DeCSS is outlawed. It just doesn't much matter because it is widely available.
Re:In the short run, this will make for bad policy
on
Politicizing Science
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I disagree with this assessment. In order for most people to actually get upset about this something will have to affect them in a directly negative way. And I don't think that's going to happen (at least not in the short term). The problems introduced by these biased review boards will be so latent as to be unnoticed in the relevant future (i.e. more global warming won't mean the ice caps melt next year). By the time people start to see negative effects it will be way too late and they won't even connect them with this policy.
The whole point of this is to silence the voices of those who offer opposing views. If the public only gets one side of the story, it won't occur to most of them that there's another side.
Software is a whole other story. Most companies realize now that upgrades are a scam.
I'm not sure this is accurate, I think in many cases management is afraid of getting behind the times. This is especially true in companies who deliver computer/Internet related products. Our CTO is constantly trying to keep our company on the bleeding edge of technology (sometimes trying a bit too hard if you ask me). Many times this is simply so we can impress a client by saying that we're working with the latest greatest stuff.
But more or less, it is brute force. Sophisticated brute force, yes, but still brute force. It's about how many different branches it can evaluate in the given time period. And this method doesn't work well for Go.
Something beyond brute force would be recognizing higher level patterns, which is what human beings do when they play Chess or Go (or at least that's what I think happens). That is to say, a human player needs to consciously evaluate far fewer possible moves in order to hone in on the best one. They're not processing thousands and thousands of possible scenarios, at least not consciously.
The real question is are we processing these thousands of possibilites unconsciously (which would pretty much place us in the brute force category) or are we able to recognize higher level patterns without having to process thousands of lower level patterns. I tend to think this is not the case, but do not know enough about how the brain functions to say.
But, you can have a good chess program without having it be brute-force approach
I don't think that is correct. Deep Blue was essentially just brute force as are, I think, most other chess playing programs. If someone knows otherwise please let me know. I'd be very interested to see other some other techniques as it relates to AI chess.
I agree with this post. I've found when working with novice programmers it helps to really specifically define what you need them to do.
Recently I was working with a SQL guy who was supposed to be writing some stored procedures for me. In order to help him I made some sample tables that contained exactly the output I was expecting to see from his procedures. He was much better able to understand this example than the specs I had previously given him.
It's frustrating, but what you have to do is just stay on top of these people. Check in with them often and if need be, break up the jobs you need them to do into smaller and smaller chunks until they get it.
Many times Slashdotters forget that it is not the web designer who generally decides what he codes for.
Almost invariably my clients don't care if the content doesn't display on anything but IE (granted, I do most internal web applications, but still). And I'm not going to waste my time (and it can take a lot of time) to make sure all the fancy stuff that the client DEMANDS is going to work in all browsers unless they are paying me to do that.
And one final note, I don't understand why in the post Flash is specically complained about. Honestly for robust web applications these days Flash is looking more and more sweet BECAUSE of browser incompatibilities. Flash in Netscape works just like Flash in IE or Opera or whatever (except for a few minor Javascript-Flash communication differences which are easily resolved.)
Except that they generally forget about the "improving" side of the equation. And they often leave the same bugs intact from version to version, while adding new features to "delight" their customers.
You're saying exactly what I'm saying. Instead of focusing on fixing bugs they concentrate on adding features because that is what the client wants.
Also, you ignore that adding more features is (or at least can be) an improvement on the product. And, in general, adding features is required to stay competitive. If you have two companies, one that consistently delivers the same product with mainly bug fixes and minor improvements and another that concentrates on adding new whiz-bang features moreso than fixing bugs then right or wrong the second company will likely succeed.
Quality of a product can be viewed in many different ways, and the decision makers are likely not looking at it in terms of most secure, most stable, least number of bugs, etc. I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying that's how it is.
I fear that you are making the same mistake the article made. Equating quality of product directly with reliability, or lack of bugs. While I recognize that these are VERY important factors in the quality of software, they are not the only factors.
Software also has to do something useful. And if you don't want to go out of business, probably something more useful than the last version.
If software companies tried to do what car companies (or refrigerator companies for that matter) do (i.e. offer a slightly improved version of pretty much the same product) year after year they would inevitably fail, probably very quickly.
Users demand newer, better, faster software. They're not going to be happy to continue to pay for incremental upgrades to the software they already have (and a company can't make money putting out free updates and not making new products). Imagine trying to sell a new version of office, citing the fact that it loaded 0.5 seconds faster and didn't crash under several specific sets of circumstances that the user has probably never even run into.
One advantage that the other more tangible industries have is that their products wear out more readily. I'm going to have to buy a new car eventually even if I am happy with my current vehicle and the next model isn't any better. The only reason I should need to buy new software is because I'm either unhappy with my current software or the new software offers SIGNIFICANT advantages over the old.
In short, direct comparisons of the software industry and the refrigerator industry do not work out.
First of all, what evidence do you have to support the claim that EVERY system on the Internet will inevitably be hacked?
Again I am not advocating a position of not worrying about security because "surely WE won't get hacked." I am simply saying that considering most sites have a finite lifetime, I don't see how one can claim that ALL sites will be hacked. But this is beside the point.
The point is, it's not about what is practical, it's about what the client wants. If the client (despite all your best efforts to convince them otherwise) wants to store billing information for its customers so that they only have to login with a username and password to order something (and not have to enter their address and such every time) then you are going to give the client what they want.
And once again, the question becomes how can I make this inherently insecure system as secure as possible while maintaining the requirements specified by my client (or boss or whatever).
Simply saying "Don't do it that way" isn't an option.
Okay, first of all, it is hardly fair to say that all personal information stored online will inevitably be compromised. That's patently absurd.
You could reasonably assert that all personal information stored online is compromisable. But there's a big different between the two.
Now, more to the point, many times there is no choice. You mention that not storing personal info online is difficult to sell to your boss. In many situations I would say it is completely impossible. If the client (the real boss) says they want to store personal information, you can advise them against it but the final say resides with them (or they won't be your client for very long).
We have to make compromises (no pun intended) all the time. Yes, you're right that not storing personal information is the best way to make sure it doesn't get compromised. But suppose that's not an option, the question then becomes how can I make my data as secure as possible.
This same thing applies to your last comment. If my boss asks me to secure a Windows box and I refuse, saying "That's impossible, we need to install Linux!" then I'm likely to not have that job for very long. So again, the question becomes how can I make the best of the situation I am forced to deal with.
Being idealistic is great fun, but it doesn't pay the bills.
The recording industry has a huge mess on its hands. They've irritated the consumer to the point where even the well-meaning consumer won't pay $17.99 a CD to see only $.08 go to the artist. No amount of copy protection is going to change that.
I honestly don't think most people even think about this when they're buying CDs, and they ARE still buying CDs, and will continue to buy them.
I'm sure some people probably just don't know that only a very small percentage goes to the artist, but I think most people just don't especially care. Should they care? Probably. But I doubt they will stop buying CDs because of it.
There are options in IE to determine which E-mail application you want to use for mailto links. As far as it defaulting to Outlook that's not much different from Netscape defaulting to Messenger.
Also you can change the associations for images as you have been able to do in all versions of Windows. Many programs when they install either change these associations or ask if you want to change them.
... if you're looking for things than only make sense from a God-based worldview, start with a large polystratic fossil and work out from there
While I myself would argue that an example such as this does not necessitate a "God-based worldview" I admit that that item is up for debate. However, I think I can say with certainty that it does not require a Christian god, or a Muslim god, or any other god that has been created by man.
So we can debate about whether there is something out there or not, but any attempt to convince me that you have any idea what that thing looks like or what its motiviation are is well... silly.
Note, I am not suggesting you are making this claim, but many do.
I fail to see how anyone could claim that something like the the Final Fantasy Series (The newer ones moreso than the original) could be seen as less artistic than film.
How would this be accomplished exactly? What beyond what the browser sends to the webserver does the webserver have to evaluate what kind of browser it is? I suppose it might be possible to defeat this spoofing in some other way, but I doubt seriously that it would be trivial.
With Opera I can be any browser I want to be as far as the webserver is concerned. Mozilla and others would certainly offer similar functionality if they aren't already (not sure, haven't seen Mozilla in a while).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm uncomfortable using personal grooming habits as an indicator of intellectual prowess. Einstein might be a good example to consider.
Why would we be fundamentally unable to reproduce this same concept with a computer?
So what, we don't know exactly how the brain works. Does that mean it is necessarily not reproducible?
Perhaps you were not implying this, but the parent of the parent was so consider this a response to that post as well.
Running WinXP, IE 6.0.26.
No crash.
Windows has enough problems, you don't need to make them up. It does nothing to strengthen your point and it makes you look like an idiot.
Care to enlighten the younger (i.e. Gen Y) among us as to what the double speed poke is?
At a private school. Or a state school if you are out of state.
I know many people with student loan debt much more impressive than that.
If the child is a fetus then it's not a child. It's a fetus. There is in fact a difference.
DeCSS is outlawed. It just doesn't much matter because it is widely available.
I disagree with this assessment. In order for most people to actually get upset about this something will have to affect them in a directly negative way. And I don't think that's going to happen (at least not in the short term). The problems introduced by these biased review boards will be so latent as to be unnoticed in the relevant future (i.e. more global warming won't mean the ice caps melt next year). By the time people start to see negative effects it will be way too late and they won't even connect them with this policy.
The whole point of this is to silence the voices of those who offer opposing views. If the public only gets one side of the story, it won't occur to most of them that there's another side.
I'm not sure this is accurate, I think in many cases management is afraid of getting behind the times. This is especially true in companies who deliver computer/Internet related products. Our CTO is constantly trying to keep our company on the bleeding edge of technology (sometimes trying a bit too hard if you ask me). Many times this is simply so we can impress a client by saying that we're working with the latest greatest stuff.
Does that principle apply to atomic clocks? I would think not, but I'm not 100% sure.
But more or less, it is brute force. Sophisticated brute force, yes, but still brute force. It's about how many different branches it can evaluate in the given time period. And this method doesn't work well for Go.
Something beyond brute force would be recognizing higher level patterns, which is what human beings do when they play Chess or Go (or at least that's what I think happens). That is to say, a human player needs to consciously evaluate far fewer possible moves in order to hone in on the best one. They're not processing thousands and thousands of possible scenarios, at least not consciously.
The real question is are we processing these thousands of possibilites unconsciously (which would pretty much place us in the brute force category) or are we able to recognize higher level patterns without having to process thousands of lower level patterns. I tend to think this is not the case, but do not know enough about how the brain functions to say.
I don't think that is correct. Deep Blue was essentially just brute force as are, I think, most other chess playing programs. If someone knows otherwise please let me know. I'd be very interested to see other some other techniques as it relates to AI chess.
I agree with this post. I've found when working with novice programmers it helps to really specifically define what you need them to do.
Recently I was working with a SQL guy who was supposed to be writing some stored procedures for me. In order to help him I made some sample tables that contained exactly the output I was expecting to see from his procedures. He was much better able to understand this example than the specs I had previously given him.
It's frustrating, but what you have to do is just stay on top of these people. Check in with them often and if need be, break up the jobs you need them to do into smaller and smaller chunks until they get it.
Thank you for the voice of reason.
Many times Slashdotters forget that it is not the web designer who generally decides what he codes for.
Almost invariably my clients don't care if the content doesn't display on anything but IE (granted, I do most internal web applications, but still). And I'm not going to waste my time (and it can take a lot of time) to make sure all the fancy stuff that the client DEMANDS is going to work in all browsers unless they are paying me to do that.
And one final note, I don't understand why in the post Flash is specically complained about. Honestly for robust web applications these days Flash is looking more and more sweet BECAUSE of browser incompatibilities. Flash in Netscape works just like Flash in IE or Opera or whatever (except for a few minor Javascript-Flash communication differences which are easily resolved.)
You're saying exactly what I'm saying. Instead of focusing on fixing bugs they concentrate on adding features because that is what the client wants.
Also, you ignore that adding more features is (or at least can be) an improvement on the product. And, in general, adding features is required to stay competitive. If you have two companies, one that consistently delivers the same product with mainly bug fixes and minor improvements and another that concentrates on adding new whiz-bang features moreso than fixing bugs then right or wrong the second company will likely succeed.
Quality of a product can be viewed in many different ways, and the decision makers are likely not looking at it in terms of most secure, most stable, least number of bugs, etc. I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying that's how it is.
I fear that you are making the same mistake the article made. Equating quality of product directly with reliability, or lack of bugs. While I recognize that these are VERY important factors in the quality of software, they are not the only factors.
Software also has to do something useful. And if you don't want to go out of business, probably something more useful than the last version.
If software companies tried to do what car companies (or refrigerator companies for that matter) do (i.e. offer a slightly improved version of pretty much the same product) year after year they would inevitably fail, probably very quickly.
Users demand newer, better, faster software. They're not going to be happy to continue to pay for incremental upgrades to the software they already have (and a company can't make money putting out free updates and not making new products). Imagine trying to sell a new version of office, citing the fact that it loaded 0.5 seconds faster and didn't crash under several specific sets of circumstances that the user has probably never even run into.
One advantage that the other more tangible industries have is that their products wear out more readily. I'm going to have to buy a new car eventually even if I am happy with my current vehicle and the next model isn't any better. The only reason I should need to buy new software is because I'm either unhappy with my current software or the new software offers SIGNIFICANT advantages over the old.
In short, direct comparisons of the software industry and the refrigerator industry do not work out.
First of all, what evidence do you have to support the claim that EVERY system on the Internet will inevitably be hacked?
Again I am not advocating a position of not worrying about security because "surely WE won't get hacked." I am simply saying that considering most sites have a finite lifetime, I don't see how one can claim that ALL sites will be hacked. But this is beside the point.
The point is, it's not about what is practical, it's about what the client wants. If the client (despite all your best efforts to convince them otherwise) wants to store billing information for its customers so that they only have to login with a username and password to order something (and not have to enter their address and such every time) then you are going to give the client what they want.
And once again, the question becomes how can I make this inherently insecure system as secure as possible while maintaining the requirements specified by my client (or boss or whatever).
Simply saying "Don't do it that way" isn't an option.
Okay, first of all, it is hardly fair to say that all personal information stored online will inevitably be compromised. That's patently absurd.
You could reasonably assert that all personal information stored online is compromisable. But there's a big different between the two.
Now, more to the point, many times there is no choice. You mention that not storing personal info online is difficult to sell to your boss. In many situations I would say it is completely impossible. If the client (the real boss) says they want to store personal information, you can advise them against it but the final say resides with them (or they won't be your client for very long).
We have to make compromises (no pun intended) all the time. Yes, you're right that not storing personal information is the best way to make sure it doesn't get compromised. But suppose that's not an option, the question then becomes how can I make my data as secure as possible.
This same thing applies to your last comment. If my boss asks me to secure a Windows box and I refuse, saying "That's impossible, we need to install Linux!" then I'm likely to not have that job for very long. So again, the question becomes how can I make the best of the situation I am forced to deal with.
Being idealistic is great fun, but it doesn't pay the bills.
I honestly don't think most people even think about this when they're buying CDs, and they ARE still buying CDs, and will continue to buy them.
I'm sure some people probably just don't know that only a very small percentage goes to the artist, but I think most people just don't especially care. Should they care? Probably. But I doubt they will stop buying CDs because of it.
There are options in IE to determine which E-mail application you want to use for mailto links. As far as it defaulting to Outlook that's not much different from Netscape defaulting to Messenger.
Also you can change the associations for images as you have been able to do in all versions of Windows. Many programs when they install either change these associations or ask if you want to change them.
While I myself would argue that an example such as this does not necessitate a "God-based worldview" I admit that that item is up for debate. However, I think I can say with certainty that it does not require a Christian god, or a Muslim god, or any other god that has been created by man.
So we can debate about whether there is something out there or not, but any attempt to convince me that you have any idea what that thing looks like or what its motiviation are is well ... silly.
Note, I am not suggesting you are making this claim, but many do.
I fail to see how anyone could claim that something like the the Final Fantasy Series (The newer ones moreso than the original) could be seen as less artistic than film.
Yes, but that is exactly what Opera changes when it identifies itself as a different browser.
How would this be accomplished exactly? What beyond what the browser sends to the webserver does the webserver have to evaluate what kind of browser it is? I suppose it might be possible to defeat this spoofing in some other way, but I doubt seriously that it would be trivial.
With Opera I can be any browser I want to be as far as the webserver is concerned. Mozilla and others would certainly offer similar functionality if they aren't already (not sure, haven't seen Mozilla in a while).