The vast majority of thieves aren't even going to realise that this service is enabled. They certainly won't be deploying GPS jammers or reflashing the BIOS or opening the laptop up. And TFA article mentions that the whole point is to protect data by allowing users to shutdown access to an encrypted HDD that might still be open.
Yes, the Debian on G1 install gives you access to phone, Android, and Debian functionality at the same time. At the moment it's done with a chroot environment, but there are plans to package/replace the Android stuff to give a native Debian install. Basically, libc and the dynamic linker are non-GNU under Android, but they are standards compatible, so it shouldn't be too difficult to replace them. The G1 runs Linux by default, so of couse there is already support in its kernel for the phone hardware.
It depends what you mean by "can't". If they were incarcerated in some prison in one of the less nice parts of the world, they would lose weight - I don't recall seeing any obese people leaving the Nazi concentration camps. So clearly it is physically possible for them to lose weight. You can argue over whether they are mentally capable of changing their own lifestyles, or even whether they have an "addiction" to food, but the reality is that fat deposits are just a function of energy_in and energy_out.
I think the point they're trying to make is that cellphone based laptops don't necessarily have to be just big cellphones. There's absolutely no reason why Android can't run on a netbook - in fact, there's absolutely no reason why Android couldn't run on your desktop. It's all open source, so package up Dalvik and the class files for your Linux distribution of choice, compile Skia with the Cairo backend, and you should be able to run Android applications on standard Linux installs. Maybe it could do with some desktop integration, but it's certainly possible. You could possibly even replace Dalvik with OpenJDK, which should give a nice performance boost.
So back to the point: the G1 and other Android phones really are just small PCs - the clock speed of the T-Mobile G1 is over 10 times that of my 486 from a decade ago, and it has over 5 times more RAM, so clearly the technological distinction between a desktop and phone isn't as big as it used to be. Heck, if you have a jail-broken G1 you can run a full blown Debian install on it. Forget web applications, the time for a computer capable of running real apps in your pocket is right now.
drivers with the attention span of a crack-addled squirrel and the reflexes of a hypothermic snail. These folks really shouldn't be going fast.
The funny thing is that 99% of drivers would agree with you, whilst not realising that they are probably included in that group. Unfortunately, nobody is perfect, and mistakes do happen. A mistake at a lower speed is usually less costly in terms of injury and life. In contrast, leaving 5 or 10 minutes earlier for a trip to get there on time really isn't that big a deal - we waste more than that on slashdot every day.
Yeah, Apple's DAAP authentication still hasn't been cracked, meaning that no other media player can stream from iTunes. It used to be that Amarok, Banshee etc. could stream, but since iTunes 7 they replaced the cracked hash algorithm with some kind of public key authentication and this is no longer possible.
Then he forced the boys, who were unarmed, to their knees, attorneys on both sides say.
The boys say they were begging for forgiveness when Gonzalez hit them with the barrel of the shotgun and kicked them repeatedly. Then, the medical examiner testified, Anguiano was shot in the back at close range. Two mashed Twinkies and some cookies were stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.
I bet if Mr. Gonzalez had put an unarmed 13 year old girl on her knees and then shot her at point blank range in the back he'd be on death by row now.
We already have self-aware machines that are capable of fully intelligent behaviour - they just happen to be made of cells, proteins and other biological matter. They require nine months to self-assemble within a growth medium, and a few years to adapt to the outside environment, but from that point on they are, as far as we know, fully self aware.
First you have to define exactly what a "soul" is, and what it means for a creature to "have a soul" in a rigid, scientifically testable way. Is "having a soul" an intrinsic property of a creature, or is it ascribed to behaviour? Maybe you accept that "have a soul" == "displays behaviour that indicates self awareness"? Then you define self awareness, and what kind of behaviour one classes as self aware. Then define tests, like the ability to formulate and plan coherent paths of action in order to attain some goal state, or ability to recognise oneself in the mirror. Then you need to answer the question regarding other creatures in the world:
Does a monkey "have a soul"? How about a dog? Or a fish?
Does a baby "have a soul"?
Does a severely mentally retarded human "have a soul"?
Does a human in a long term coma "have a soul"?
Does a fetus "have a soul"?
When I go to sleep, do I "have a soul"? If I never wake up, and never again display any form of mental or physical activity, do I still "have a soul"?
Does an individual neuron "have a soul"? How about a group of neurons? How many neurons, and what kind of activity, is required in order to "have a soul"?
He didn't choose to use this "unscientific and highly religiously charged word" - he was asked a specific question in an interview - Will super intelligent machines ever have souls? and he responded by saying that the soul was a synonym for consciousness and continued from that point.
Don't blame Kurzweil for an interviewer who uses fuzzy pseudo-religious language.
Yes, medicine was once seen as a man's job, which the "intellectually inferior" females were incapable of doing, and now 60% of new doctors are female. The trend towards feminisation has provoked some interesting comments though, with claims that "women docs are weakening the medical profession" (also here)
How many white guys did you see in the 100 meter dash at the Olympics?
According to the research, there are genetic differences in muscle fiber distribution between individuals who's ancestry hails from different regions of the planet. It's no coincidence that no white person has ever run the 100 metres in less than 10 seconds, whilst hundreds of black people have. And ever notice how Kenyans from a certain mountainous region dominate long distance running? It seems obvious that different environmental pressures would lead to significant differences in evolution around the globe (kind of like how a larger proportion of Africans have the gene that provides resistance to malaria, even though the gene causes sickle cell disease).
So it may not be bias, but due to genetics. In contrast, current research suggests that when it comes to intelligence etc. culture and upbringing are the important factors (to my knowledge, there is no real science underlying claims of neural differences in different genetic/racial groups, and given that intelligence would be a positively selected attribute, you'd expect any significant genes to have become quickly spread throughout the population). So when certain groups are under-represented academically, and there are some obvious factors relating to financial and cultural background present, then it may be possible to alter those factors and change the observed distributions to better reflect what we think should be happening if there were no selective bias.
In evolution, different phenotype traits should be positively selected for in different geographical regions, so we shouldn't be surprised to see some differences related to lung capacity, muscle distribution, bone density etc. In contrast, intelligence should always be positively selected for, since it provides such a great advantage for the individual. The real question for society is how far should we go in trying to correct those differences that aren't down to genetics, and whether we should bother at all in trying to correct for differences that are.
Odd... I recall other statistical studies that showed women cheated more than men.
As they say, you can show anything with statistics. But here are some interesting stats on infidelity. Highlights:
Recent studies reveal that 45-55% of married women and 50-60% of married men engage in extramarital sex at some time or another during their relationship
About 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage
Younger people are more likely candidates; in fact, younger women are as likely as younger men to be unfaithful.
35 percent of Americans thought adultery should be a crime in the United states
Trust no one! This article on how Brilliant men always betray their wives is quite interesting as well - "Honey, it's not that I don't love you, it's just that I'm brilliant!".
Citation? The research I've read suggests that, when all other factors are accounted for, female directors work longer hours but earn 19% less. Note that this is comparing like for like - employees at the highest level of business. Women who take a few years out to have children may well be less likely to be promoted this far, but the fact is that these women have already achieved that, but still earn less than their male counterparts.
"Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions, legally, on the license you use for your code.
Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical reasons - for example, Bison copies a standard parser program into its output file. In such cases, the copied text in the output is covered by the same license that covers it in the source code. Meanwhile, the part of the output which is derived from the program's input inherits the copyright status of the input.
As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs. This is because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison standard parser program in Bison output files without restriction. We made the decision because there were other tools comparable to Bison which already permitted use for non-free programs."
Using non free modules is just like using a non-free compiler
No, it isn't. It is generally accepted that the copyright of user generated output of a program is controlled by that user. Some rare (inevitably proprietary) licenses do claim copyright over output of the program, but no open source license does that.
I would not expect the GPL to be compatible with the security restrictions around the F-22's avionics firmware though.
Why not? The GPL only applies to software distribution. Unless the F-22 is being sold, the GPL doesn't apply. And if the F-22 is being sold, then the customer probably wants access to that software anyway, to avoid vendor lock-in and ensure that they can fix any bugs they find. The US military has even gone so far as cracking software to avoid exactly this kind of problem.
"You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid." Richard Stallman
"Programmers could develop custom software by day, develop general purpose free software for fun. Or pay people for developing free software. Or sell support, or copies of free software." Richard Stallman
It seems RMS fully supports the idea of paid software development. I wonder why so many people think differently - poor reporting, or just personal bias?
It's necessary for there to be an economic incentive to develop software. Nobody is going to donate millions of man-hours to write the software for the F-22 out of the goodness of their heart. Nobody is going to donate the man-hours to write the software for my insurance agency or hospital.
Nobody is asking them to. The developers that wrote the F22/insurance/hospital software would still get paid, because the software has to actually be written, and they'll get paid for modifications and support too. What they can't do is get their customer reliant on some bit of closed software, and then jack up the cost of that software a couple of years down the line when replacing it with something else is almost impossible.
What's the worst that could happen if hospitals actually used open source systems? That open standards would be developed and utilised, and that information interchange between systems would be many times easier? That patients might have some degree of control over their own data? That vendor lock-in, the type leading to the failure of the "£50 billion, largest civilian IT programme in the entire history of the world" might be avoided? I could support that.
No he isn't. He appears to support the idea of paid software development and paid services, but insists that the users of that developed software should have the right to copy, modify and redistribute it.
Anyway, I agree with him. Having worked for 2 years with a contracting company that was almost 100% Linux and open source, I can say that the open source software development and services arena is very profitable. We never had a customer complain that the solution we delivered was either based on open source, or that our changes would be open source due to the GPL or whatever. What customers cared about was a) did it work and b) did it not crash (the two are somewhat related). As long as we checked those boxes, they were very happy - you'd be surprised at the number of contractors who try to deliver overly fancy solutions but fail on those two basic points.
More software developers should ask themselves "What's the worst that could happen if my customers could modify and redistribute this software"? For proprietary software, it means you can no longer hold customers to ransom and insist on yearly revenue generating "updates". For developers who get paid for hours worked doing actual development and support, this is no problem. I prefer the latter - getting paid for actual work just seems more honest.
If the CIA needed access to the Facebook databases and were unable to get it (either through social, legal or technical measures), I would consider that to be a massive display of incompetence. If the world's most highly funded spying agency isn't capable of accessing Facebook accounts from a cooperative company, then it (the CIA) should be shut down, since it's clearly going to be of no use at all against more determined opponents.
Firefox is a strange case, since initially the sources were free software but the binaries released by the Mozilla Foundation were not free. They were non-free for two reasons: they included one non-free module, Talkback, for which sources were not available (even to the Mozilla Foundation); and because they carried a restrictive EULA [end-user licence agreement].
I think these two problems have both been corrected, so maybe the distributed Firefox binaries are free software today.
They don't need to ship the device with root, but everything that runs Android has source code published for it, so anyone with sufficient knowledge of code should be able to make it happen.
That's like saying that "everything that runs Debian has source code published for it, so anyone with sufficient knowledge of code should be able to make it happen." The fact is that root exploits don't just grow on trees - the only way to make it happen is by discovering a new root exploit. If Google/T-Mobile wanted to, they could've allowed the ROM to be flashed over USB without a special cryptographic key, or provided keys to individual developers upon request. But they don't - flash updates require a cryptographic key, and root access require a software exploit. Even if we find another exploit, we have no guarantee that the next root exploit won't be closed as quickly as this one was.
No, it was written by Linus Torvalds and thousands of other contributors, and released under the GPL. It's our OS. Google just borrowed it for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
The vast majority of thieves aren't even going to realise that this service is enabled. They certainly won't be deploying GPS jammers or reflashing the BIOS or opening the laptop up. And TFA article mentions that the whole point is to protect data by allowing users to shutdown access to an encrypted HDD that might still be open.
TFA says the disabling is handled in the BIOS - so it would be independent of the OS.
Yes, the Debian on G1 install gives you access to phone, Android, and Debian functionality at the same time. At the moment it's done with a chroot environment, but there are plans to package/replace the Android stuff to give a native Debian install. Basically, libc and the dynamic linker are non-GNU under Android, but they are standards compatible, so it shouldn't be too difficult to replace them. The G1 runs Linux by default, so of couse there is already support in its kernel for the phone hardware.
It depends what you mean by "can't". If they were incarcerated in some prison in one of the less nice parts of the world, they would lose weight - I don't recall seeing any obese people leaving the Nazi concentration camps. So clearly it is physically possible for them to lose weight. You can argue over whether they are mentally capable of changing their own lifestyles, or even whether they have an "addiction" to food, but the reality is that fat deposits are just a function of energy_in and energy_out.
I think the point they're trying to make is that cellphone based laptops don't necessarily have to be just big cellphones. There's absolutely no reason why Android can't run on a netbook - in fact, there's absolutely no reason why Android couldn't run on your desktop. It's all open source, so package up Dalvik and the class files for your Linux distribution of choice, compile Skia with the Cairo backend, and you should be able to run Android applications on standard Linux installs. Maybe it could do with some desktop integration, but it's certainly possible. You could possibly even replace Dalvik with OpenJDK, which should give a nice performance boost.
So back to the point: the G1 and other Android phones really are just small PCs - the clock speed of the T-Mobile G1 is over 10 times that of my 486 from a decade ago, and it has over 5 times more RAM, so clearly the technological distinction between a desktop and phone isn't as big as it used to be. Heck, if you have a jail-broken G1 you can run a full blown Debian install on it. Forget web applications, the time for a computer capable of running real apps in your pocket is right now.
The funny thing is that 99% of drivers would agree with you, whilst not realising that they are probably included in that group. Unfortunately, nobody is perfect, and mistakes do happen. A mistake at a lower speed is usually less costly in terms of injury and life. In contrast, leaving 5 or 10 minutes earlier for a trip to get there on time really isn't that big a deal - we waste more than that on slashdot every day.
Yeah, Apple's DAAP authentication still hasn't been cracked, meaning that no other media player can stream from iTunes. It used to be that Amarok, Banshee etc. could stream, but since iTunes 7 they replaced the cracked hash algorithm with some kind of public key authentication and this is no longer possible.
I bet if Mr. Gonzalez had put an unarmed 13 year old girl on her knees and then shot her at point blank range in the back he'd be on death by row now.
We already have self-aware machines that are capable of fully intelligent behaviour - they just happen to be made of cells, proteins and other biological matter. They require nine months to self-assemble within a growth medium, and a few years to adapt to the outside environment, but from that point on they are, as far as we know, fully self aware.
First you have to define exactly what a "soul" is, and what it means for a creature to "have a soul" in a rigid, scientifically testable way. Is "having a soul" an intrinsic property of a creature, or is it ascribed to behaviour? Maybe you accept that "have a soul" == "displays behaviour that indicates self awareness"? Then you define self awareness, and what kind of behaviour one classes as self aware. Then define tests, like the ability to formulate and plan coherent paths of action in order to attain some goal state, or ability to recognise oneself in the mirror. Then you need to answer the question regarding other creatures in the world:
He didn't choose to use this "unscientific and highly religiously charged word" - he was asked a specific question in an interview - Will super intelligent machines ever have souls? and he responded by saying that the soul was a synonym for consciousness and continued from that point.
Don't blame Kurzweil for an interviewer who uses fuzzy pseudo-religious language.
Yes, medicine was once seen as a man's job, which the "intellectually inferior" females were incapable of doing, and now 60% of new doctors are female. The trend towards feminisation has provoked some interesting comments though, with claims that "women docs are weakening the medical profession" (also here)
According to the research, there are genetic differences in muscle fiber distribution between individuals who's ancestry hails from different regions of the planet. It's no coincidence that no white person has ever run the 100 metres in less than 10 seconds, whilst hundreds of black people have. And ever notice how Kenyans from a certain mountainous region dominate long distance running? It seems obvious that different environmental pressures would lead to significant differences in evolution around the globe (kind of like how a larger proportion of Africans have the gene that provides resistance to malaria, even though the gene causes sickle cell disease).
So it may not be bias, but due to genetics. In contrast, current research suggests that when it comes to intelligence etc. culture and upbringing are the important factors (to my knowledge, there is no real science underlying claims of neural differences in different genetic/racial groups, and given that intelligence would be a positively selected attribute, you'd expect any significant genes to have become quickly spread throughout the population). So when certain groups are under-represented academically, and there are some obvious factors relating to financial and cultural background present, then it may be possible to alter those factors and change the observed distributions to better reflect what we think should be happening if there were no selective bias.
In evolution, different phenotype traits should be positively selected for in different geographical regions, so we shouldn't be surprised to see some differences related to lung capacity, muscle distribution, bone density etc. In contrast, intelligence should always be positively selected for, since it provides such a great advantage for the individual. The real question for society is how far should we go in trying to correct those differences that aren't down to genetics, and whether we should bother at all in trying to correct for differences that are.
As they say, you can show anything with statistics. But here are some interesting stats on infidelity. Highlights:
Trust no one! This article on how Brilliant men always betray their wives is quite interesting as well - "Honey, it's not that I don't love you, it's just that I'm brilliant!".
Citation? The research I've read suggests that, when all other factors are accounted for, female directors work longer hours but earn 19% less. Note that this is comparing like for like - employees at the highest level of business. Women who take a few years out to have children may well be less likely to be promoted this far, but the fact is that these women have already achieved that, but still earn less than their male counterparts.
Your answers:
"Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions, legally, on the license you use for your code.
Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical reasons - for example, Bison copies a standard parser program into its output file. In such cases, the copied text in the output is covered by the same license that covers it in the source code. Meanwhile, the part of the output which is derived from the program's input inherits the copyright status of the input.
As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs. This is because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison standard parser program in Bison output files without restriction. We made the decision because there were other tools comparable to Bison which already permitted use for non-free programs."
No, it isn't. It is generally accepted that the copyright of user generated output of a program is controlled by that user. Some rare (inevitably proprietary) licenses do claim copyright over output of the program, but no open source license does that.
Why not? The GPL only applies to software distribution. Unless the F-22 is being sold, the GPL doesn't apply. And if the F-22 is being sold, then the customer probably wants access to that software anyway, to avoid vendor lock-in and ensure that they can fix any bugs they find. The US military has even gone so far as cracking software to avoid exactly this kind of problem.
"You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid." Richard Stallman
"Programmers could develop custom software by day, develop general purpose free software for fun. Or pay people for developing free software. Or sell support, or copies of free software." Richard Stallman
It seems RMS fully supports the idea of paid software development. I wonder why so many people think differently - poor reporting, or just personal bias?
Nobody is asking them to. The developers that wrote the F22/insurance/hospital software would still get paid, because the software has to actually be written, and they'll get paid for modifications and support too. What they can't do is get their customer reliant on some bit of closed software, and then jack up the cost of that software a couple of years down the line when replacing it with something else is almost impossible.
What's the worst that could happen if hospitals actually used open source systems? That open standards would be developed and utilised, and that information interchange between systems would be many times easier? That patients might have some degree of control over their own data? That vendor lock-in, the type leading to the failure of the "£50 billion, largest civilian IT programme in the entire history of the world" might be avoided? I could support that.
No he isn't. He appears to support the idea of paid software development and paid services, but insists that the users of that developed software should have the right to copy, modify and redistribute it.
Anyway, I agree with him. Having worked for 2 years with a contracting company that was almost 100% Linux and open source, I can say that the open source software development and services arena is very profitable. We never had a customer complain that the solution we delivered was either based on open source, or that our changes would be open source due to the GPL or whatever. What customers cared about was a) did it work and b) did it not crash (the two are somewhat related). As long as we checked those boxes, they were very happy - you'd be surprised at the number of contractors who try to deliver overly fancy solutions but fail on those two basic points.
More software developers should ask themselves "What's the worst that could happen if my customers could modify and redistribute this software"? For proprietary software, it means you can no longer hold customers to ransom and insist on yearly revenue generating "updates". For developers who get paid for hours worked doing actual development and support, this is no problem. I prefer the latter - getting paid for actual work just seems more honest.
If the CIA needed access to the Facebook databases and were unable to get it (either through social, legal or technical measures), I would consider that to be a massive display of incompetence. If the world's most highly funded spying agency isn't capable of accessing Facebook accounts from a cooperative company, then it (the CIA) should be shut down, since it's clearly going to be of no use at all against more determined opponents.
He in fact says:
That's like saying that "everything that runs Debian has source code published for it, so anyone with sufficient knowledge of code should be able to make it happen." The fact is that root exploits don't just grow on trees - the only way to make it happen is by discovering a new root exploit. If Google/T-Mobile wanted to, they could've allowed the ROM to be flashed over USB without a special cryptographic key, or provided keys to individual developers upon request. But they don't - flash updates require a cryptographic key, and root access require a software exploit. Even if we find another exploit, we have no guarantee that the next root exploit won't be closed as quickly as this one was.
I guess it's like politicians: don't judge them by what they promise, but by their actions. One thing is not like the other.
No, it was written by Linus Torvalds and thousands of other contributors, and released under the GPL. It's our OS. Google just borrowed it for a while.