In my opinion, scientists may be able to approach absolute zero but they will never effectively reach it. They may hit a point at which it can be proclaimed as "good enough", but since the entire system must contain no energy and energy will always leak into the system from the universe, absolute zero will not be reached in actuality.
IANAP, but doesn't it immediately follow from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that absolute zero is not reachable, as well?
Point: quite a bit of spyware is perfectly legal. It's very clear in the EULA for the product it's strapped to, and it has a clear uninstaller (which breaks the program you wanted). Many people will use it anyway to use the program for free, or are just too clueless to notice.
That doesn't necessarily make it legal. If someone wants to install a piece of spyware and realises what he's doing, that's fine, of course, but for someone who's too clueless to notice, it's not nearly as clear. I might argue that there is no meeting of minds, and thus no contract (that's assuming we're in a jurisdiction where EULAs can be binding contracts at all). You might argue that it's his duty to read the contracts he's signing/accepting, so it's his own fault. I might argue that many EULAs are written / presented in a way that deliberately makes them hard to read, and that software manufacturers shouldn't get away with relying on people not reading things after they made it as difficult as possible to actually read them. And so on...
I don't know what the solution is, but it's certainly not clear that spyware that's mentioned somewhere deep down in an obfuscated EULA and that will get installed without people realising (and that people would NOT install IF they knew it was there) is really legal.
Thus only a dozen out of the million recipients was ever bothered by the spam. Conversely, an email list would receive no (or very few) "mark as spam" clicks, and would be allowed to pass. So basically the Gmail userbase acts the workforce to continually train the spam filter, and moreover to detect new spam within minutes of it being sent.
This probably plays a role, but it will not be the only thing GMail relies on (and probably not even the most important factor), and it will likely require more than a dozen people, too. Think about it - otherwise, a spammer could just set up twelve fake GMail accounts, send the spam message in question to those as well, and mark them as "Not Spam" there when they filter catches them after the dozen users you refer to tell the system that it's indeed spam.
Needless to say, this is probably still being done - and given that email is a pretty private matter, I don't think there's much webmail providers can do about it, either. After all, it's not like you can just have an employee look at someone's account after the system flagged it as "suspicious" to see if they are a legitimate user or not; doing so would be a rather crass invasion of people's privacy and their right to private communication.
So the spammers *are* doing it (why wouldn't they, after all?), and GMail etc. can't really do all that much about it - and therefore, the system will probably not depend on user input quite as much as you think.
I think you are mixing up this incident with bullying, which it is not. It's a fake myspace profile about a principal. It's like passing an insulting note about the teacher around class. Yes it's naughty, yes the offender should be disciplined in some appropriate manner.
Just out of curiosity... why? Really, I thought about it for a moment after initially agreeing with you, but after I actually thought about it now, I genuinely can't see why anymore.
FWIW, what I'm specifically talking about is putting up a fake website/myspace profile/... for your principal, not passing around notes in class, BTW. The latter clearly harms the learning environment in class, but the former, when it doesn't interfere with class, should be protected speech - otherwise, you could just as well argue that children should be punished for talking about how their principal sucks among each other after school.
Children, like everyone else, have the right to an opinion. They don't have the right to disrupt class, but what they do in their own private time is not for the principal (or the school) to judge. I can see why the principal felt insulted, but hey - as long as it's not libellous or inciting assaults on him or other crimes or anything, I don't think he should have a right to use the powers granted to him to punish the children.
That's an interesting point, but shouldn't it mean that the USA would have to disregard the ICC and all related bodies and international laws *completely* instead of selectively? There is no a priori difference between the US constitution and that of, say, Chad (which I'm just using as an example!); if one is valid and trumps international laws and treaties that the country enters into, for example, then the other does, too, at least a priori (i.e., unless there are specific provisions that state that this is not the case).
So the USA would then certainly have to lobby against any case brought before this court (or similar bodies such as the ICJ) on the grounds that these courts do not actually have jurisdiction over the defendants - because the law from which these courts derive their justification cannot trump the rights guaranteed to people by the states they are citizens of. (In fact, given that the US constitution *recognises* rights that are thought to be inherent in all humans rather than granting them, the USA would probably have to oppose even those cases where the country in question does not guarantee the rights of the defendant to not have to appear in front of courts such as these).
Finally, the USA would also not have been able to participate in things like the Nuremberg trials then; at the very least, after they did participate, they should've reverted their position on them by now (something that would be doubly true considering that things like "crimes against humanity" or "genocide", for example, were concepts that were not even considered prior to Nuremberg).
I personally think that this would be a bad idea, but it would be a sound position, at least. In reality, though, it sure seems to be true that the USA apply selective reasoning and freely use tools such as these courts when it suits them while at the same time claiming immunity for themselves and their own people - and it's that dichotomy which is the problem, not the claims of immunity as such.
That doesn't make it spyware. I assume most distros (desktop-oriented ones, anyway) also install things like Firefox by default, which - suprise! - sends information on my system to websites when I visit them. But that doesn't make Firefox spyware, simply because it only does so when I tell it to; the situation would be quite different, however, if it did so on its own in the background.
Without knowing anything about popcon really, I think it's safe to say that as long as it has to be EXPLICITELY enabled and/or started by the user, it's not spyware.
Easy: throw the CEO in prison, or the board of directors, or other folks in upper management who're responsible for the crimes the company committed.
FWIW, this seems like a good idea, too. I'm not a fan of prison terms in general, but I also think that they're quite good at deterring white-collar crime (fraud etc., as opposed to blue-collar crime where you actually have to get your hands dirty - armed robbery, battery, and so on). The problem with penalty fees is that they're paid by the company, not the individuals who're actually responsible - so even if worst comes to worst and if the company will go bankrupt, they'll just go and start another one.
It's like punishing mafia hitmen but letting the actual dons go free - they'll just hire new hitmen and continue like before. But as soon as the directors of a spyware company are *personally* threatened with punishment for their deeds (and let's face it, it *is* upper management that is responsible for these things: the company does not have a life of its own that goes beyond the people working in/for it, and doesn't just decide to commit crimes on its own), most likely will stop and comply with the letter of the law, at least.
All material is copyrighted by default: what you're probably referring to is material where the copyright owner allows sharing. But I don't want to pick nits, so I'll just say that this doesn't work with all ISPs; some genuinely don't care about how much bandwidth you use. (Although why you'd want to leave one that doesn't is probably another question entirely.)
Generally speaking, it's an interesting idea, though, if a rather Dilbert-esque one (there actually is an old Dilbert strip where Wally tries to get fired so he'll qualify for the bonus he won't get if he quits on his own and where he mentions that this has given him a degree of freedom in dealing with "local management").
Why is small, difficult-to-read fine print okay?
Why can't features be in fine print gotchas be in large print?
Because text size doesn't matter. Anyone who signs a contract without actually reading all of it (and *especially* the "fine print") has only themselves to blame. And I'm not talking about people who sign contracts written in legalese and who are thus confused about the true conditions set forth therein - I'm talking about people who argue "it's difficult to read, so I didn't read it at all, and thus I shouldn't be bound by it".
You probably still could argue that there was no meeting of minds, but people do have a certain responsibility when entering contracts, too.
Why is it that a company can advertise something as true that others can show to be false?
Why can a company call themselves "perfect" when it's not?
Free speech. I don't think companies should be allowed to outright lie, but I also don't think that they usually do - they just try to mislead you as much as possible without outright lying.
Why is it okay that a company obfuscates things from their potential consumers?
If capitalism is working, then companies who do this will ultimately fail in the market. (Make of that statement what you will...)
Similarly, if you go to a library, unless you check out a book, reading it won't leave a record anywhere. Sure, someone (another patron or an employee) might *see* you reading it, but there is no objective, permanent record that says "on this date, that person looked for information on this and that topic".
The world isn't black or white. Are you seriously saying that because we can't get perfect security, we should choose no security over some security? (Of course, that's a hypothetical scenario, since not having a.safe or.bank domain would not mean no security, and since it's true that it's not a priori clear that a.safe domain would actually increase security, even by a little bit - but your reasoning doesn't make sense.)
The difference is that anyone can just register any.com domain, even if it's - for example - www-paypal-payments.com or so. www-paypal-payments.bank or www-paypal-payments.safe, on the other hand, could not be registered by phishers, or at least that's the theory.
I'm not sure how the fact that something like this would be in F-Secure's best financial interest would have any effect on whether the idea is good or not - or whether it should be considered or not.
At the same time, though, I'm also not sure how they would directly benefit from this at all. Wouldn't it be in their best interest to make sure that no.safe (or.bank or whatever) domain exists so that banks are forced to stay with.com, where every phisher can just register a domain name that will fool Joe Sixpack?
This is more akin to a company that hires out security guard campaigning for locks on doors - another security feature that, if anything, makes their own solution less necessary; but at the same time, it also shows that they genuinely care. Maybe that's what F-Secure is ultimately hoping for (good karma), but I'm inclined to think that they simply just care about security instead of having any ulterior motives.
The kernel team has never been loath to replace code when necessary, and never slow to handle the job, no matter how large the item to be replaced. Just look at the replacement of Bitkeeper with "git", a big job that took a ground-up rewrite and yet was working in five weeks. So, code belonging to GPL3-objectors would be swiftly dealt with.
No, I don't think that's true. The fundamental difference is that git was being developed when McVoy started interfering with actual development; Linus didn't mind the fact that BK was unfree at all as long as he could get his work done with it (and that necessitates other developers also being able to use the program).
GPLv2 code would probably be replaced if a serious problem with the GPLv2 was discovered - for example, if, for some reason, it turned out that the license contradicted itself and that you couldn't actually distribute GPLv2 code you didn't write yourself after all. But barring that, as long as the GPLv3 is "only" an improvement over the GPLv2, I don't see why there would suddenly be a big rush to replace code when there's no technical reason.
And that's doubly true when you consider how huge and complex the kernel really is: it was pretty easy to write an initial replacement for BK, but development certainly carried on (it didn't just spring into existence bug-free and chock-full of features), and BK, like most projects, is laughable in terms of size and complexity when compared to the kernel.
So I neither believe that it could be done as easily as replacing BK, and I also don't believe that Linus would seriously consider it unless there was an actual technical reason why all GPLv2 code would suddenly have to be rewritten from scratch in a hurry under the GPLv3 instead.
What's more likely is that code that was contributed as being under the GPLv2 *only* will slowly be replaced by "GPLv2 or GPLv3" code; and when all pieces are suitably licensed, there may be a switch from "GPLv2 or GPLv3" to "GPLv3 only", at which point the kernel would properly be licensed under the GPLv3. But it just as well might not happen, and if it does, it's going to be an evolution, not a revolution.
So... please, text question based captchas are DOOMED TO FAIL. stop thinking that they could work. They can't.
While I agree with you in principle, I think youre definition of "work" with regard to captchas is flawed. Captchas don't need to be 100% undefeatable; they just need to work well enough so that the time/energy/computing power/manpower/money needed to solve them en gros makes sure doing so isn't worth it to the spammer.
Your claim that they're useless because they don't work perfectly makes as much sense as saying that postage paid on snail mail letters doesn't make sense since it's possible for postal spammers to just shell out the amount necessary to send a letter, anyway (especially given that they'll receive bulk discounts). Still, in reality, I hardly ever get postal spam; the rate is probably less than 1 unsolicited letter per month, while my email spam, on the other hand, is measured in thousands of mails per day.
I'd argue that the fact that bulletin boards, blogs etc. are generally pretty spam-free proves that captchas ARE working - not perfectly, but well enough.
Indeed. I was in my teenage years when DOOM came out, and I well remember the outrage over it, perpetrated by the media after the game became a big hit and picked up by parents everywhere. The problem, back then, was not the graphics, the blood, or the gibs; it was the killing, or, more precisely, the fact that there was NO aspect to the game beyond killing. You didn't collect items, you didn't score points, you didn't have levels where you needed skill to advance (like in jump'n'run games) - it was just shooting and killing. Curiously enough, the fact that most enemies where demons and monsters (and that those few who weren't were zombified humans who had already been dead prior to being raised) did not matter, either.
But I've got to say it didn't hurt me, and neither did playing Wolfenstein 3D at the age of 14 or so and killing *actual* humans. I don't believe it's video games that are the problem; normal people don't go on rampages or run amok, and those who do had bigger issues and problems - they're not normal teenagers who suddenly turn violent just because they played a computer game.
With regard to the age question, I doubt I'd let an 8-year old play DOOM, myself, but the daughter of a friend of mine who's 11 now (the daughter, that is, not my friend) certainly seems mature enough to handle it (not that she'd actually be interested in it, of course). His son (who's 9) doesn't seem to, but I think neither of these cases can be generalised easily: development doesn't always progress at the same pace, and one 11-year old may well not be ready for it while a 10-year old might be. Ultimately, it depends on the children; slapping an age label on these things just encourages laziness and bad parenting.
It's up to the parents to know their children and be able to tell when they are/aren't ready for things (no matter whether it's violent video games or anything else).
I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "not deliberately" here. Do you mean that they always try to make sure to the best of their ability that no civilian is ever harmed and that the only times when it happens are genuine, unfortunate accidents? Or do you mean that they don't hurt (a pretty broad word, I must say) civilians *intentionally*, and that while they try to not cause unnecessary deaths or other harm, they also accept harm to civilians as a cost depending on what they want to achieve?
Consider the case of a hypothetical bank robber: as he's storming into a bank, gun drawn, a customer steps into his way and screams at him to stop; the bank robber forcefully pushes the customer away, who falls and breaks his arm. Did the bank robber "deliberately" "hurt" the customer now?
I mean... he didn't just walk up to the customer and break his arm for the fun of it. For that matter, he didn't even break the customer's arm because the customer was trying to stop him; it just happened as a result of his pushing the customer out of his way. But he didn't try to make sure it wouldn't happen, either.
If that's the best thing you can say about the USA's conduct throughout the world - that they don't hurt civilians just for the sake of hurting them -, then I'd say things really need to change. FWIW, where exactly do you draw the line, anyway? Even the inquisition didn't torture and kill people just for the fun of it: they had a very good reason, too, but that doesn't make what they did OK.
The ends do not justify the means, you know, and the families of people who die as a result of US foreign politics aren't going to be consoled when you tell them that you didn't "deliberately" kill them and that they only died because you didn't care too much about casualties (that is, because you cared only to the extent that those casualties would cause bad press for you).
think of the last time you told someone to get away from you because "you didn't like him" for no justifiable reason, just 'because' he offended your senses.
What's wrong with that, though? It's natural to like or dislike some people, and not wanting to have anything to do with those you dislike is a good way of avoiding trouble - it's when you're FORCED to deal with them that fights (of whatever kind) arise.
A good war is better then a tenuous and suffocating peace.
That's only true if you're on the winning side, and only if you've actually got a decent chance of surviving. And of course, how would you be able to tell whether a war is just, justified, good or anything like that? Unless you're one of the high-ups who're actually in charge, you won't even be able to tell whether what you're being told is truth or propaganda.
I'm not sure what a "tenuous and suffocating" peace is supposed to be, either. The real solution to problems is not war (or, more generally, fighting); it's sitting down on your goddamned asses, putting your irrational, emotional anger aside for a moment, talking to each other and trying to find a solution. It may be necessary to defend yourself when the other party decides that it's had enough and starts a war with YOU, but you shouldn't go around starting any.
What is more attractive? Some awesomely sexy woman, dressed to knock you off your feet, or some woman in her jogging sneakers, jeans and "hoodie"?
The latter, since she comes across as an honest person who's not trying to manipulate me by replacing reality with hyperreality. I might lust after the former for a short while, but if I was considering a serious relationship, I'd always prefer the latter (a priori, anyway; it might still turn out that the former's an intelligent, honest, and all-around nice person while the latter is the exact opposite, but my initial bet would be that that's not the case).
Of course, I'm bi with a slight preference for guys, anyway, and I've often found that I'm drawn to effeminate men and tomboyish women, so I'm probably not representative in any way, but I think that your conclusion that is not all "true - every word". Different people like different things, and saying that women must wear dresses, stockings, lace bikinis and perfume in order to be attractive is simply not true - and implying that attracting males, bearing children and caring for the family is all women are supposed to do in life is outright misogynistic. If you reduce feminism, demands for equality and the like to "women want to dress 'like a guy on his way to a pickup game'", you've completely missed the point.
Advertising is not evil. Flashing/spinning/dancing/up-popping/distracting advertising is evil. Polite, relevant advertising can be a way to support something without an immense amount of additional work.
Actually, all advertising *is* evil (for a relatively liberal definition of evil, of course), but to an extent, it's a necessary evil. I don't like advertising in magazines, for example, but I realise that it's necessary for them to be able to survive, and I don't like commercial breaks on TV, but I realise that they are necessary for them to be able to provide my favourite shows to me for free, so I don't mind it - but I'll never *like* it. All advertising exists to create an emotional, irrational appeal to buy a product that I don't need or that can't stand on its own merits (at least not for its actual price), and to me, that is evil.
Spinning flash ads with sound are more *obnoxious* than text-based advertising, but they're not any more or less evil than any other form of advertising is.
Chinese input is a well established market; Google Giant forces itself into the market with a product that is very similar to existing ones and offers no innovation. That is not evil enough?
Um, no, that's not evil at all - it's called capitalism. Now, you might argue that capitalism in general is evil, but that'd hardly be Google's fault...
Seriously, if Google doesn't have anything new to offer, no innovations, no improvements or changes over existing products, then they won't do very well in the "well established market"; and if people do flock to them and their product, then maybe they had something to offer after all, even if it was something you didn't/could/didn't want to see. (Of course, that's assuming that they're not using any underhanded or outright illegal tactics to ensure their success, like other companies *coughmscough* did (and continue to do), but I honestly don't see how they could do so here even if they wanted to.)
Slashdot Mirror
IANAP, but doesn't it immediately follow from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that absolute zero is not reachable, as well?
That doesn't necessarily make it legal. If someone wants to install a piece of spyware and realises what he's doing, that's fine, of course, but for someone who's too clueless to notice, it's not nearly as clear. I might argue that there is no meeting of minds, and thus no contract (that's assuming we're in a jurisdiction where EULAs can be binding contracts at all). You might argue that it's his duty to read the contracts he's signing/accepting, so it's his own fault. I might argue that many EULAs are written / presented in a way that deliberately makes them hard to read, and that software manufacturers shouldn't get away with relying on people not reading things after they made it as difficult as possible to actually read them. And so on...
I don't know what the solution is, but it's certainly not clear that spyware that's mentioned somewhere deep down in an obfuscated EULA and that will get installed without people realising (and that people would NOT install IF they knew it was there) is really legal.
This probably plays a role, but it will not be the only thing GMail relies on (and probably not even the most important factor), and it will likely require more than a dozen people, too. Think about it - otherwise, a spammer could just set up twelve fake GMail accounts, send the spam message in question to those as well, and mark them as "Not Spam" there when they filter catches them after the dozen users you refer to tell the system that it's indeed spam.
Needless to say, this is probably still being done - and given that email is a pretty private matter, I don't think there's much webmail providers can do about it, either. After all, it's not like you can just have an employee look at someone's account after the system flagged it as "suspicious" to see if they are a legitimate user or not; doing so would be a rather crass invasion of people's privacy and their right to private communication.
So the spammers *are* doing it (why wouldn't they, after all?), and GMail etc. can't really do all that much about it - and therefore, the system will probably not depend on user input quite as much as you think.
Just out of curiosity... why? Really, I thought about it for a moment after initially agreeing with you, but after I actually thought about it now, I genuinely can't see why anymore.
FWIW, what I'm specifically talking about is putting up a fake website/myspace profile/... for your principal, not passing around notes in class, BTW. The latter clearly harms the learning environment in class, but the former, when it doesn't interfere with class, should be protected speech - otherwise, you could just as well argue that children should be punished for talking about how their principal sucks among each other after school.
Children, like everyone else, have the right to an opinion. They don't have the right to disrupt class, but what they do in their own private time is not for the principal (or the school) to judge. I can see why the principal felt insulted, but hey - as long as it's not libellous or inciting assaults on him or other crimes or anything, I don't think he should have a right to use the powers granted to him to punish the children.
That's an interesting point, but shouldn't it mean that the USA would have to disregard the ICC and all related bodies and international laws *completely* instead of selectively? There is no a priori difference between the US constitution and that of, say, Chad (which I'm just using as an example!); if one is valid and trumps international laws and treaties that the country enters into, for example, then the other does, too, at least a priori (i.e., unless there are specific provisions that state that this is not the case).
So the USA would then certainly have to lobby against any case brought before this court (or similar bodies such as the ICJ) on the grounds that these courts do not actually have jurisdiction over the defendants - because the law from which these courts derive their justification cannot trump the rights guaranteed to people by the states they are citizens of. (In fact, given that the US constitution *recognises* rights that are thought to be inherent in all humans rather than granting them, the USA would probably have to oppose even those cases where the country in question does not guarantee the rights of the defendant to not have to appear in front of courts such as these).
Finally, the USA would also not have been able to participate in things like the Nuremberg trials then; at the very least, after they did participate, they should've reverted their position on them by now (something that would be doubly true considering that things like "crimes against humanity" or "genocide", for example, were concepts that were not even considered prior to Nuremberg).
I personally think that this would be a bad idea, but it would be a sound position, at least. In reality, though, it sure seems to be true that the USA apply selective reasoning and freely use tools such as these courts when it suits them while at the same time claiming immunity for themselves and their own people - and it's that dichotomy which is the problem, not the claims of immunity as such.
Both: we will see another try, and it will turn out to be a vain attempt. Oh yeah, and here's a question mark for you:
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That doesn't make it spyware. I assume most distros (desktop-oriented ones, anyway) also install things like Firefox by default, which - suprise! - sends information on my system to websites when I visit them. But that doesn't make Firefox spyware, simply because it only does so when I tell it to; the situation would be quite different, however, if it did so on its own in the background.
Without knowing anything about popcon really, I think it's safe to say that as long as it has to be EXPLICITELY enabled and/or started by the user, it's not spyware.
Easy: throw the CEO in prison, or the board of directors, or other folks in upper management who're responsible for the crimes the company committed.
FWIW, this seems like a good idea, too. I'm not a fan of prison terms in general, but I also think that they're quite good at deterring white-collar crime (fraud etc., as opposed to blue-collar crime where you actually have to get your hands dirty - armed robbery, battery, and so on). The problem with penalty fees is that they're paid by the company, not the individuals who're actually responsible - so even if worst comes to worst and if the company will go bankrupt, they'll just go and start another one.
It's like punishing mafia hitmen but letting the actual dons go free - they'll just hire new hitmen and continue like before. But as soon as the directors of a spyware company are *personally* threatened with punishment for their deeds (and let's face it, it *is* upper management that is responsible for these things: the company does not have a life of its own that goes beyond the people working in/for it, and doesn't just decide to commit crimes on its own), most likely will stop and comply with the letter of the law, at least.
All material is copyrighted by default: what you're probably referring to is material where the copyright owner allows sharing. But I don't want to pick nits, so I'll just say that this doesn't work with all ISPs; some genuinely don't care about how much bandwidth you use. (Although why you'd want to leave one that doesn't is probably another question entirely.)
Generally speaking, it's an interesting idea, though, if a rather Dilbert-esque one (there actually is an old Dilbert strip where Wally tries to get fired so he'll qualify for the bonus he won't get if he quits on his own and where he mentions that this has given him a degree of freedom in dealing with "local management").
Because text size doesn't matter. Anyone who signs a contract without actually reading all of it (and *especially* the "fine print") has only themselves to blame. And I'm not talking about people who sign contracts written in legalese and who are thus confused about the true conditions set forth therein - I'm talking about people who argue "it's difficult to read, so I didn't read it at all, and thus I shouldn't be bound by it".
You probably still could argue that there was no meeting of minds, but people do have a certain responsibility when entering contracts, too.
Free speech. I don't think companies should be allowed to outright lie, but I also don't think that they usually do - they just try to mislead you as much as possible without outright lying.
If capitalism is working, then companies who do this will ultimately fail in the market. (Make of that statement what you will...)
Similarly, if you go to a library, unless you check out a book, reading it won't leave a record anywhere. Sure, someone (another patron or an employee) might *see* you reading it, but there is no objective, permanent record that says "on this date, that person looked for information on this and that topic".
The world isn't black or white. Are you seriously saying that because we can't get perfect security, we should choose no security over some security? (Of course, that's a hypothetical scenario, since not having a .safe or .bank domain would not mean no security, and since it's true that it's not a priori clear that a .safe domain would actually increase security, even by a little bit - but your reasoning doesn't make sense.)
The difference is that anyone can just register any .com domain, even if it's - for example - www-paypal-payments.com or so. www-paypal-payments.bank or www-paypal-payments.safe, on the other hand, could not be registered by phishers, or at least that's the theory.
I'm not sure how the fact that something like this would be in F-Secure's best financial interest would have any effect on whether the idea is good or not - or whether it should be considered or not.
.safe (or .bank or whatever) domain exists so that banks are forced to stay with .com, where every phisher can just register a domain name that will fool Joe Sixpack?
At the same time, though, I'm also not sure how they would directly benefit from this at all. Wouldn't it be in their best interest to make sure that no
This is more akin to a company that hires out security guard campaigning for locks on doors - another security feature that, if anything, makes their own solution less necessary; but at the same time, it also shows that they genuinely care. Maybe that's what F-Secure is ultimately hoping for (good karma), but I'm inclined to think that they simply just care about security instead of having any ulterior motives.
Lead developer of desktop MUA thinks that desktop MUAs are better than webmail. News at 11. Yawn.
No, I don't think that's true. The fundamental difference is that git was being developed when McVoy started interfering with actual development; Linus didn't mind the fact that BK was unfree at all as long as he could get his work done with it (and that necessitates other developers also being able to use the program).
GPLv2 code would probably be replaced if a serious problem with the GPLv2 was discovered - for example, if, for some reason, it turned out that the license contradicted itself and that you couldn't actually distribute GPLv2 code you didn't write yourself after all. But barring that, as long as the GPLv3 is "only" an improvement over the GPLv2, I don't see why there would suddenly be a big rush to replace code when there's no technical reason.
And that's doubly true when you consider how huge and complex the kernel really is: it was pretty easy to write an initial replacement for BK, but development certainly carried on (it didn't just spring into existence bug-free and chock-full of features), and BK, like most projects, is laughable in terms of size and complexity when compared to the kernel.
So I neither believe that it could be done as easily as replacing BK, and I also don't believe that Linus would seriously consider it unless there was an actual technical reason why all GPLv2 code would suddenly have to be rewritten from scratch in a hurry under the GPLv3 instead.
What's more likely is that code that was contributed as being under the GPLv2 *only* will slowly be replaced by "GPLv2 or GPLv3" code; and when all pieces are suitably licensed, there may be a switch from "GPLv2 or GPLv3" to "GPLv3 only", at which point the kernel would properly be licensed under the GPLv3. But it just as well might not happen, and if it does, it's going to be an evolution, not a revolution.
While I agree with you in principle, I think youre definition of "work" with regard to captchas is flawed. Captchas don't need to be 100% undefeatable; they just need to work well enough so that the time/energy/computing power/manpower/money needed to solve them en gros makes sure doing so isn't worth it to the spammer.
Your claim that they're useless because they don't work perfectly makes as much sense as saying that postage paid on snail mail letters doesn't make sense since it's possible for postal spammers to just shell out the amount necessary to send a letter, anyway (especially given that they'll receive bulk discounts). Still, in reality, I hardly ever get postal spam; the rate is probably less than 1 unsolicited letter per month, while my email spam, on the other hand, is measured in thousands of mails per day.
I'd argue that the fact that bulletin boards, blogs etc. are generally pretty spam-free proves that captchas ARE working - not perfectly, but well enough.
Indeed. I was in my teenage years when DOOM came out, and I well remember the outrage over it, perpetrated by the media after the game became a big hit and picked up by parents everywhere. The problem, back then, was not the graphics, the blood, or the gibs; it was the killing, or, more precisely, the fact that there was NO aspect to the game beyond killing. You didn't collect items, you didn't score points, you didn't have levels where you needed skill to advance (like in jump'n'run games) - it was just shooting and killing. Curiously enough, the fact that most enemies where demons and monsters (and that those few who weren't were zombified humans who had already been dead prior to being raised) did not matter, either.
But I've got to say it didn't hurt me, and neither did playing Wolfenstein 3D at the age of 14 or so and killing *actual* humans. I don't believe it's video games that are the problem; normal people don't go on rampages or run amok, and those who do had bigger issues and problems - they're not normal teenagers who suddenly turn violent just because they played a computer game.
With regard to the age question, I doubt I'd let an 8-year old play DOOM, myself, but the daughter of a friend of mine who's 11 now (the daughter, that is, not my friend) certainly seems mature enough to handle it (not that she'd actually be interested in it, of course). His son (who's 9) doesn't seem to, but I think neither of these cases can be generalised easily: development doesn't always progress at the same pace, and one 11-year old may well not be ready for it while a 10-year old might be. Ultimately, it depends on the children; slapping an age label on these things just encourages laziness and bad parenting.
It's up to the parents to know their children and be able to tell when they are/aren't ready for things (no matter whether it's violent video games or anything else).
I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "not deliberately" here. Do you mean that they always try to make sure to the best of their ability that no civilian is ever harmed and that the only times when it happens are genuine, unfortunate accidents? Or do you mean that they don't hurt (a pretty broad word, I must say) civilians *intentionally*, and that while they try to not cause unnecessary deaths or other harm, they also accept harm to civilians as a cost depending on what they want to achieve?
Consider the case of a hypothetical bank robber: as he's storming into a bank, gun drawn, a customer steps into his way and screams at him to stop; the bank robber forcefully pushes the customer away, who falls and breaks his arm. Did the bank robber "deliberately" "hurt" the customer now?
I mean... he didn't just walk up to the customer and break his arm for the fun of it. For that matter, he didn't even break the customer's arm because the customer was trying to stop him; it just happened as a result of his pushing the customer out of his way. But he didn't try to make sure it wouldn't happen, either.
If that's the best thing you can say about the USA's conduct throughout the world - that they don't hurt civilians just for the sake of hurting them -, then I'd say things really need to change. FWIW, where exactly do you draw the line, anyway? Even the inquisition didn't torture and kill people just for the fun of it: they had a very good reason, too, but that doesn't make what they did OK.
The ends do not justify the means, you know, and the families of people who die as a result of US foreign politics aren't going to be consoled when you tell them that you didn't "deliberately" kill them and that they only died because you didn't care too much about casualties (that is, because you cared only to the extent that those casualties would cause bad press for you).
What's wrong with that, though? It's natural to like or dislike some people, and not wanting to have anything to do with those you dislike is a good way of avoiding trouble - it's when you're FORCED to deal with them that fights (of whatever kind) arise.
That's only true if you're on the winning side, and only if you've actually got a decent chance of surviving. And of course, how would you be able to tell whether a war is just, justified, good or anything like that? Unless you're one of the high-ups who're actually in charge, you won't even be able to tell whether what you're being told is truth or propaganda.
I'm not sure what a "tenuous and suffocating" peace is supposed to be, either. The real solution to problems is not war (or, more generally, fighting); it's sitting down on your goddamned asses, putting your irrational, emotional anger aside for a moment, talking to each other and trying to find a solution. It may be necessary to defend yourself when the other party decides that it's had enough and starts a war with YOU, but you shouldn't go around starting any.
The latter, since she comes across as an honest person who's not trying to manipulate me by replacing reality with hyperreality. I might lust after the former for a short while, but if I was considering a serious relationship, I'd always prefer the latter (a priori, anyway; it might still turn out that the former's an intelligent, honest, and all-around nice person while the latter is the exact opposite, but my initial bet would be that that's not the case).
Of course, I'm bi with a slight preference for guys, anyway, and I've often found that I'm drawn to effeminate men and tomboyish women, so I'm probably not representative in any way, but I think that your conclusion that is not all "true - every word". Different people like different things, and saying that women must wear dresses, stockings, lace bikinis and perfume in order to be attractive is simply not true - and implying that attracting males, bearing children and caring for the family is all women are supposed to do in life is outright misogynistic. If you reduce feminism, demands for equality and the like to "women want to dress 'like a guy on his way to a pickup game'", you've completely missed the point.
Actually, all advertising *is* evil (for a relatively liberal definition of evil, of course), but to an extent, it's a necessary evil. I don't like advertising in magazines, for example, but I realise that it's necessary for them to be able to survive, and I don't like commercial breaks on TV, but I realise that they are necessary for them to be able to provide my favourite shows to me for free, so I don't mind it - but I'll never *like* it. All advertising exists to create an emotional, irrational appeal to buy a product that I don't need or that can't stand on its own merits (at least not for its actual price), and to me, that is evil.
Spinning flash ads with sound are more *obnoxious* than text-based advertising, but they're not any more or less evil than any other form of advertising is.
Make that 95%, and count me in as one of those who'd disagree and who're curious as well.
Um, no, that's not evil at all - it's called capitalism. Now, you might argue that capitalism in general is evil, but that'd hardly be Google's fault...
Seriously, if Google doesn't have anything new to offer, no innovations, no improvements or changes over existing products, then they won't do very well in the "well established market"; and if people do flock to them and their product, then maybe they had something to offer after all, even if it was something you didn't/could/didn't want to see. (Of course, that's assuming that they're not using any underhanded or outright illegal tactics to ensure their success, like other companies *coughmscough* did (and continue to do), but I honestly don't see how they could do so here even if they wanted to.)
Sohu is probably asserting copyright over the errors they introduced. ;)