If you read the patent laws, you'll see that the original intent of the patent system is, indeed, simply to give an incentive for researchers to work harder and come up with new, creative ideas. How the patent system warped itself into its current state is conjectural...
Perhaps it's because of the fallacious association of intangible things in the Information Age (eg. the Internet, software, software design (ideas), etc) with physical objects. OT1H physical analogies are necessary to convey the ideas and patterns behind the electronic world, however it is way too easy to make that jump to believe that these analogies are actual, physical descriptions of the electronic medium. Eg., regarding software as a physical or close-to-physical material object which can be owned, traded, etc.. In some respects software does exhibit such attributes; however, it is totally fallacious to think software behaves exactly the way physical property behaves. One such fallacy, for example, is the fact that it costs close to nothing to duplicate software. There are no real physical objects that behave in a similar way.
The association of ideas with physically owned objects suffers from the same fallacies. Ideas behave much like software does -- they are replicated (in fact, without effort, as Jefferson points out!) in whoever hears them, and are next to impossible to erase once it enters the memory. Moreover, the conveyance of ideas does not detract any of itself from its originator. This is the key point IMHO. The copying of ideas is free. And the act of copying in no way harms the originator of the idea. (Save perhaps some ego loss when the originator of the idea isn't acknowledged.) It does not detract anything from the "owner". It does NOT behave like physical property -- which costs money and time to duplicate, and which thieves take away from the owner. You cannot really "steal" an idea -- you are merely making a copy of it.
I'm rambling... but the point is, ideas and software are NOT the same as physical property and should NOT be treated as such. The spirit of the original patent system was NOT to enforce "intellectual property"; it was to give the originator of an idea a reward by granting him temporary control over his (non-physical) creation. It was never intended grant the power to withhold ideas from the rest of the world.
The Net's signal-to-noise ratio is rapidly dropping... not that it was that high anyways, but look at how much bandwidth is wasted on unnecessary Flash plugins, "cute" animations, "cool" special effects... especially on lame commercial pages so poorly designed all you ever see is ads, hype, and garbage, but it's next to impossible to find what you want. Ugh.
When I visit a website, I want to see what they got. Not the silly flashy stuff (unless the page is dedicated for that purpose) but the real stuff they have to offer: useful information, their products, etc.. Who cares about all that bandwidth hogging eye-candy anyways?! Where's the beef? I wish more web designers would knock this into their heads: put your products up front! publish your useful information up front! (if you have any, that is). Sites that contain endless animations usually are so poorly design it's next to impossible to navigate and find what you want. And too often than it ought to be, that is usually a sign that they have (almost) nothing of value to offer.
Sorry for this rant. I'm just so fed up and turned off by flashy commercial sites that I can't help it...
LOL... so you think you're as special or more special than God just because you figured out how to take apart something He has built and re-assemble it to something else that still works? It's like taking apart your car and re-assembling it to another car, and then claiming that you invented cars. Rather myopic, if you ask me.
I guess this just shows the loose, lax way the patent office handles its stuff, which is sad, letting many absurd patents go through. I'm not saying the people who work there are lazy or anything, but surely they should pay more attention to carefully verifying the patent for originality, contribution, and elibility for patenting?! It's a shame that they keep letting such patents fall through. No wonder people can abuse the patent system so easily, like the one-click shopping stupidity. (Gimme a break, clicking the mouse to shop online is such an original idea is it not?! But anyway, I digress...)
This is just business as usual for the judge. It wasn't exactly a ground-shattering decision like, oh say, that processes to do with DNA should be unpatentable. If it *was*, then I'd be applauding.
Well, I have nothing against patents of processes to do with DNA. I think that if somebody came up with a creative idea of solving a technical difficulty in dealing with DNA, there's nothing wrong with him patenting it. But what is problematic is if he tries patenting stuff to do with the DNA itself -- eg., patenting a particular DNA sequence that he found that others haven't found yet. It's patents like that that are scary, because ultimately it boils down to a group of people controlling the use of something which is found in nature.
But of course, the other extreme can go wrong too, in fact, very wrong. The main problem being that in a leading-edge technology like this, techniques that are "obvious" to whoever is in the field may not be obvious at all to whoever is working in the patent office. Then somebody could just go and patent something that looks innovative and creative but which can easily be found by whoever's in the field if they worked at it. This could be the source of silly patents and "obvious" patents which lets companies or a few individuals "control" an obvious technique and leech money off everybody else in the field for using it or "re-discovering" it.
Well, it all depends on how the system is used. Remember that the system only alerts "George" to the possibility of crime. As long as the human behind the sounding alarm knows what he's doing, this shouldn't be a problem.
The only thing is, how do we guarantee that "George" doesn't start trusting the system more than common sense and sound judgment? Yes, they probably have to go through training and stuff like that, but still, there no 100% guarantee that "George" may have ulterior motives or just too naive in believing the system when the alarm goes off, and uses that as "proof" to get on somebody's case.
IMHO this kind of system only helps prevent petty crimes and spot naive criminals (and in the meantime, probably wrongly "spots" many innocent people as well). Those who get the false sense that such systems will "reduce crime" are deceiving themselves. It only reduces petty crimes, but could have the nasty side-effect of motivating criminal-wannabes to employ more sophisticated detection-avoiding techniques. (I.e., instead of preventing crime, the system has encouraged criminals to strive for more refined criminal skills that would evade detection.)
The problem is that with all the hype about this "new technology", people will tend to put more "trust" in these systems than is appropriate. Unless the limitations of the system are clearly spelled out for its users, we have another case of hurting innocent people to (incompletely) reduce crime.
Agreed. I might be wrong, but it seems that in the past the FSF legal department only makes a big deal with something like Emacs or GCC needs to be defended. Seems that they either don't care or are not able to defend GPL violations of other free software besides their own?? Maybe it's not their fault... but we really need a fund for the legal costs of defending GPL, etc., and to do something when some bungling corporation decides "inadvertantly" to step on a piece of GPL'd software.
It's all fine and dandy now that at least one court realizes that ISP's only act as carriers, and are not responsible for the content transmitted through them. Great, this is nice for us privacy freaks and all that.
But still, from the other point of view, you still haven't really solved the problem. All this proves is that you can't make ISPs trace info so that you can track down abusers. But I'm just wondering, supposing privacy concerns become priority in the future -- meaning no one is legally allowed to monitor our Net activities, store personal info, and strong encryption becomes the norm. This is all great for privacy-aware users like us. But what about people who abuse it? Is there some way to both preserve our privacy, yet not make it impossible to track down abusers when it's necessary? Or will privacy necessarily entail the impossibility of tracking down Net criminals?
Maybe some people think, forget about the abusers, as long as we have our privacy. But this is like saying, forget about robbers, let's just make sure the police have no rights to search our belongings and we'll be happy. Then how would you mete out justice to robbers? This doesn't solve the problem, it only (rather foolishly) ignores it. How about on the Net? Can privacy be preserved yet at the same time it's possible to do something about Net crime?
Hmmm now that I think about it... will this device really help when someone is shining their high-beams at you? What if it outshines the HUD display??? Just a thought...
Cool device! I'd love to have a car with that thing. Even if it's just for the fun of it. Perhaps now people will stop swearing at drivers who shine their headlights into your face?:-)
Still, a device is just a device... it's meant to help conscientious drivers drive better. But I doubt it would make that much a difference for careless drivers. Nothing can replace human responsibility, IMHO.
They're only hurting the lawkeepers
on
WTO + SDMI = NWO
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· Score: 3
Imposing this kind of regulatory laws on the Internet will only harm the law-abiding consumers. They will do nothing at all against the trouble-makers. What, you can stop stuff like pr0n and whatnot on the Internet by monitoring who connects where, and cutting off traffic at routers, etc.? No way! They'll always find a way around it. Then what happens? You've crippled the Internet for the average user -- who has no part in "questionable" things like this. You've deprived the innocent user of his privacy so that ad companies can bombard him with spam and sell his personal info. But you've done absolutely nothing to prevent Internet crime and abuse. Those who abuse the Net will always find ways to work around any kind of "protection" you impose on the Internet.
Why does US allow citizens to have guns? Because by outlawing guns you only cause normal people to be more vulnerable. It doesn't matter whether guns are legal or not; criminals will always find ways to get them. The same goes for the Internet.
It's an effort to "freely distribute" music by using LilyPond's music definition language. The motivation is to "free" music written by composers who are no longer alive, so it makes little sense for some corporate body to still hold the copyright. However, the stuff here is only classical so far... I suppose more variety will be included when LilyPond gets more complete. Not sure how the Mutopia philosophy would fit with contemporary music, though (ie. those whose composers are still around). I suppose they'd have to "open-source" it themselves for this to be legal.
No, the problem is not that they can access information. The problem is that they can modify the information. That's what's scary, because there's nothing that would prevent a Australian authority from changing your files so that it becomes "evidence" against you.
Play nice? In an ideal world, yes... but remember, human beings are inherently corruptible. Given enough power, the temptation to abuse will always be there. And quite frequently, that step is taken.
... is that email was designed with plaintext in view. If you want HTML, please go to a Website. Email has never been designed to be some lame, contorted "sub-Website" that runs on HTML!!!! The problem is that people have this bells-and-whistles mentality: "Oh, it will be so cool if my email has HTML formatting! Oh, it will be so cool if my email can contain inline images! Oh it will be so cool if my email can contain JavaScript animations! Oh it will be so cool if my email can run cool programs on my computer automagically! Oh it will be so NOT cool when my email can format my hard drive!"
Email with HTML is just disgusting. Especially the way it's currently done by the lame mailers that allow it: a plaintext version in the body of the email, plus an *attachment* with the HTML-ized version of the plaintext. Or worse with this annoying featurism trend, you have MS-TNEF attachments containing who knows what. I mean, WTF?!?! Talk about bloat. No wonder network bandwidth is always so congested. What's the f***ing problem with plaintext email anyways?!
Those people who really want this kind of sick featurism should seriously consider designing a NEW protocol, NOT EMAIL, that transports this kind of crap. And I think I know what that is, too. Automatically send a ZIP file containing HTML, GIFs, JavaScript, the whole ball of crap, and the User Agent on the other end automatically decompress the ZIP, run the browser to view it.
Alright, enough of this rant. But I just can't emphasize enough that featurism always leads to crappy implementations which in turn introduces all kinds of problems, like security holes, because the original protocol was never designed to support this kinds of "features".
Actually, I'd be happier if more HW manufacturers adopted an open philosophy in publishing their APIs. Yes, it would be really nice if HW manufacturers starting putting out X servers for their cards, but I think it's better if they release their API. Why? Two reasons:
Hardware companies probably don't want to spend too much resources in writing software drivers. So why not publish the API, let somebody who's focusing on software do the job, and your hardware gains wide acceptance, rather than spending minimal budget on your own software engineers who may only do a mediocre job?
Other software can use your hardware. Other software as in things other than, say, X servers. If the HW company only produces X servers (and perhaps Win32 drivers), this excludes platforms that they don't support. Then it simply becomes the case where XFree is "accepted into the fold" but others will still be left out there in the cold. Publish an open API, and bingo! people on esoteric, unsupported platforms can use your hardware. You've just gained more customers at little or no cost.
But in the meantime, I suppose all we can do is hope that XFree gets enough support so that those of us with unsupported (or poorly supported) hardware can have a better X server soon.
Finally, the next release of X is visible on the horizon...:-) Hopefully with the new device driver API, people can come up with drivers for new video HW faster. My SiS6326 chip is still only minimally supported under X (no bitblt, no accel), and so far I'm stuck with 3.3.3. I tried the 3.3.4 driver and it barfs on my system, locking up the keyboard totally.:-( I've yet to try 3.3.5... but hopefully with XF 4.0 this nightmare won't happen again. A generic API is what we really want -- so that supporting a new HW doesn't entail hacking an entire X server, which is no trivial task. By localizing device-dependent parts of the X server, I think people will be able to come up with more drivers faster, so X won't be lagging behind new HW as bad as now.
Security ratings are just like MHz ratings for CPU's. There are way too many parameters to take into account that a single number/certificate doesn't mean a whole lot.
In the CPU world, MHz ratings make sense only within the same family of processors: a system running 450MHz i586 can be safely said to be faster than a system running a 333MHz i586. (Even then it's not a reliable measure.) But you cannot compare, say, a 450MHz i586 and a 350MHz RS4000 -- you might say, well, the Intel must be faster since it has a faster cycle. But what if the RS4000 can do in 10 instructions what takes 100 instructions on the Intel? Well, if it were a 350Mhz RS4000 and a 450MHz RS4000, we'd know the latter is faster, but it's very hard to compare across different processor families.
Same thing goes for certification. In the NT world, the system is more or less uniform across all deployments, so a certification for it makes sense (just like comparing MHz ratings for one particular family of processors). But now in the Linux world, there are just way too many different configurations. Treat each distro as the equivalent of "processor family" if you will, to draw the analogy. What does a rating on, say, a typical RH6 installation mean to other Linux distros, or even other versions of RedHat? Two different Linux installations can be so different that a certification only makes sense if you stick with one particular distro, one particular release of that distro, and even the same configuration used in the certification process.
What I'm trying to say is, certification is useful only when you're comparing static, non-changing systems. The term "Linux" encompasses too much -- it makes no sense to "certify Linux" and think that the certification gives an accurate picture of security on Linux.
And then, you have the human factor to account for. Everybody knows that the most "secure" system can be the most vulnerable if the sysadmin doesn't know what he's doing. In a way, security certifications like this should be taken with a grain of salt -- just because NT, or even Linux, is "certified to be secure", doesn't mean that you can now just go to the store, buy a copy of the system, install it, and you automagically gain the same security as the certification says. Absolutely not -- you must hire a competent system administrator before your system has any degree of reliable security. Doesn't matter if your NT or Linux box is "certified" to be C2 or C3 or C-whatever, all that guarantees nothing unless you have the right person behind the machine.
"There is no such thing as out-of-the-box security. If it's out-of-the-box, it's not secure."
... is because of accidents/failures like this. Although everybody loves space travel, colonizing other planets, and all that, the economic nightmares occurring on Earth will stop it all. NASA is already short on funding, and one more Mars mission failure like this one may provoke the government to finally cut off funding for NASA. After all, their political agenda was already fulfilled decades ago when NASA put men on the moon. Today, I think people are more worried about economic crisis, job insecurity, and other Earthly troubles than whether it's possible to colonize another planet. Today people have been reduced mostly to either trying to survive, or, on the other side of the spectrum, how to take advantage of their competitive edge to line their pockets more. Nobody has time to worry about better, higher things.
Hmm... colonizing Mars, eh? Colonizing those planets out there that we only see as wobbles in their parent star right now. My question is, will humanity even last that long for technology to take us there??? Humanity might have collapsed under the weight of its own problems before that time comes.
LOL! Yeah, think about it: NT running on Coppermine would be immune to hacks -- it's down all the time! WoW! I think I hit it! This must be Intel delivering its last promise to MS in making NT secure before it defacts to Linux!
(Standard disclaimer: my sense of humor is different from yours. Moderators take note.:-D )
Hmm, I wonder if the Antitrust case is taking the Halloween documents into accounts? They might be able to do something about MS trying to close off protocols... Not that they can do much, though. I just don't see court remedies as being effective against MS's tactics.
Unfortunately, unless a miracle happens with Netscape/Mozilla, it seems that the Web is going to go for IE "standards" as opposed to "real" standards. And IE is taking off at the "right time" too -- look at all the companies jumping onto the Internet bandwagon now. With IE taking off and introducing "cool features", who won't want to exploit those features in an attempt to attract customers to their niche in the Web?
This sounds bleak, I know... I really wish there was more reason to hope for something better. Mozilla had better pull it off well, otherwise the Net as we know it will be gone.
This is truly interesting. So we finally have devices that can interact directly with our optical nerves without actually using light. The Matrix begins to sound more plausible now... kidnap someone, blind them, install (a more advanced, color version of) this device and feed VR into it. They'd never know what happened to their world. Nah... this sounds too corny:-) But devices like these do present interesting possibilities, though.
On a related note... if the previous article has lots of posts and is quickly increasing, it usually means you have a slightly longer time to play around with newer articles (as most people would be sluggin' out flamewars in that popular article, and the moderators would take some time before they moved on to newer articles.) Quick, grab the chance!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the patent laws, you'll see that the original intent of the patent system is, indeed, simply to give an incentive for researchers to work harder and come up with new, creative ideas. How the patent system warped itself into its current state is conjectural...
Perhaps it's because of the fallacious association of intangible things in the Information Age (eg. the Internet, software, software design (ideas), etc) with physical objects. OT1H physical analogies are necessary to convey the ideas and patterns behind the electronic world, however it is way too easy to make that jump to believe that these analogies are actual, physical descriptions of the electronic medium. Eg., regarding software as a physical or close-to-physical material object which can be owned, traded, etc.. In some respects software does exhibit such attributes; however, it is totally fallacious to think software behaves exactly the way physical property behaves. One such fallacy, for example, is the fact that it costs close to nothing to duplicate software. There are no real physical objects that behave in a similar way.
The association of ideas with physically owned objects suffers from the same fallacies. Ideas behave much like software does -- they are replicated (in fact, without effort, as Jefferson points out!) in whoever hears them, and are next to impossible to erase once it enters the memory. Moreover, the conveyance of ideas does not detract any of itself from its originator. This is the key point IMHO. The copying of ideas is free. And the act of copying in no way harms the originator of the idea. (Save perhaps some ego loss when the originator of the idea isn't acknowledged.) It does not detract anything from the "owner". It does NOT behave like physical property -- which costs money and time to duplicate, and which thieves take away from the owner. You cannot really "steal" an idea -- you are merely making a copy of it.
I'm rambling... but the point is, ideas and software are NOT the same as physical property and should NOT be treated as such. The spirit of the original patent system was NOT to enforce "intellectual property"; it was to give the originator of an idea a reward by granting him temporary control over his (non-physical) creation. It was never intended grant the power to withhold ideas from the rest of the world.
I was referring to websites in general, not just Fox.
The Net's signal-to-noise ratio is rapidly dropping... not that it was that high anyways, but look at how much bandwidth is wasted on unnecessary Flash plugins, "cute" animations, "cool" special effects... especially on lame commercial pages so poorly designed all you ever see is ads, hype, and garbage, but it's next to impossible to find what you want. Ugh.
When I visit a website, I want to see what they got. Not the silly flashy stuff (unless the page is dedicated for that purpose) but the real stuff they have to offer: useful information, their products, etc.. Who cares about all that bandwidth hogging eye-candy anyways?! Where's the beef? I wish more web designers would knock this into their heads: put your products up front! publish your useful information up front! (if you have any, that is). Sites that contain endless animations usually are so poorly design it's next to impossible to navigate and find what you want. And too often than it ought to be, that is usually a sign that they have (almost) nothing of value to offer.
Sorry for this rant. I'm just so fed up and turned off by flashy commercial sites that I can't help it...
LOL... so you think you're as special or more special than God just because you figured out how to take apart something He has built and re-assemble it to something else that still works? It's like taking apart your car and re-assembling it to another car, and then claiming that you invented cars. Rather myopic, if you ask me.
I guess this just shows the loose, lax way the patent office handles its stuff, which is sad, letting many absurd patents go through. I'm not saying the people who work there are lazy or anything, but surely they should pay more attention to carefully verifying the patent for originality, contribution, and elibility for patenting?! It's a shame that they keep letting such patents fall through. No wonder people can abuse the patent system so easily, like the one-click shopping stupidity. (Gimme a break, clicking the mouse to shop online is such an original idea is it not?! But anyway, I digress...)
Well, I have nothing against patents of processes to do with DNA. I think that if somebody came up with a creative idea of solving a technical difficulty in dealing with DNA, there's nothing wrong with him patenting it. But what is problematic is if he tries patenting stuff to do with the DNA itself -- eg., patenting a particular DNA sequence that he found that others haven't found yet. It's patents like that that are scary, because ultimately it boils down to a group of people controlling the use of something which is found in nature.
But of course, the other extreme can go wrong too, in fact, very wrong. The main problem being that in a leading-edge technology like this, techniques that are "obvious" to whoever is in the field may not be obvious at all to whoever is working in the patent office. Then somebody could just go and patent something that looks innovative and creative but which can easily be found by whoever's in the field if they worked at it. This could be the source of silly patents and "obvious" patents which lets companies or a few individuals "control" an obvious technique and leech money off everybody else in the field for using it or "re-discovering" it.
Well, it all depends on how the system is used. Remember that the system only alerts "George" to the possibility of crime. As long as the human behind the sounding alarm knows what he's doing, this shouldn't be a problem.
The only thing is, how do we guarantee that "George" doesn't start trusting the system more than common sense and sound judgment? Yes, they probably have to go through training and stuff like that, but still, there no 100% guarantee that "George" may have ulterior motives or just too naive in believing the system when the alarm goes off, and uses that as "proof" to get on somebody's case.
IMHO this kind of system only helps prevent petty crimes and spot naive criminals (and in the meantime, probably wrongly "spots" many innocent people as well). Those who get the false sense that such systems will "reduce crime" are deceiving themselves. It only reduces petty crimes, but could have the nasty side-effect of motivating criminal-wannabes to employ more sophisticated detection-avoiding techniques. (I.e., instead of preventing crime, the system has encouraged criminals to strive for more refined criminal skills that would evade detection.)
The problem is that with all the hype about this "new technology", people will tend to put more "trust" in these systems than is appropriate. Unless the limitations of the system are clearly spelled out for its users, we have another case of hurting innocent people to (incompletely) reduce crime.
Agreed. I might be wrong, but it seems that in the past the FSF legal department only makes a big deal with something like Emacs or GCC needs to be defended. Seems that they either don't care or are not able to defend GPL violations of other free software besides their own?? Maybe it's not their fault... but we really need a fund for the legal costs of defending GPL, etc., and to do something when some bungling corporation decides "inadvertantly" to step on a piece of GPL'd software.
It's all fine and dandy now that at least one court realizes that ISP's only act as carriers, and are not responsible for the content transmitted through them. Great, this is nice for us privacy freaks and all that.
But still, from the other point of view, you still haven't really solved the problem. All this proves is that you can't make ISPs trace info so that you can track down abusers. But I'm just wondering, supposing privacy concerns become priority in the future -- meaning no one is legally allowed to monitor our Net activities, store personal info, and strong encryption becomes the norm. This is all great for privacy-aware users like us. But what about people who abuse it? Is there some way to both preserve our privacy, yet not make it impossible to track down abusers when it's necessary? Or will privacy necessarily entail the impossibility of tracking down Net criminals?
Maybe some people think, forget about the abusers, as long as we have our privacy. But this is like saying, forget about robbers, let's just make sure the police have no rights to search our belongings and we'll be happy. Then how would you mete out justice to robbers? This doesn't solve the problem, it only (rather foolishly) ignores it. How about on the Net? Can privacy be preserved yet at the same time it's possible to do something about Net crime?
Hmmm now that I think about it... will this device really help when someone is shining their high-beams at you? What if it outshines the HUD display??? Just a thought...
Cool device! I'd love to have a car with that thing. Even if it's just for the fun of it. Perhaps now people will stop swearing at drivers who shine their headlights into your face? :-)
Still, a device is just a device... it's meant to help conscientious drivers drive better. But I doubt it would make that much a difference for careless drivers. Nothing can replace human responsibility, IMHO.
Imposing this kind of regulatory laws on the Internet will only harm the law-abiding consumers. They will do nothing at all against the trouble-makers. What, you can stop stuff like pr0n and whatnot on the Internet by monitoring who connects where, and cutting off traffic at routers, etc.? No way! They'll always find a way around it. Then what happens? You've crippled the Internet for the average user -- who has no part in "questionable" things like this. You've deprived the innocent user of his privacy so that ad companies can bombard him with spam and sell his personal info. But you've done absolutely nothing to prevent Internet crime and abuse. Those who abuse the Net will always find ways to work around any kind of "protection" you impose on the Internet.
Why does US allow citizens to have guns? Because by outlawing guns you only cause normal people to be more vulnerable. It doesn't matter whether guns are legal or not; criminals will always find ways to get them. The same goes for the Internet.
Actually, there already is an effort to "open source" music... check out:
Mutopia
It's an effort to "freely distribute" music by using LilyPond's music definition language. The motivation is to "free" music written by composers who are no longer alive, so it makes little sense for some corporate body to still hold the copyright. However, the stuff here is only classical so far... I suppose more variety will be included when LilyPond gets more complete. Not sure how the Mutopia philosophy would fit with contemporary music, though (ie. those whose composers are still around). I suppose they'd have to "open-source" it themselves for this to be legal.
No, the problem is not that they can access information. The problem is that they can modify the information. That's what's scary, because there's nothing that would prevent a Australian authority from changing your files so that it becomes "evidence" against you.
Play nice? In an ideal world, yes... but remember, human beings are inherently corruptible. Given enough power, the temptation to abuse will always be there. And quite frequently, that step is taken.
... is that email was designed with plaintext in view. If you want HTML, please go to a Website. Email has never been designed to be some lame, contorted "sub-Website" that runs on HTML!!!! The problem is that people have this bells-and-whistles mentality: "Oh, it will be so cool if my email has HTML formatting! Oh, it will be so cool if my email can contain inline images! Oh it will be so cool if my email can contain JavaScript animations! Oh it will be so cool if my email can run cool programs on my computer automagically! Oh it will be so NOT cool when my email can format my hard drive!"
Email with HTML is just disgusting. Especially the way it's currently done by the lame mailers that allow it: a plaintext version in the body of the email, plus an *attachment* with the HTML-ized version of the plaintext. Or worse with this annoying featurism trend, you have MS-TNEF attachments containing who knows what. I mean, WTF?!?! Talk about bloat. No wonder network bandwidth is always so congested. What's the f***ing problem with plaintext email anyways?!
Those people who really want this kind of sick featurism should seriously consider designing a NEW protocol, NOT EMAIL, that transports this kind of crap. And I think I know what that is, too. Automatically send a ZIP file containing HTML, GIFs, JavaScript, the whole ball of crap, and the User Agent on the other end automatically decompress the ZIP, run the browser to view it.
Alright, enough of this rant. But I just can't emphasize enough that featurism always leads to crappy implementations which in turn introduces all kinds of problems, like security holes, because the original protocol was never designed to support this kinds of "features".
Actually, I'd be happier if more HW manufacturers adopted an open philosophy in publishing their APIs. Yes, it would be really nice if HW manufacturers starting putting out X servers for their cards, but I think it's better if they release their API. Why? Two reasons:
But in the meantime, I suppose all we can do is hope that XFree gets enough support so that those of us with unsupported (or poorly supported) hardware can have a better X server soon.
Finally, the next release of X is visible on the horizon... :-) Hopefully with the new device driver API, people can come up with drivers for new video HW faster. My SiS6326 chip is still only minimally supported under X (no bitblt, no accel), and so far I'm stuck with 3.3.3. I tried the 3.3.4 driver and it barfs on my system, locking up the keyboard totally. :-( I've yet to try 3.3.5... but hopefully with XF 4.0 this nightmare won't happen again. A generic API is what we really want -- so that supporting a new HW doesn't entail hacking an entire X server, which is no trivial task. By localizing device-dependent parts of the X server, I think people will be able to come up with more drivers faster, so X won't be lagging behind new HW as bad as now.
Security ratings are just like MHz ratings for CPU's. There are way too many parameters to take into account that a single number/certificate doesn't mean a whole lot.
In the CPU world, MHz ratings make sense only within the same family of processors: a system running 450MHz i586 can be safely said to be faster than a system running a 333MHz i586. (Even then it's not a reliable measure.) But you cannot compare, say, a 450MHz i586 and a 350MHz RS4000 -- you might say, well, the Intel must be faster since it has a faster cycle. But what if the RS4000 can do in 10 instructions what takes 100 instructions on the Intel? Well, if it were a 350Mhz RS4000 and a 450MHz RS4000, we'd know the latter is faster, but it's very hard to compare across different processor families.
Same thing goes for certification. In the NT world, the system is more or less uniform across all deployments, so a certification for it makes sense (just like comparing MHz ratings for one particular family of processors). But now in the Linux world, there are just way too many different configurations. Treat each distro as the equivalent of "processor family" if you will, to draw the analogy. What does a rating on, say, a typical RH6 installation mean to other Linux distros, or even other versions of RedHat? Two different Linux installations can be so different that a certification only makes sense if you stick with one particular distro, one particular release of that distro, and even the same configuration used in the certification process.
What I'm trying to say is, certification is useful only when you're comparing static, non-changing systems. The term "Linux" encompasses too much -- it makes no sense to "certify Linux" and think that the certification gives an accurate picture of security on Linux.
And then, you have the human factor to account for. Everybody knows that the most "secure" system can be the most vulnerable if the sysadmin doesn't know what he's doing. In a way, security certifications like this should be taken with a grain of salt -- just because NT, or even Linux, is "certified to be secure", doesn't mean that you can now just go to the store, buy a copy of the system, install it, and you automagically gain the same security as the certification says. Absolutely not -- you must hire a competent system administrator before your system has any degree of reliable security. Doesn't matter if your NT or Linux box is "certified" to be C2 or C3 or C-whatever, all that guarantees nothing unless you have the right person behind the machine.
"There is no such thing as out-of-the-box security. If it's out-of-the-box, it's not secure."
... is because of accidents/failures like this. Although everybody loves space travel, colonizing other planets, and all that, the economic nightmares occurring on Earth will stop it all. NASA is already short on funding, and one more Mars mission failure like this one may provoke the government to finally cut off funding for NASA. After all, their political agenda was already fulfilled decades ago when NASA put men on the moon. Today, I think people are more worried about economic crisis, job insecurity, and other Earthly troubles than whether it's possible to colonize another planet. Today people have been reduced mostly to either trying to survive, or, on the other side of the spectrum, how to take advantage of their competitive edge to line their pockets more. Nobody has time to worry about better, higher things.
Hmm... colonizing Mars, eh? Colonizing those planets out there that we only see as wobbles in their parent star right now. My question is, will humanity even last that long for technology to take us there??? Humanity might have collapsed under the weight of its own problems before that time comes.
LOL! Yeah, think about it: NT running on Coppermine would be immune to hacks -- it's down all the time! WoW! I think I hit it! This must be Intel delivering its last promise to MS in making NT secure before it defacts to Linux!
(Standard disclaimer: my sense of humor is different from yours. Moderators take note. :-D )
Nah, they're just so amused by the 20+ min show that they're listening to it over and over again, so by the time they start posting again, ...
(Standard disclaimer: my sense of humor doesn't match yours. Moderators keep that in mind. :-D )
Hmm, I wonder if the Antitrust case is taking the Halloween documents into accounts? They might be able to do something about MS trying to close off protocols... Not that they can do much, though. I just don't see court remedies as being effective against MS's tactics.
Unfortunately, unless a miracle happens with Netscape/Mozilla, it seems that the Web is going to go for IE "standards" as opposed to "real" standards. And IE is taking off at the "right time" too -- look at all the companies jumping onto the Internet bandwagon now. With IE taking off and introducing "cool features", who won't want to exploit those features in an attempt to attract customers to their niche in the Web?
This sounds bleak, I know... I really wish there was more reason to hope for something better. Mozilla had better pull it off well, otherwise the Net as we know it will be gone.
This is truly interesting. So we finally have devices that can interact directly with our optical nerves without actually using light. The Matrix begins to sound more plausible now... kidnap someone, blind them, install (a more advanced, color version of) this device and feed VR into it. They'd never know what happened to their world. Nah... this sounds too corny :-) But devices like these do present interesting possibilities, though.
(Disclaimer: it's way past my bedtime...)
On a related note... if the previous article has lots of posts and is quickly increasing, it usually means you have a slightly longer time to play around with newer articles (as most people would be sluggin' out flamewars in that popular article, and the moderators would take some time before they moved on to newer articles.) Quick, grab the chance! :-)