to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court.
This is still highly lopsided.
Why does a "wrongfully accused" have to sue? Shouldn't that be that this accused has been sued already or so?
If really this way it is still that the music company just can say "you're file sharing!" without having to have any firm proof, as most file sharers will not sue in the first place because of the huge costs involved just to start up a suit.
I'd go with PHP because it's much more useful for getting jobs, etc., after the competition.
Depends on whether the job you're after is asking you whether you can program, or whether you know a specific programming language. I'd go after the first type of jobs. For anyone who knows programming, learning a new language should be matter of hours for the basic syntax and maybe a few weeks of actually working with it to become familiar with it.
And considering Java, PHP and Visual Basic are also in the list I don't think speed is too much of an issue really. Those languages are not known for speedy execution.
I have heard the rule of thumb that a Python solution is something like half the speed of a C solution, so that's not too bad.
Pascal may be nice too. My college was teaching Turbo Pascal, that was very easy for me to pick up (especially as I knew the idea of programming thanks to BASIC already). I found it a quite easy syntax to pick up, not as easy and clear as Python which is my current favourite, it certainly will be easier than C/C++ (I tasted that and found it too hard to learn for my purposes, especially thanks to the fact that you have to compile before you can run - Python debugs easier).
If I were to do something like you propose I'd go for Python. From what I've seen from the other languages it's the easiest to learn. I think it's the best current language for teaching programming.
If an international agreement has to remain secret, then it is bad for the general people. No doubt about that. If it is good for the public, why keep it secret in the first place? When the agreement comes in force, it has to be published to be of any use in the first place. ACTA is about forcing other countries to make laws around it - that can only be done if it is public. Laws, by nature, have to be public,
There can be no other reason for such an agreement to be drafted in secret than that it is against the wishes of the general public. And possibly against the legislatures of many of the countries involved. So no matter how you turn it, it makes Obama with his promises of an open government look more than just stupid. It makes him look Bush.
Now I am aware of the US having secret laws/regulation (especially regarding air traffic). It makes me wonder how to go about people breaking those laws. Because on one hand, a basic legal principle is that "ignorance of the law is no defense". But what if that law is secret? Can you not argue that it is impossible to know about it? And that in effect such a law doesn't exist for you as you can not know about it for the very fact that it is secret?
So ironical to call that party PVV (this is a quite new party, only founded some 5, 6 years ago or so).
PVV = Partij voor Vrijheid, or Party for Freedom. And what they vote against here is freedom.
PVV is indeed an anti-islam and anti-immigration party. Playing into the people's terrorist fears and the like, as happens so often these days. And as so many of this type of parties they claim to be for freedom, but in reality they are the exact opposite. For repression, secrecy, privacy invasions, surveillance, etc.
There are always differences between people, and even countries. Germans in general are earlier than Dutch (it may help that they are more east in the same time zone, so the sun is up earlier for them, but that doesn't explain the full difference).
However from my direct experience lower educated workers often start work early. Construction starts already at 7 when I wouldn't even consider getting up. And while I was working in the university as post-grad student I would now and then arrive before 9 only to find a still almost completely empty building.
Of course like with all generalisations there is easily 20% that does not follow it.
Human eyes are not bad, but also not very good at night. With a full moon we can see quite well but otherwise not. When it is overcast, or no moon, we're lost.
Many animals that hunt at night have eyes adapted to night vision, we don't.
Now it is also known that higher-educated people (typically higher IQ) tend to start work later than lower-educated people. Construction workers are happy to start at 7 am, but at the university the researchers start at 9 am earliest, they hate getting up so early. And I have never heard about a reasonable explanation why that could be.
Oh and I don't think that an eight-hour shift means you're super-gifted or so:)
On the other hand good chance that it is a trait that is not a disadvantage. There are quite some oddities found in animals that seem to have no function, but are also not in the way of normal functioning. Thus the trait remains in the gene pool.
I'm also a night owl, can't go to sleep before midnight. Easily go on until 2-3 am.
This goes quite well until you get a child to take care of. Little children tend to wake up early, like 7-8 am. That's quite horrible as it messes up my sleep schedule, and I just can't seem at adjust to anything earlier. Partly due to my work, it's easy to continue work all evening for me.
Now personally, I find my biggest pet peeve is how the bumps on a PC keyboards are not on the D and K keys like they were on my Mac.
My iBook is at home, can't check that one. I know the bumps are there but I have never learnt to actually use them (though I can type without looking at my keyboard).
However the keyboard I'm typing on now, has the bumps on the F and J keys. Just like a spare keyboard that I have around here.
It apparently varies with the maker where they put them.
The top typist there reaches 895 keypresses per minute, that is 179 words per minute. Probably not a world record but still really fast.
It would be interesting if I can find other statistics on that site: like number of typists per speed range (50-60, 60-70, 70-80 wpm, etc), to get an idea what a typical speed is.
You should consider using Flashblock instead of AdblockPlus. That is doing exactly what you are asking for: block flash and flash alone (and if you do want to see the flash part after all: just click on it).
The problem is of course that it is all called Windows. Which for 99,9% of even the slashdot community means desktop, windowing system, mouse clicks, etc. You know, Windows.
Win CE doesn't even need a graphical output. Let alone a windowing system. Calling it Windows is confusing at best, and of course just marketing: the name is familiar so it must be good for what-ever you want to use it for.
For the first time in over a decade I'm interested in a MS product, however I'm afraid they will kill the awesome hardware form factor with buggy, poorly designed and unattractive software.
We will probably have to wait until Linux runs on it. That shouldn't be too long.
Or, if it is successful, for a Chinese copycat to come up with a same piece of hardware that doesn't have DRM built in (the Chinese are leaving the "copy" stage and are reaching the "copy and improve" stage like the Japanese did some 25 years ago, albeit by leaving out bits instead of adding bits!)
No the warning is still correct. You may just as well try to enter a password in uppercase by typing it in holding the shift key. If you do so while capslock is on, you are again entering lower case. The system can not see whether that is the case.
What I prefer though is those warnings at password prompts that disappear when you switch of caps lock. May be hard to do in a web browser.
I would rather say something like "I just want to make sure that I can follow exactly what you are doing, and that nothing goes wrong. After all I can not see what is on your screen, I just know what should be there."
The Chinese definitely have the desire to innovate, the ability is still lacking. I see lots of quite innovative products coming out of there (mostly toys and premium items), the problem is that in general they are not thought out well, or just don't work.
Back on topic: surveillance of their own people may be one thing, but being "in" foreign systems comes mighty handy in case of a war. Then you can use your existing secret log-ins to do serious cyber-damage to foreign computer systems, breaking communication channels the enemy thinks are safe, or simply listening in on enemy communication.
Well the problem seems to be far more than just a pdf or a Windows vulnerability. Scariest part in the list from TFS:
5. The attacker attempts to access an Active Directory server to obtain the password database, which can be cracked onsite or offsite.
The question I have now is: why is it so easy to crack those passwords? (apparently easier than tricking someone in giving their password or installing keyloggers: that means it's quite easy). I thought passwords were normally stored as one-way hashes, and those are really tough to crack.
Dictionary attacks of course are easy (just calculate the hashes of a dictionary and compare), but in this case I may assume that they were after sysadmin passwords which again I may assume are proper passwords, and not vulnerable to dictionary attach.
So like (all) successful attacks there must be an array of vulnerabilities in all the layers of security in those systems.
Getting into the single desktop as logged-in user shouldn't happen: vulnerability 1.
Getting into a single desktop as the logged-in user should not give you full control over that desktop. Vulnerability 2.
Getting full control over the desktop should not give you access to an AD server (in order to download that database). Vulnerability 3.
Downloading the (encrypted I may hope) AD password database should not give you the passwords: modern encryption technology is strong enough to prevent that for all practical reasons.
If I understand this sequence of events correctly there have to be at least four security vulnerabilities. Not just one. But four layers of security that have been punched open, and not once but apparently on large scale. That is a bad sign for overall security.
DDT as a matter of fact is still in daily use. In China at least it is. Even though it's illegal, highly damaging to the environment in the long term, but on the short term it works wonders. And that's what the farmers see.
Half a million downloads may be a lot, but lets put that in perspective. From addons.mozilla.org: over 1.8 bln downloads for 109 mln add-ons in use. That means 17 downloads for one use. Or only about 30,000 users for Ubiquity. AdBlockPlus, the most popular add-on, clocks almost 900,000 downloads weekly, for a total of over 72 mln downloads now. Even geeky NoScript is doing almost 400,000 a week.
If there were really great demand, then someone would have stepped in and continued development. Or similar projects would be around to try and do the same. There are plenty more adblockers, for example.
I have never tried Ubiquity, it may be a nice experiment, may have its uses, but is either not good enough or ahead of its time (rest of software/hardware not good enough yet). Too bad, and smart lead dev to try the idea seriously for two years, see it's leading no-where, and move on.
There were four IP addresses involved. Probably about 1000 requests from each IP. After all a single web page can generate a couple dozen requests (html body, image here, script there, some flash, etc). I bet they counted every single GET request for every single part of the site here. Not unique visitors; just hits.
Reading the comments I finally start to understand what tfs is trying to say.
All and all I would not call this a bug. Also not a feature. It's an artifact at best. Bugs in the common use of the word are either small animals, or programming errors. This is neither. It's an algorithm that has certain artifacts, and some software (the long list in tfs) apparently uses a different algorithm.
So how is this news? What does it have to do on/. really? This is more something to discuss for graphics people, not for computer people like we are.
So big money that in Hong Kong in the evening news (at least on ATV, I don't know about the other free-to-air channel TVB) they can only show some still images of the action. Truly sad. As a result I am barely aware that these Olympics are being held. Quite some evenings, when there are no medals for China, the whole Olympics are completely ignored and the sports news is all about golf and British football. So yes it may be big money but no taking it completely from the TV news is not good advertising. It's over-the-top greed that comes back to haunt them.
Note I am not exactly a sports fan but Olympics has cool stuff that's good to watch for anyone and simply a great event.
Note to self: when my son (now 3 1/2) gets a laptop from school, wipe it clean, and re-install with all officially required software. No more, no less. All he needs will be there; all that's secretly installed is gone.
Slashdot Mirror
to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court.
This is still highly lopsided.
Why does a "wrongfully accused" have to sue? Shouldn't that be that this accused has been sued already or so?
If really this way it is still that the music company just can say "you're file sharing!" without having to have any firm proof, as most file sharers will not sue in the first place because of the huge costs involved just to start up a suit.
I'd go with PHP because it's much more useful for getting jobs, etc., after the competition.
Depends on whether the job you're after is asking you whether you can program, or whether you know a specific programming language. I'd go after the first type of jobs. For anyone who knows programming, learning a new language should be matter of hours for the basic syntax and maybe a few weeks of actually working with it to become familiar with it.
And considering Java, PHP and Visual Basic are also in the list I don't think speed is too much of an issue really. Those languages are not known for speedy execution.
I have heard the rule of thumb that a Python solution is something like half the speed of a C solution, so that's not too bad.
Pascal may be nice too. My college was teaching Turbo Pascal, that was very easy for me to pick up (especially as I knew the idea of programming thanks to BASIC already). I found it a quite easy syntax to pick up, not as easy and clear as Python which is my current favourite, it certainly will be easier than C/C++ (I tasted that and found it too hard to learn for my purposes, especially thanks to the fact that you have to compile before you can run - Python debugs easier).
If I were to do something like you propose I'd go for Python. From what I've seen from the other languages it's the easiest to learn. I think it's the best current language for teaching programming.
If an international agreement has to remain secret, then it is bad for the general people. No doubt about that. If it is good for the public, why keep it secret in the first place? When the agreement comes in force, it has to be published to be of any use in the first place. ACTA is about forcing other countries to make laws around it - that can only be done if it is public. Laws, by nature, have to be public,
There can be no other reason for such an agreement to be drafted in secret than that it is against the wishes of the general public. And possibly against the legislatures of many of the countries involved. So no matter how you turn it, it makes Obama with his promises of an open government look more than just stupid. It makes him look Bush.
Now I am aware of the US having secret laws/regulation (especially regarding air traffic). It makes me wonder how to go about people breaking those laws. Because on one hand, a basic legal principle is that "ignorance of the law is no defense". But what if that law is secret? Can you not argue that it is impossible to know about it? And that in effect such a law doesn't exist for you as you can not know about it for the very fact that it is secret?
So ironical to call that party PVV (this is a quite new party, only founded some 5, 6 years ago or so).
PVV = Partij voor Vrijheid, or Party for Freedom. And what they vote against here is freedom.
PVV is indeed an anti-islam and anti-immigration party. Playing into the people's terrorist fears and the like, as happens so often these days. And as so many of this type of parties they claim to be for freedom, but in reality they are the exact opposite. For repression, secrecy, privacy invasions, surveillance, etc.
There are always differences between people, and even countries. Germans in general are earlier than Dutch (it may help that they are more east in the same time zone, so the sun is up earlier for them, but that doesn't explain the full difference).
However from my direct experience lower educated workers often start work early. Construction starts already at 7 when I wouldn't even consider getting up. And while I was working in the university as post-grad student I would now and then arrive before 9 only to find a still almost completely empty building.
Of course like with all generalisations there is easily 20% that does not follow it.
In that case our eyes should be better.
Human eyes are not bad, but also not very good at night. With a full moon we can see quite well but otherwise not. When it is overcast, or no moon, we're lost.
Many animals that hunt at night have eyes adapted to night vision, we don't.
Now it is also known that higher-educated people (typically higher IQ) tend to start work later than lower-educated people. Construction workers are happy to start at 7 am, but at the university the researchers start at 9 am earliest, they hate getting up so early. And I have never heard about a reasonable explanation why that could be.
Oh and I don't think that an eight-hour shift means you're super-gifted or so :)
On the other hand good chance that it is a trait that is not a disadvantage. There are quite some oddities found in animals that seem to have no function, but are also not in the way of normal functioning. Thus the trait remains in the gene pool.
I'm also a night owl, can't go to sleep before midnight. Easily go on until 2-3 am.
This goes quite well until you get a child to take care of. Little children tend to wake up early, like 7-8 am. That's quite horrible as it messes up my sleep schedule, and I just can't seem at adjust to anything earlier. Partly due to my work, it's easy to continue work all evening for me.
Now personally, I find my biggest pet peeve is how the bumps on a PC keyboards are not on the D and K keys like they were on my Mac.
My iBook is at home, can't check that one. I know the bumps are there but I have never learnt to actually use them (though I can type without looking at my keyboard).
However the keyboard I'm typing on now, has the bumps on the F and J keys. Just like a spare keyboard that I have around here.
It apparently varies with the maker where they put them.
The top typist there reaches 895 keypresses per minute, that is 179 words per minute. Probably not a world record but still really fast.
It would be interesting if I can find other statistics on that site: like number of typists per speed range (50-60, 60-70, 70-80 wpm, etc), to get an idea what a typical speed is.
You should consider using Flashblock instead of AdblockPlus. That is doing exactly what you are asking for: block flash and flash alone (and if you do want to see the flash part after all: just click on it).
The problem is of course that it is all called Windows. Which for 99,9% of even the slashdot community means desktop, windowing system, mouse clicks, etc. You know, Windows.
Win CE doesn't even need a graphical output. Let alone a windowing system. Calling it Windows is confusing at best, and of course just marketing: the name is familiar so it must be good for what-ever you want to use it for.
For the first time in over a decade I'm interested in a MS product, however I'm afraid they will kill the awesome hardware form factor with buggy, poorly designed and unattractive software.
We will probably have to wait until Linux runs on it. That shouldn't be too long.
Or, if it is successful, for a Chinese copycat to come up with a same piece of hardware that doesn't have DRM built in (the Chinese are leaving the "copy" stage and are reaching the "copy and improve" stage like the Japanese did some 25 years ago, albeit by leaving out bits instead of adding bits!)
No the warning is still correct. You may just as well try to enter a password in uppercase by typing it in holding the shift key. If you do so while capslock is on, you are again entering lower case. The system can not see whether that is the case.
What I prefer though is those warnings at password prompts that disappear when you switch of caps lock. May be hard to do in a web browser.
I would rather say something like "I just want to make sure that I can follow exactly what you are doing, and that nothing goes wrong. After all I can not see what is on your screen, I just know what should be there."
The Chinese definitely have the desire to innovate, the ability is still lacking. I see lots of quite innovative products coming out of there (mostly toys and premium items), the problem is that in general they are not thought out well, or just don't work.
Back on topic: surveillance of their own people may be one thing, but being "in" foreign systems comes mighty handy in case of a war. Then you can use your existing secret log-ins to do serious cyber-damage to foreign computer systems, breaking communication channels the enemy thinks are safe, or simply listening in on enemy communication.
Well the problem seems to be far more than just a pdf or a Windows vulnerability. Scariest part in the list from TFS:
5. The attacker attempts to access an Active Directory server to obtain the password database, which can be cracked onsite or offsite.
The question I have now is: why is it so easy to crack those passwords? (apparently easier than tricking someone in giving their password or installing keyloggers: that means it's quite easy). I thought passwords were normally stored as one-way hashes, and those are really tough to crack.
Dictionary attacks of course are easy (just calculate the hashes of a dictionary and compare), but in this case I may assume that they were after sysadmin passwords which again I may assume are proper passwords, and not vulnerable to dictionary attach.
So like (all) successful attacks there must be an array of vulnerabilities in all the layers of security in those systems.
Getting into the single desktop as logged-in user shouldn't happen: vulnerability 1.
Getting into a single desktop as the logged-in user should not give you full control over that desktop. Vulnerability 2.
Getting full control over the desktop should not give you access to an AD server (in order to download that database). Vulnerability 3.
Downloading the (encrypted I may hope) AD password database should not give you the passwords: modern encryption technology is strong enough to prevent that for all practical reasons.
If I understand this sequence of events correctly there have to be at least four security vulnerabilities. Not just one. But four layers of security that have been punched open, and not once but apparently on large scale. That is a bad sign for overall security.
DDT as a matter of fact is still in daily use. In China at least it is. Even though it's illegal, highly damaging to the environment in the long term, but on the short term it works wonders. And that's what the farmers see.
I couldn't agree more.
Half a million downloads may be a lot, but lets put that in perspective. From addons.mozilla.org: over 1.8 bln downloads for 109 mln add-ons in use. That means 17 downloads for one use. Or only about 30,000 users for Ubiquity. AdBlockPlus, the most popular add-on, clocks almost 900,000 downloads weekly, for a total of over 72 mln downloads now. Even geeky NoScript is doing almost 400,000 a week.
If there were really great demand, then someone would have stepped in and continued development. Or similar projects would be around to try and do the same. There are plenty more adblockers, for example.
I have never tried Ubiquity, it may be a nice experiment, may have its uses, but is either not good enough or ahead of its time (rest of software/hardware not good enough yet). Too bad, and smart lead dev to try the idea seriously for two years, see it's leading no-where, and move on.
There were four IP addresses involved. Probably about 1000 requests from each IP. After all a single web page can generate a couple dozen requests (html body, image here, script there, some flash, etc). I bet they counted every single GET request for every single part of the site here. Not unique visitors; just hits.
Reading the comments I finally start to understand what tfs is trying to say.
All and all I would not call this a bug. Also not a feature. It's an artifact at best. Bugs in the common use of the word are either small animals, or programming errors. This is neither. It's an algorithm that has certain artifacts, and some software (the long list in tfs) apparently uses a different algorithm.
So how is this news? What does it have to do on /. really? This is more something to discuss for graphics people, not for computer people like we are.
So big money that in Hong Kong in the evening news (at least on ATV, I don't know about the other free-to-air channel TVB) they can only show some still images of the action. Truly sad. As a result I am barely aware that these Olympics are being held. Quite some evenings, when there are no medals for China, the whole Olympics are completely ignored and the sports news is all about golf and British football. So yes it may be big money but no taking it completely from the TV news is not good advertising. It's over-the-top greed that comes back to haunt them.
Note I am not exactly a sports fan but Olympics has cool stuff that's good to watch for anyone and simply a great event.
Absolutely.
Note to self: when my son (now 3 1/2) gets a laptop from school, wipe it clean, and re-install with all officially required software. No more, no less. All he needs will be there; all that's secretly installed is gone.
Technically, schools do have the rights of a parent (for the most part) when THE KID IS AT SCHOOOL. It's called in loco parentis.
Often also for the commute between home and school. That includes responsibilities regarding safety of the child during that trip.