns out to be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time science has been wrong on such a fundamental question.
Yes, science corrects itself. Eventually.
Problem is, most people, many slashdotter included, have a penchant for truth. We'd rather know for certain that something is true than believe in a tentative explanation which could be later shown false through the discovery of additional data. And for questions such as the meaning of life and mankind's role in the universe, and in relation to each other, science has no answers, indeed, it cannot answer such questions. The issue of creation is important to religion, because our understanding of how we came to be influences how we think of ourselves and our sense of purpose. A "coming into being" without the involvement of an almighty God implies that human existence is futile, a mere utilitarian existence without any binding morality whatsoever; the actions of mankind cannot be judged according to what is right and wrong, but rather, what is most expedient.
That is why creationism matters. And also why some people so vehemently object. The debates is less about science than it is about our perceived relationship to God, and even to the subject of God's very existence.
Now, some of us who have considered the problem do not find a problem with a God who directs evolution, or even one who *designed* evolution to produce human beings (wouldn't it be smarter for God to have let matter do the work for him?). However, in the interest of those less well informed, we do no one any favors by continuing to beat the drum of evolution in the faces of those who do not have the capacity to properly evaluate ideas beyond those espoused by authority. Believe it or not, many people believe Creationism not because of reasoned evaluation, but rather, because their gut feeling tells them evolutionists are out to destroy their religion; they have been so poorly educated that they trust not their own reason, but only the reason of others to provide them with their own opinions. And sadly, on the first count (that is, evolutionists out to destroy religion), they are right more often than not. In the end, the debate only damages the credibility of science and religion alike, and, like most internet discussions, often generates more heat than light.
They wouldn't have qualified. And my id is not that low.
It seems that Google wants the startups to go with someone, or rather, something else - which is not a bad idea until you consider the fact this practice will eventually cut Google out of a large portion of the market. Why would a well-established website, with its own marketing staff, cater to Google? Once you've hired marketing staff (as opposed to just using Google), there's going to be a resistance to change. Sure, you can fire them, but I'm thinking that ~100,000 views/day point, the operation is still on first-name-basis scale, and nobody likes firing their friends.
Everybody starts small.
I was thinking of buying a powerbook. But after this, it's apparent that both Apple and Microsoft have their interests at heart more than those of the consumer.
I'll stick with my Linux laptop instead. No reason to buy from a closed company, anyway. Why, yes, I expect to use my hardware in the way I intend to, not the way the manufacturer "lets" me. <SARCASM> How gracious of Apple to let you play music on hardware you've bought. We should all feel so lucky that Apple allows us this priveledge. </SARCASM>
They call themselves the RIAA, but really, they represent companies like Sony, UMG, Time-Warner, etc... The RIAA moniker is used to keep their activities from reflecting poorly on the sponsoring companies.
You know what's interesting? When I was younger, I had heard things about pop music being evil, then rock music being evil, and certainly, gangsta rap was evil. I just kind of dismissed them, thinking, how could listening to music be evil?
Turns out, I was asking the wrong question. The problem wasn't in listening to the music, so much as it was that my paying for music was funding evil things, directly and indirectly. Sure, rappers talking about killing cops isn't a good thing, but it wasn't as nearly as bad as what music purchasers were doing by feeding the record companies:
I can't remember the last time I bought a CD. In fact, I'm probably one of those lost sales the RIAA blames on piracy. The thought that someone might not buy their music because they object to their lack of morality and common decency doesn't even occur to them. They think everyone else is just like them - greedy, money grubbers who can't stand the notion of actually paying for music. (After all, the RIAA member companies do their best to avoid paying the musicians).
You don't need to explain why you don't patronize the RIAA member companies like Sony, etc... Instead, ask the question, "What good has the RIAA done for music, musicians, and society in general?"
The silence will be deafening.
More likely, you'll have to pay $19.95 to download Windows Ad Supported.
If you want to get rid of most of the ads, you'll have to pay an additional $189.95. After paying this fee, you'll only see the Microsoft Premiere Vendor(TM) ads. And only every other day.
To go completely ad-free, you'll have to buy a Premier Partner Subscription, with a one-time activation charge of $399.95 and monthly subscription fee of $19.95.
The thing that gets me is that Wikipedia seems to know more about the ATI chips than ATI. Of course this can't actually be the case, but I think it is somewhat telling that ATI is not the authoritative reference for even their own hardware. There seems to be some uneasiness with releasing the full product specs, which suggests to me that they don't have a real committment to openness.
Well, if I can't get specs, my next video card will be an nVidia. Why should I suffer because my HW vendor wants to hide something from me? Do they really believe that non-functional hardware gains them any marketshare?
With Windows hopelessly insecure, my only real option is to either buy a Mac, which is too expensive for my taste, or to use Linux. Which means that if ATI doesn't provide the documentation that I - or somebody - needs to write open drivers, I'm just not going to buy their HW. Period. That super-secret, proprietary graphics pipeline won't sell ATI cards if no one can use it. Do they really think that I'm going to run Windows just to get video to work?
For those of us who have an ATI X1250, that's not much good.
I'm reading these, stuck wondering to which products they actually apply (as in, Marketing Names(TM)). It would be nice if they mentioned the products by name. Also, there's no high level overview, so you just have to guess how the registers work.
Hopefully someone can provide a link to more documentation, because this is just trickle compared to what the OEMs must get from ATI. Normally, you'd get a datasheet, a register reference, a technical reference manual, and programmer's guide. ATI provides one of these, and people are ecstatic? This is hardly open.
Because it:
That's why. Whenever you don't understand a corporate decision, just ask yourself, "Who benefits from this?", and soon the reason will become obvious. It's not that corporations make non-sensical decisions; rather, that corporate decisions are often motivated more by internal politics and the need to maintain a semblance of professionalism than anything else.
This is odd. I thought free speech in America only applied to those opinions with which a significant portion of the general public agrees.
For the site to be back up suggests that at least someone in America values free speech to the extent that they would tolerate an opinion with which they disagree.
Truly strange indeed!
Of course, I have a 5 year old Dell. People think they can buy whatever hardware they want and just have it work. No.
Not to troll, but Windows users have been able to do this for the past 15 years. People who know nothing about hardware, engineering, recompiling kernels, or editing config files have been able to install hardware in Windows since Windows 95. Granted, a lot of the cheap hardware had buggy drivers, but they could at least get it to work for a while.
What gets me is that the Linux community still believes, in 2007, that auto-detection of hardware isn't worth the effort. At least X got it right a few years ago - I shouldn't have to know which video HW I'm running; if you don't recognize the specific HW, you can at least default to the standard VESA modes. But a large part of driver installation on Linux is a manual process; on my 2003 Toshiba laptop, I end up recompiling the kernel to get the sound to work. I haven't been able to upgrade to 2.6 series, either, because there's some bug with the power management and I don't have the time to look into it.
And just recently, I bought an ASUS motherboard, and tried to install Slackware 12.0 on it. And you know what happened? The kernel hangs after reporting the serial driver message. Sure, I could trace through the code to find the likely culprit (I used to do Linux dev, and have a pretty good idea of where it is hanging...), but it's just not worth the effort. The interesting part is that Slackware 10.1 and 10.2 boot just fine.
So even those of us who do our research on HW sometimes get burned. Remember how ATI said they were going to open up their graphics chipsets? I figured I'd buy a motherboard with an ATI chipset, because Linux support had been good in the past. And yet come to find out that they really didn't open up their platform, and now I'm stuck with a Linux-incompatible motherboard, even though I actually did a fair amount of research before buying it. I'm not going to spend $5000 worth of my time to buy a $100 Linux compatible motherboard, only to find that it doesn't work because I missed the latest slashdot article detailing ATI's malfeasence.
As an embedded engineer, I've encountered numerous cases where power cycling RAM did not alter the contents.
In fact, I've seen systems boot and run even after the power was cut for several seconds. Some types of SRAM and SDRAM have the ability to retain an (imperfect) memory image even at very low voltage levels. Sure, it's not guaranteed to be accurate by the manufacturer, but RAM "images" are a pretty well known phenomenon. In some cases, the contents of memory can be reconstructed even after the computer has been powered off and removed to a forensic laboratory.
This is not random at all. In fact, it's more likely to produce an easily exploitable RNG than anything else; I would not be at all surprised if the standard UNIX random number generator provided better security.
Just like patents, we in America need a profit-making monopoly to encourage progress in the useful arts and sciences. Because, everyone knows that businesses won't invest in technology unless they can turn it into a profit-making monopoly and shut out the competition. ;-)
Some people think of progress as something that enriches all of humankind. Obviously, these people don't work for the Justice Department - whose notion of progress is measured by how much money is being made from things formerly given away for free. Apparently, progress isn't progress unless you can put a dollar value on it and sell it. It's called Market Creation(TM), and it is considered a Good Thing(TM) by those who believe Corporate America(SM) is the savior of the working classes.
After all, every politician drools at the prospect of creating jobs out of thin air. The rights of the consumer, OTOH, don't seem so important.
Now is the time for us to raise our concerns with our elected officials. Write or call a senator. Send them an email before it becomes "premium content" and subject to an additional surcharge.
I've heard this before from ATI, but have yet to see any real progress. Okay, I just bought an ASUS motherboard, and they were kind enough to include the Linux drivers - in binary. But a Google search for "ATI Radeon Datasheet" reveals no datasheets, only sad commentary on how ATI has failed to live up to its promises.
From this article comes:
The second main cultural difference we would like to point out is the lack of more in-depth technical information on ATI products written in clear language available to the public. On a press presentation held on September, 2005, ATI spokesperson said that from that date on all ATI would fully disclosure all the technical details (like block diagrams and in-depth explanations, for example) of their architecture, but this never hit the web, what contrasts with AMD philosophy. AMD and all other microprocessor manufacturers always made available their datasheets with in-depth information about their products. For us that work in a highly technical media, not having access to the technical information right away is really bad.
As someone who has ported Linux framebuffer drivers to different ARM platforms, I would not have much of a problem writing Linux drivers for the ATI chips. I could probably do it in a few weeks of part time effort (at least as far as the FB is concerned), maybe a little more if I wanted to include special features. (Read: reinvent the 3D rendering wheel.)
The problem is, though, that I bought this ASUS motherboard thinking that it was open; that I could write the drivers for the video card if need be. Now that I can't get a datasheet, I'm dependent on the good graces of ATI.
Every single one of them are either retold stories, discredited frauds, explainable phenomena, within statistical ranges
You do realize you just described all of modern science, right? Unless you personally have repeated and verified all of the experiments done in physics, chemistry, biology, etc... you are merely believing what someone else has told you. Someone could simply make up a phenomenon, publish bogus experiments, and you would be none the wiser.
The interesting thing is that far more people have personally verified God's existence than the science which routinely makes the papers. God's existence is one of the few topics which has been more thoroughly reviewed than any other subject in human history.
No observed miracles? Just tales of miracles?
Troll on.
faith in things supported by our observations
Why then would you be an atheist? Miracles have been observed for the past 4,000 years. Man's notion of God's existence is the longest held tenet in the written history of our existence. It would seem that if it were incorrect, we would have found out by now.
The interesting thing is that other methods of knowing - such as scientific discovery - have not only been wrong, but spectacularly so. From the Golden Age of Greece until the Renaissance, it was held that the Earth was the center of the universe. Imagine if one's eternal destiny had been contingent on knowing the correct answer to this question.
Yes, science does correct itself - eventually. But you never know if what you believe today will be shown wrong tomorrow by the discovery of additional material. People want to know the truth, not something that *may* be true until later shown false. Logic can assist, but it is only as good as the assumptions on which it is predicated. Divine revelation, OTOH, is known to be true by virtue of the authority from which it is given. And interestingly, is often confirmed through miracles.
If you want to believe in a tentative explanation which could be true, listen to science. If you want to know eternal truth that has been verified true throughout the centuries, listen to divine revelation. (Of course, for questions of the physical environment, you're stuck with science, but on these matters it's usually a pretty safe bet, global warming and other politically sensitive subjects excepted.)
Yes, they'll tighten up their security, but it is possible that they were going to do it silently, anyway.
I mean, if you're going to do research in this area - that is, expend effort looking at security - it's really a cop out to claim that you can't be bothered to contact the embassies individually. You were neither required, nor asked, to evaluate their security. Instead, you take it upon yourself to expend the effort to do the research, and then claim that you can't expend the additional effort to do responsible disclosure?
This guy had a reasonable expectation that he was going to find vulnerabilities, and should have known from the start that doing the research would incur the responsibility of either keeping them secret, or disclosing them in a responsible way. He did neither.
In the local jail. Why else would anyone do something so boneheaded?
Honestly, I can't think of any better way to get jailed than to embarrass and irritate the high-level diplomats of 100 countries.
Yes, it was easier than turning the list over to authorities, or contacting each of the embassies. So what? It could easily be argued that he had a duty of confidentiality with his client that he failed to observe.
Furthermore, he has actually made security worse by disclosing in this matter. Who knows how many embassies were already aware of the problem, and were in the process of tightening security? It is also likely that at least some of the embassies would have discovered the vulnerabilities independently of this consultant through internal audits, and would have fixed them silently.
Now, while this guy has stirred up a hornet's nest, he hadn't really done anything to improve the security of these embassies. Sure, they have to fix it now, but they might have done it anyway.
And what if the Swedes were aware of this and using this information for intel gathering? I don't think anyone is happy he did this.
To think about how they would solve the problem of compensating those involved in media production, and if lawsuits would be an ethically appropriate part of your business model.
I find it kind of odd that this is news considering that the AMD Geode runs a 1 GHz and draws only 1 watt of power. And it, too, is x86.
And the Geode is at least a year old.
Interestingly, if you look at the parent directory of the referenced "corrected" data, you get a much different picture.
Sure, the blogger did find a Y2K anomaly, but this doesn't discredit global warming the least; it just shows that the US isn't warming quite like the rest of the world.
That it is not in the health insurance company's best interest for employees to know how likely they are to get sick.
If people knew their relative risk, only those likely to get sick would bother buying health insurance. At which point, the whole basis of affordable health insurance would go out the window.
By charging extra fees for the "unhealthy" indicators, this company is basically telling those who don't get charged that they don't need health insurance. At which point those people will begin to ask themselves, "Why should I be paying money for health insurance, when my healthcare bills are less than my premiums, and even the insurance co. thinks I'm not likely to get sick?"
You know, so I could screen out shows that would insult my intelligence?
Just think of the possibilities:
Yeah, that's it! A chip for everyone! The world will finally be safe from itself ;-)
Come to think of it, I could just turn off the tv or change the channel... Hmmm...
Yes, but the actual people involved in making a film - the writers, actors, grips, stagehands, etc... would probably not call for the arrest of someone making a 20 second film clip. They'd probably look at the situation, see that no harm was done, and just dismiss it.
It is when corporations get involved that you see the extremes. A corporation fiduciarily responsible to its shareholders cannot let the little things slip that ordinary people would just ignore.
It's not the pursuit of profit that is wrong; it is the pursuit of profit above all else. Things like tolerance, forgiveness, and human rights get lost when money becomes the sole reason for the existence of a corporation.
Make it 20 years.
Seriously, how long will it take before people realize that crimes such as murder and rape are much less severe than threatening the profits of a corporation?
Look, we're a capitalist country here. Money is everything. Nobody cares about your so-called rights unless there's a dollar to be made from it. If you don't like it, I'm sure there's some socialist country up north that you could move to. After you serve your year in jail.