Authentium
already broke Patch Guard and hooked the Vista kernel. That pretty much destroys 50% of the unbreakable new security model, as far as I can tell. Microsoft're quoted in that Reg story as saying they'll patch it, but are they holding RTM for that? If not, the launch will be as big a farce as the development process to date...
So, the thought of these machines running closed source on Windows doesn't bother you, but/Access/ gets your blood boiling? You need to go away and think about things a little longer I think.
I'll add a data point. I lived for eight years in Brixton (central London, big street drug scene, large black community (along with gay & lesbians, a Jewish community, a little Portuguese cluster in SW9, clubbers, artists, students, yuppies, and several other sub-cultures.) In total in that time I saw one drunken brawl on the street (2 or 3 pissed up white 17 year-olds) , 4 or 5 30 second drunken fights in my local pub (I used to drink there four or five nights a week. It was a nice pub and a fine venue for reading Sky & Telescope or Linux Journal:) The pub fights generally only lasted 30 second because by the time two punches had been thrown (one each way) there were usually 20 people sitting next to them grabbing each participant, pulling them away from each other and giving it the "leave it he's not worth it let me buy you a drink" treatment (or sometimes "perhaps you should go check out the Dog Star, I hear it's a good night tonight. Byeeeeee" treatment.) This is all 5 mins walk from one of three or four best known crack and smack dealing areas in London. I never so much as saw a gun (though there were occasional gang shootings.). Oh, and I witnessed part of a very small riot, which was actually pretty good-natured - compared to how it would have been 15 - 20 years earlier.)
Brixton isn't very representative of the rest of the UK, unfortunately.
[Steps 1-10 of an enormously complex way to get some sort of half-way verifiable electronic voting system to work elided. View parent post for the full horror.]
Alternatively you could do what we here in the UK, and I believe Canada, India, Australia, and some other rather large functioning democracies do. Large metal box with election supervisor watching at all times. Voter enters polling station. Is given piece of paper with candidate names on. Steps behind plywood partition. Marks X with 3" stub of the same pencil that has been used since 1964 next to the name of desired candidate (or writes amusing slogan if he/she wishes to spoil their ballot.) Folds paper in half, concealing vote. Returns to ballot box. Pushes bit of paper in slot. At 10pm, boxes are conveyed to local town hall (or similar establishment may be used from time to time) where volunteers, supervised by a representative of each party, count the bits of paper into piles. Most seats return a result sometime between midnight and 4am, making for a generally interesting and sometimes exciting night of drinking, turning into a wake or celebration according to the PoV of one's friends. Wake up with hangover and new government. The last time I did this properly (1997) I had the following day off work; I wandered up to Westminster and was puzzled to see a man in a suit being photographed waving at a couple of dozen photographers from a doorway of the Treasury; this turned out that this was Gordon Brown. All in all a very interesting experience and hard to dispute, modulo the unfair and unrepresentative 'first past the post' voting system, which is a rant for another day.
An email went round from our syadmin group the other day, as they were clearing some crappy, redundant old boxes out to make some new rack space. And so now I have a (not very shiny, six year old) Sun Enterprise E4000 in my bedroom! Seriously... it's at the foot of my bed. Quad Sparc procs, only 20Gb system disks but I should be able to pick up some cheap RAID arrays on eBay, once I've got the bastard thing to either boot from the CD drive, or have worked out how to this "pixie boot" thing works.
It's not just ironic, it doesn't even fit. China is not a sovereign nation. The territory controlled by the Peoples Repulic of China is rightfully owned by the free government of Taiwan.
You're full of shit. Possession is nine points of the law, remember. Otherwise, every nation in North and South America would be rightfully owned by the dispossessed native peoples, which (I guess) would make you the heir to genocidal thugs.
--
"And we have seen and do testify that the Flying Spaghetti Monster sent the Meatballs to be the Savior of the World"
Gosh, someone who knows what they're talking about;)
If your internet link is DSL, you do not need a real router:)
I should point out that this topic comes up every couple of years on NANOG, ummmmmm... here's a reasonable selection from the last decade. These people have forgotten more about routing than most of us here will ever know. And until generic PCs come with multi-gig backplanes, it ain't happening anywhere except the low end. And at the low end, you're better off either leaving it to your ISP or using a few whitebox "desktop" switches/routers. They're cheap, cheerful, work, and you don't need to know the difference between "sh ip bgp run" and "sh bgp ip run"...
That's what bothers me most about the environmental movement. It always seems to take a knee-jerk approach rather than a studied view of the whole system, and the result is that more often than not, the things that are pushed in the name of environmental reform usually do more harm than good
That's not the environmental movement... that's homo sapiens.
How about some creative legislation, like providing state incentives rather than disencentives for more fuel efficient cars?
The price mechanism is the best way to change behaviour. Make clean vehicles tax-free. Better yet, provide massive subsidies for them, and for public transport. At the same time, drop punitive taxes on dirty (in the CO2 sense) vehicles to make their real cost visible. Once gas is $10 a gallon you'll start seeing some proper fuel economy and public transport.Until then, you're counting angels on pinheads.
Humans, in particular those living in rich industrialised north, are responsible for fucking the planet up. If we don't pay for the costs of stopping fucking it up even more, who will? Whaddya gonna do, sue the universe? or the laws of physics?
I seriously doubt that's the case with Radiohead, at least. Apart from anything else they haven't bothered to get a new deal since their original early 90s EMI deal ended. They've also put up a fair bit of material (music and video) for download, and their website includes the interesting disclaimer "Don't copy if you do it for profit" -- not exactly "home taping is killing music",..
If you don't think science and religion are mutually exclusive, you're using different definitions of the words than I am.
you should also consider a pragmatic point of view: religious folk both in America and worldwide are outbreeding the atheists and agnostics by a wide margin. If this war between God and Science continues another couple generations, it's more likely to bring about a dark age than a golden age.
Yup, I agree, although I find it cause for despair rather than a reason to change my mind. Objective truth does not result from a social consensus. Newton's laws would have worked just as well before he wrote them down as they did afterwards.
Well, you said it, not me! Talk about condemned out of your own mouth... I have this old-fashioned idea that freedom is a good thing, and that social control is bad. Call me an old hippy if you will...
Science is falsifiable. Religion isn't. That's the point.
Anyway, I challenge anyone to distinguish between coherent descriptions of the world view of a sufferer from paranoid schizophrenia, from that of a Believer.
interesting stuff, thanks, I'll check it out (sadly the link's giving "You must select a video speed, please go back and select one." for me, perhaps cos I'm on Linux here.) I don't claim to have read any of his work in linguistics or even to really understand it's significance. (I saw a note that he was partly responsible for the decline of behaviourism; personally I think 'Beyond freedom and Dignity' is one of the most important books of the 20th C, though, so I should be interested to see what he says on that score... one day. (my intellectual self-improvement campaign for this decade is to read and comprehend Dennett. Not easy for a bear of little brain like me:)
sixth-form sophistry; very good, well done, you're very clever. If you get to college, try taking some real philosophy courses. (PS: you could start now, by googling 'brain vat hypothesis fallacy criticism'...)
Calling them mentally ill, or any other insults does not strengthen your case.
Sorry if it sounded like an insult, not intended as such - just an observation. Suffering from an illness doesn't make you bad person in some way, it makes you unfortunate. You're the one who thinks mental illness bears a stigma...
Why are they mentally ill?
Well, the aetiology of most mental illnesses consists of a genetic predisposition or vulnerability, plus a particular set of circumstances or life events that trigger it off. I myself am manic depressive, as it happens (which is why I nearly replied 'who knows? Perhaps they had bad potty training'), which is a good example: there's a strong genetic signal but it doesn't account for which people carrying the predisposing genotype develop the condition and which don't. Same goes for most classical affective disorders and the schizophreniform conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
Authentium already broke Patch Guard and hooked the Vista kernel. That pretty much destroys 50% of the unbreakable new security model, as far as I can tell. Microsoft're quoted in that Reg story as saying they'll patch it, but are they holding RTM for that? If not, the launch will be as big a farce as the development process to date...
So, the thought of these machines running closed source on Windows doesn't bother you, but /Access/ gets your blood boiling? You need to go away and think about things a little longer I think.
Brixton isn't very representative of the rest of the UK, unfortunately.
If you'd read TFA you'd see that (contrary to the write-up) this is a trial scheme in Yeovil, a small country town in Somerset.
Alternatively you could do what we here in the UK, and I believe Canada, India, Australia, and some other rather large functioning democracies do. Large metal box with election supervisor watching at all times. Voter enters polling station. Is given piece of paper with candidate names on. Steps behind plywood partition. Marks X with 3" stub of the same pencil that has been used since 1964 next to the name of desired candidate (or writes amusing slogan if he/she wishes to spoil their ballot.) Folds paper in half, concealing vote. Returns to ballot box. Pushes bit of paper in slot. At 10pm, boxes are conveyed to local town hall (or similar establishment may be used from time to time) where volunteers, supervised by a representative of each party, count the bits of paper into piles. Most seats return a result sometime between midnight and 4am, making for a generally interesting and sometimes exciting night of drinking, turning into a wake or celebration according to the PoV of one's friends. Wake up with hangover and new government. The last time I did this properly (1997) I had the following day off work; I wandered up to Westminster and was puzzled to see a man in a suit being photographed waving at a couple of dozen photographers from a doorway of the Treasury; this turned out that this was Gordon Brown. All in all a very interesting experience and hard to dispute, modulo the unfair and unrepresentative 'first past the post' voting system, which is a rant for another day.
An email went round from our syadmin group the other day, as they were clearing some crappy, redundant old boxes out to make some new rack space. And so now I have a (not very shiny, six year old) Sun Enterprise E4000 in my bedroom! Seriously... it's at the foot of my bed. Quad Sparc procs, only 20Gb system disks but I should be able to pick up some cheap RAID arrays on eBay, once I've got the bastard thing to either boot from the CD drive, or have worked out how to this "pixie boot" thing works.
--
"And we have seen and do testify that the Flying Spaghetti Monster sent the Meatballs to be the Savior of the World"
If your internet link is DSL, you do not need a real router :)
I should point out that this topic comes up every couple of years on NANOG, ummmmmm... here's a reasonable selection from the last decade. These people have forgotten more about routing than most of us here will ever know. And until generic PCs come with multi-gig backplanes, it ain't happening anywhere except the low end. And at the low end, you're better off either leaving it to your ISP or using a few whitebox "desktop" switches/routers. They're cheap, cheerful, work, and you don't need to know the difference between "sh ip bgp run" and "sh bgp ip run"...
You've heard of CEF, right?
Humans, in particular those living in rich industrialised north, are responsible for fucking the planet up. If we don't pay for the costs of stopping fucking it up even more, who will? Whaddya gonna do, sue the universe? or the laws of physics?
b0rk! b0rk! b0rk!!
I seriously doubt that's the case with Radiohead, at least. Apart from anything else they haven't bothered to get a new deal since their original early 90s EMI deal ended. They've also put up a fair bit of material (music and video) for download, and their website includes the interesting disclaimer "Don't copy if you do it for profit" -- not exactly "home taping is killing music",..
sample size?
google 'Voyager mystery force site:slashdot.org' :)
*G*
I completely agree; thank you for stating the argument so eloquently.
Yup, I agree, although I find it cause for despair rather than a reason to change my mind. Objective truth does not result from a social consensus. Newton's laws would have worked just as well before he wrote them down as they did afterwards.
Well, you said it, not me! Talk about condemned out of your own mouth... I have this old-fashioned idea that freedom is a good thing, and that social control is bad. Call me an old hippy if you will...
PS I never claimed to be a scientist.
Anyway, I challenge anyone to distinguish between coherent descriptions of the world view of a sufferer from paranoid schizophrenia, from that of a Believer.
interesting stuff, thanks, I'll check it out (sadly the link's giving "You must select a video speed, please go back and select one." for me, perhaps cos I'm on Linux here.) I don't claim to have read any of his work in linguistics or even to really understand it's significance. (I saw a note that he was partly responsible for the decline of behaviourism; personally I think 'Beyond freedom and Dignity' is one of the most important books of the 20th C, though, so I should be interested to see what he says on that score... one day. (my intellectual self-improvement campaign for this decade is to read and comprehend Dennett. Not easy for a bear of little brain like me :)
So, do all your fellow believers also believe that being ill makes you a bad person?
sixth-form sophistry; very good, well done, you're very clever. If you get to college, try taking some real philosophy courses. (PS: you could start now, by googling 'brain vat hypothesis fallacy criticism'...)
Well, the aetiology of most mental illnesses consists of a genetic predisposition or vulnerability, plus a particular set of circumstances or life events that trigger it off. I myself am manic depressive, as it happens (which is why I nearly replied 'who knows? Perhaps they had bad potty training'), which is a good example: there's a strong genetic signal but it doesn't account for which people carrying the predisposing genotype develop the condition and which don't. Same goes for most classical affective disorders and the schizophreniform conditions.