It's also one of the big reasons why we don't directly elect the president. (And don't let anybody fool you: Bush is far from the first president who lost the majority vote, and he won't be the last. Not that its of any comfort to anybody...)
The more I look at it, the 'checks and balances' in the US seem to be more intended to preserve the status quo, so unless something really needs to be done, nothing actually gets done. (Except for war; somehow this seems to be immune to normal 'status quo' of peace).
It's been said that the American system of government is quite intentionally broken by design, the idea being that the only way things get done is if they really need to. It shouldn't come as too large a suprise, then, that the only place a US-style system of government has ever worked is in the US.
If you care to recall, a century ago (in the US), a minority group had their 'rights' with reguard to marriage trampled on, and their marital preferences declared illegal. The US Army was sent in to enforce this view, men spent years in federal prisons being 'punished' for their 'crime'. (For that matter, men have been scentenced to prison for simply getting married as recently as 2004, as I recall).
Those laws are still in force, its practice banned nationwide, even to the point where such a marriage is explicitly prohibited in many state constitutions. This prohibition has never been overturned in court, nor has its 'correctness' really ever been questioned.
And even as I explain the marital practice, and the group involved, somehow the situation is considered to be entirely different than a homosexual marriage.
The group that had the United States Army instate martial law (within the US) because of its marital practices: The Mormons, in Utah, who were practicing polygamy.
Interestingly, the Mormons are now more anti-polygamist than the government is, excommunicating members who are found to be practicing polygamy.
Legally, there isn't a difference between these two marital practices; there is court precedent in which individuals have not only had their 'marriage' deemed null and void, but have also been incarcerated by the government because they practiced their 'right' to such a marriage (even as recently as the 21st century).
So, yes, the states can and do choose what is legal with reguard to marriages, and yes, the federal government has upheld the state's rights to do so.
Whether you agree with it or not isn't relevant, whether it is 'right' or not isn't relevant, history and fact do not care about either.
I learned from a wise man years ago -- there is a world of difference between 'Justice' and 'The Law'. Courts only deal with 'the law', which, doesn't always side with justice.
Frankly, sometimes tyrrany of the majority isn't always a bad thing; we do it all the time with many criminals. There are many who (discouragingly) feel it is not only 'right', but a moral obligation to kill other human beings (for various reasons, race, religion, ideologies).
The majority chooses to disagree, and either incarcerates such individuals for their natural lives, or chooses to end that individual's life.
Democracy is a weird thing; with it, you worry about the 'Tyranny of the Majority'; no small problem.
However, Republics (and monarchies/dictatorships) often suffer from the opposite problem: "Tyranny of the Minority".
So a balance must be struck, and usually patience and tolerance wins the day over political grandstanding and litigous gerrymandering; and this because patience almost always wins the heart of the majority; litigation and political grandstanding typically cements opposition in the hearts of the majority.
Yeah, well, international politics being the wonder that it is, let's see how long it takes anybody to come to an agreement on where else they decide to point the DNS servers. The fighting over where the root servers would be hosted (physically) would take years by itself. (Just look at the ITER stalemate; a multi-lateral stalemate that lasted years...)
Then figure out how the governing body would be organized, who would control what, etc.
The bottom line is that it works because everybody decided to play by the same rules. For it to continue to work, everybody has to decide on a different rule book.
And it's a lot easier to convince every ISP in the world to stick with the known state (in which case the ISP owners have to do jack squat of work), or to point their DNS servers elsewhere, and deal with the customer service nightmare.
You might as well say to entire world 'go pick up a shovel and move mount everest'. The current DNS system is quite entrenched; people expect it to 'just work', and 99.99999% of the human populace doesn't give a tiny rat's ass where it is, and who controls it, so long as it works.
So go ahead and get cozy, make yourself some popcorn (or whatever snack you prefer), and watch the fireworks. Because even if the US relinquishes control (probability: next to zero), it will be a hell of a show watching every country in the world (including the US) fight tooth and nail, demanding that their small coalition of countries should have control, they get the contract, etc, etc.
You've got some very good points sl3xd. I guess I just wished that Internet was managed by a group that we are 100% sure is independant and hermetic to lobying, government pressure, etc... But you're right that, so far, the US didn't abuse their position. So far. Call me a pessimist, but just because it didn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.
The problem there is that it's impossible to have a group to manage a global resource, and have certainty that it's shielded off from 'lobbying, government pressure, etc.'
So the question should be: 'What is a better solution than what we have now?' Unfortunately, unless the US decides to abuse its position, there isn't much incentive to dig too deeply into the matter. A much less centralized system is a desirable thing, but the internet is evolving to that point without the help of any governmental agency.
The off-the-cuff 'let the UN handle it' response is made by individuals who have a deeply disturbing belief in the technical competence of the United Nations. The UN is a diplomatic and political body -- not a catch-all solution to every problem.
You know, a lot of non-Americans don't understand this; but even fewer Americans do...
The US Constitution actually puts the juristiction over marriage (actually, juristiction over just about everything) in the hands of the states. The individual states actually have a significant amount of control over what they can and cannot do and/or allow. The US/Federal government is absolutely toothless when it comes to governing how a state handles marriage. The "Defense of Marriage Act" and "Marriage Protection" are political gestures; they have no real weight and never will (in fact, this was great fodder for pundits from all sides of the debate), as the Federal government has absolutely no say in the matter, and never has.
The entire idea was that there would not be 'one' set of laws for the entire country. Believe it or not, this was one of the founding ideals of the United States. If you don't like the laws of a particular state, then you're free to move to a state that you like more. It's a quite normal practice, actually. There is nothing to stop you from moving to a state whose laws are more to your liking.
The idea of a certain amount of state soverignty has always been a big deal in US politics; ie. let New York decide what is best for New York. Let Utah decide what is good for Utah. But don't force either to accept what California wants them to do.
For some states, it quite literally is the 'tyranny of the majority' to force a small state to accept the ideals of a large state. (ie. for Wyoming to accept gay marriage because there are more people in California who support it than there are citizens of Wyoming who oppose it.)
It's possible to appease both sides of the gay marriage debate; Let California allow gay marriage, and if the people don't like it, let them move to Utah. Let the people of Utah oppose gay marriage, and let those who want it move to California.
Let each state deal with the consequences of their decisions.
Both sides have perfectly valid feelings in the matter; and both sides have a place where their way is the law and can be comfortable, nobody is forced to accept either way of life. Isn't that a better solution than forcing only one solution to everyone?
This was the entire point behind letting the states have a large degree of self-government. The US. Constitution has widespead opposal at its inception precicely because many were concerned that the federal government would have too much control, and the majority in one state would make legislation for the entire populace of another state.
The bottom line is that the UN is a diplomatic body. It's original conception was for the purpose of diplomacy, not to create legislation for the world's countries.
Most of the wonderful administrative bodies of the UN haven't shown themselves to be particularly competant or useful (there are examples of things that do work, however). But in a great many cases other (non-governmental) bodies are doing the same things with greater levels of success.
The ITU has been pointed to as a great success of the UN; however it can be argued (quite convincingly) that the IEEE is a far more influential body than the ITU-- and that's in the field of communications. In many cases the ITU adopts the IEEE standard almost verbatim. The IEEE isn't a governmental body; yet it fills the role of an international standards organization better than the official UN body (the ITU). The ITU's processes move at a/glacial/ pace; often the technologies the ITU standard addresses is obsolete before the ITU finishes its job.
Just because the UN is one of a great many international bodies doesn't mean that the UN is the one best suited to the task.
In spite of any arguments about it being 'wrong' for the US to keep (or let go of) 'control of the internet', there is, for all practical purposes, little reason to go with one or the other (aside from national pride or politics).
The US has yet to purposefully break the internet for anybody; FUD and mistrust about the US's current stewardship in the matter is exactly that -- fear, uncertainty, doubt, and mistrust. Just because somebody doesn't like the US's control in the matter is not a valid reason to force a change; it's a global population, and quite frankly, there will always be people who don't like any given system.
The fact of the matter is that the US hasn't abused its stewardship; there simply isn't a compelling reason to make any change at all. The internet isn't broken (well, aside from miscellaneous issues arising from IPv4), countries aren't being shut off, and the US isn't censoring anybody. If the US were censoring groups, then why are half the entries in a google search for 'George W. Bush' decidedly unflattering to its current president?
There isn't a reason to spend anybody's time, money, or effort over it. If a handover were to take place, it's almost certain there will be additional problems that arise from the transition. Moving stewardship to the UN won't solve any of the internet's problems, and at best it would be a lateral move.
Until there is a bona-fide compelling reason to do so, the status quo is fine. There's nothing to stop governments from subverting the current system; they haven't because there is no advantage to be gained in doing so.
Not true; I say this mainly because the will of the voters has been turned over in courts/many/ times; try looking up refferendums reguarding using English as a State's official language, abortion, marriage, prohibition (of alcohol)...
People crying about such votes makes for good TV, but in the end it all becomes a non-issue, because it's one thing to vote on something, it's another thing entirely to: a.) get it past the courts b.) have the act/law/referrendum actually enforced.
If you are going to use a bioagent in war, you have to make sure that your own tropus are protected.
No argument there; however it's also the case that no military leader in his right mind would send his men into a war unprotected if he even suspected his enemy had bioagents as well. Vaccinating the troops costs less than feeding them a meal, so it's a fairly big PR failure if it doesn't happen.
This is espescially true of the US military, where the proverbial exrement hits the fan for every American casualty... espescially when it's for something that's trivially inexpensive compared to feeding the military.
You're right on the facts, but I think you're missing one point, which is that though you can set up application specific ACLs in Linux, it's not common or easy to do so.
I'd argue against that point because there isn't really an OS out there that makes ACL's easy to do. Windows has ACL's, but I know of no mere mortals that make use of them. Nearly every Windows user (ie. home users) doesn't make use of ACLs; those that do are either rather competent admins, or have had a good admin set things up for them.
Whether an OS commonly has ACLs is a moot point if they aren't implemented properly; there are very few people who have the ability to do this on any OS.
Linux's use of simple unix permissions (in spite of its flaws), is in the general use case a considerably better option than Windows's rather robust ACL system. This is largely because the simpler permission system used by Linux is actually implemented and working; this cannot be said of ACL's in Windows, for example.
Well, at least your confidential documents that aren't accessed through Mozilla. (Like online banking; Mozilla lost its passwords and there's a decent chance some of those passwords have been forgotten.)
Besides, ACL's like this do exist in Linux; which goes back to the argument of the parent about Linux having poor security in this reguard. Just because the author of the parent post doesn't know how to make use of Linux's ACL's doesn't mean they don't exist.
Too bad my _important_ personal files read/writable by any infected binary I run.
So what exactly are you suggesting is a decent way to handle this? Either a program you execute is going to be able to use these files or not -- there's no half-way about it. You have to be able to read/write to these important files for them to be anything more than a waste of disk space. ACL's aren't a magic bullet, neither is the concept of 'only this program can access this file'.
It's quite quaint to say the ability to read and write your personal files is a security problem. Espescially when you don't mention an alternative of any kind that is supported by any operating system.
So, I'll help out some: with SELinux installed properly, even root can be restricted from accessing files... Doesn't this solve the very problem you state?!? And doesn't every major distro support the installation of SELinux?
I'm sorry -- but it doesn't make sense to complain that your brains are splattered against the wall after you've shot yourself in the head. YOU executed the infected binary, YOU didn't make backups, YOU didn't make use of the features in Linux that alleviate these problems to begin with.
Similar arguments also hold true for people complaining about Windows security -- don't complain about the fatal results after you've taken the time to load the gun, point it at your head, and pull the trigger.
An OS is part of a machine. We can't make a gun that refuses to shoot its owner in the head either. We can't make a stove that will cook your food and not burn your skin.
What we can do is try to minimize negative effects; ie. you may have shot yourself in the head, but at least you haven't exterminated the entire human race.
Any user account that needs the ability to install software into/usr is probably going to also have write to/bin as well.
There's no such thing as a normal user that needs the ability to install software; the security problem is in thinking that this might somehow be true. I've compiled Mozilla, KDE, etc. such that they run from/home/my_login/programs. There is absolutely no excuse for ever allowing a user to write to a folder that is not the home folder (and the two temp folders --/tmp and/var/tmp).
You might as well do the world a favor and take a bath in gasoline while smoking yak turds.
User accounts don't have access to write into/usr, PERIOD; not unless the admin is actively trying to be stupid. And even if an admin was so out of his/her mind that s/he allowed a normal user to write to/usr, that doesn't mean that permissions for one folder has any bearing on permissions for another folder; quite frequently/usr and / are on entirely different partitions, meaning that one partition can be mounted read-only, and can never be written to unless it is re-mounted.
If you want to go to a fair amount of pain to ensure your system is broken in this way, go ahead. But this is very, very far from a complete moron's level of stupidity; a moron would just run everything as root -- they'd be too stupid to reset the permissions on the entire filesystem to allow a normal user to write to a non/home or temp folder.
Users don't install software for the entire system; It's like saying don't douse yourself with gasoline and play with matches. Just because Windows allows this insane practice doesn't mean that everybody else should follow suit.
Only one login name (root) should ever be able to install systemwide software, and that login shouldn't be used for web browsing to begin with. The most a user should ever be able to play with home folder -- that's it.
If a normal user ever has write access anywhere outside/home and the tmp folders, you've got a serious problem; but fortunately its not one a large glass of antifreeze won't fix.
The original poster's intent (which is clear enough to me) wasn't either for or against the "copyright infringement isn't theft" argument. His entire argument is that whether copyright infringement is technically defined as theft or not is a moot point. The original poster did nothing to refute the argument.
What the original poster did emphasize is that while copyright infringement isn't properly defined as theft, it does not in any way mean that copyright infringement is a legal practice, because it is most certainly not.
No matter what little theory you choose to delude yourself with, copyright infringement is illegal, punishible with fines up to $250,000.00 and 25 years in prison; that's a fact. Go ahead and see how well the argument that "copyright infringement isn't theft" will protect you. The courts will likely agree that copyright infringement isn't theft. "However," the courts will say, "we still have this rather heavy book of penalties for copyright infringment to throw at you. Your cell is waiting."
Although considering their workload, I'd bet a few wish they could.
You know, my goldfish could've done better than this... [STAMP] REJECTED And I ate him for breakfast too...[STAMP] REJECTED Although he does seem to be fighting his way back out...[STAMP] REJECTED Um... Crap... I can't even read this one anymore... [STAMP] REJECTED Oh well; they'll send in another eventually. . . .
Hey Sarah, feel like catching dinner? Work was a joke today.
I'm sure there are people who would find the comparisons between an overly-strict computer and a group that baked people in ovens offensive.
How about a little context? We (quite happily) tell children the fairy tale of Handsel and Gretel, where the evil witch tried to bake the children in an oven, but the children outwit her and shove the witch into the oven instead. Charming.
Besides, sometimes I think those trying to get past the firewalls (spammers & crackers for starters) should be given the same level of contempt and/or mercy the Nazis gave to their victims.
I'm sure there are more than a few days in which all of us wish we could do inhuman things to spammers...
Well, since there is a international treaty banning the use of nuclear rockets within a certain distance from the Earth's surface (I never can remember how far), I doubt we'll see nuclear rockets as launch vehicles anytime soon; nuke rockets may be a cargo that a launch vehicle puts into orbit, sure... but not the launch vehicle itself.
Vectoring thrust is one thing, generating it is another matter entirely.
No matter what way you cut it, in a liquid fuel rocket, the fuel must be pumped from the fuel tank to the combustion chamber in the first place; we have no alternative methods of achieving this at the present time. Goddard had some success simpy by pressurizing the fuel; while it worked fine in his proof-of-concept rockets, it doesn't scale well to a size that could launch a man into space. The turbopumps in a liquid-fueled rocket are probably the most extreme components in a liquid-fueled rocket, and malfunction is an all too common occurance. The obscene cost of the turbopumps required is another big negative for a liquid-fueled rocket.
IIRC, a substantial amount of the rocket's fuel is required to run the turbopumps (something on the range of 20% or more). So while it is necessary for operation, it also requires lifting a larger fuel cargo, reducing the amount of mission cargo that can be lifted.
A notebook computer is a luxury; so is a computer for that matter. At a university, students are there because they want to be there; in middle school (and even high school), students are there because they are leagally required to be there. More important, teachers cannot assign homework that requires a computer more powerful than the school's computer labs, simply because it would put those students of a less wealthy background at a significant disadvantage.
The argument falls flat; computers are rarely shown to provide a better educational experience than books and paper; the only exception is computer programming... and those lower-education facilities that teach programming have the computers in the classroom.
Giving a notebook to a mid-school student is little more than a status symbol, a way for an affluent child of privilige to justify his arrogance and stroke his ego. It's also a good reason for a bully to assault (and possibly kill) someone to get the computer... or has it been so quickly forgotten that kids have been killed over athletic shoes and iPods already? I certainly know that would have been the case in my mid/high schools.
Um... the LOX and LH2 are both imported as well... at a considerable expense and effort. I recall reading that a non-trivial amount of those liquid fuels literally evaporate into thin air during transit and fueling (something like 25-30%). There's also the order of magnitude of complexity and things that can go wrong with a liquid-fuel rocket versus a solid-fuel rocket.
Honestly... it's not that expensive to ship the SRB's from Utah to Florida; the shipping cost is negligible compared to the cost of the SRB itself. And a solid booster is an order of magnitude cheaper to produce (and espescially maintain!) than a liquid-propellant booster. Even if it's reused, the entire engine must be disassembled, carefully inspected and serviced between each and every flight; a process that takes significant amounts of time and money. Man-rated space propulsion systems don't enjoy the (relatively) easy to meet standards for unmanned (eg. Delta or Arianne) launch vechiles.
There is only one thing the liquid-fuel rocket has going for it: It can be throttled (some would add switched on/off, but isn't 'off' just another throttle setting?)
Even that advantage is rapidly dissapearing with the development of viable hybrid rocket engines. Even hybrids are largely a solid rocket design; the pumps used to push in the oxidizer don't have to be anywhere near as expensive or advanced as the turbopumps used in a liquid fuel rocket engine.
The problem isn't with the SRB's. The SRB is probably the most practical thing on the entire shuttle, because of the literal order of magnitude difference in cost per unit thrust between a solid fuel and liquid fuel booster (both per shot and over a reusable lifetime). There is also a similar order of magnitude increase in complexity (and chances of catastrophic failure) as one moves from a solid-fuel to a liquid fuel rocket... or has it not occured to you that having thousands of moving parts (some at many hundred thousand RPM's) is intrinsically more likely to fail than a rocket with zero moving parts?
There's a reason why Boeing, Lockheed, and Arianne all use solid rocket boosters on their heavy launch vehicles, and it's called 'bang for the buck'.
In the entire history of the shuttle program, not one SRB failed to produce the thrust required of it during takeoff; the Shuttle's main engines can't say this; there are more than a few flights where one of the three engines have failed during liftoff. The main engines also have to be completely overhauled between flights.
The SRB's are, on the other hand, extremely reliable, dependable, and inexpensive ways to produce massive quantities of thrust.
Many would point to the Challenger accident as the weakness in the SRB; but the SRB's have never failed to produce their design thrust during liftoff. (When Challenger was destroyed, the boosters were still burning away happily-- fully intact, and producing thrust within their design tolerances for the duration they were supposed to. The fuel tank for the liquid hydrogen was the fatal failure. (Granted, the fuel tank had been pushed well out of its design parameters by the solid rocket booster's o-ring leak; however the boosters themselves had been forced to operate outside their design parameters on that black day. In fact, Thiokol loudly and vigorously objected to NASA's launch of Challenger that day, expressing their concerns up to the point of liftoff, but since the engineers were unable to gather 'sufficient proof' that there was a problem, their objections were ignored.)
It's also no suprise that nearly every military rocket (like ICBM's) is solid-fueled. The bottom line is it's more dependable. Liquid fuel is a finicky hydra, whose costs and complexities are only justified by their ability to vary thrust output. With hybrid rockets coming into their own, a liquid fueled rocket's days are numbered.
As it's been pointed out -- it takes a tremendous amount of energy to make hydrogen for the fuel; more, in fact, than is produced by the rocket. And that energy comes from fossil fuels, mainly coal. It's arguably better for the environment to just use perchlorate.
No, because game designers can write for OpenGL and hit every non-xbox console. (Assuming Microsoft cuts off support for OpenGL in its 360). Hardware makers also have a significant incentive to keep OpenGL around -- as it's necessary for anything not Windows.)
Too bad it's PS/2 only. I quite liked how Soul Calibur 2 was a tri-console release; have the Xbox and Gamecube versions. Too bad, though; I won't be getting SC3 because I'm not buying the PS/2 for that one game. (And it's the only game that even tempts me...)
Maybe it's just a problem in people who build rpms. It's just so frustrating to find cyclic dependencies or dependencies on nonexistent rpms.
The bottom line is that too many people don't understand what an RPM really is, and think that it is something it's not. An RPM is not a universal binary, never was, never will be. The problem exists in the idea that 'an RPM is an RPM is an RPM.' Somehow people came to think that an RPM is the equivalent of an Windows Installer -- it isn't even close! Windows is controlled by ONE entity, so it's much easier to keep track of which versions of Windows are compatible with the software to be installed; unless a particular library is included in Windows, it is usually installed with the program (resulting in multiple versions of the same library on a single Windows install.)
RPM's attempt to use dependancies to reduce the number of times a particular library gets installed; it does this in a fairly fragile way, and is quite easy to break by using packages not provided by the distro.
Different distros name the same software packages differently (eg. ssh, ssh-client, openssh, etc. The problem is made worse when the same distro (say SuSE) changes package names from one release to another. As long as you stick with 100% vendor-provided distro-specific RPM's, you're generally safe. The dependancy problem rears its head when people start to use RPM's that are not installed from the distro's library, using the distro's dependancy managment tools.
That's why most commercial distros will not support anyone who installs a package they did not provide. In some cases, installing a non-distro package voids the entire support contract.
If you don't like sticking with a pretty pure 'distro' release, then expect compatibility and dependancy problems. Debian, Ubunutu, the BSD's, etc. all expect their users to get 99% of all their software through the distro-provided mechanism. Few Debian users install software outside of apt-get or dselect (or GUI wrappers for the above). Gentoo users use 'emerge' and forget about it. And their users have very few dependancy problems to deal with as a result.
Slashdot Mirror
Still, I liked that quote.
It's also one of the big reasons why we don't directly elect the president. (And don't let anybody fool you: Bush is far from the first president who lost the majority vote, and he won't be the last. Not that its of any comfort to anybody...)
The more I look at it, the 'checks and balances' in the US seem to be more intended to preserve the status quo, so unless something really needs to be done, nothing actually gets done. (Except for war; somehow this seems to be immune to normal 'status quo' of peace).
It's been said that the American system of government is quite intentionally broken by design, the idea being that the only way things get done is if they really need to. It shouldn't come as too large a suprise, then, that the only place a US-style system of government has ever worked is in the US.
If you care to recall, a century ago (in the US), a minority group had their 'rights' with reguard to marriage trampled on, and their marital preferences declared illegal. The US Army was sent in to enforce this view, men spent years in federal prisons being 'punished' for their 'crime'. (For that matter, men have been scentenced to prison for simply getting married as recently as 2004, as I recall).
Those laws are still in force, its practice banned nationwide, even to the point where such a marriage is explicitly prohibited in many state constitutions. This prohibition has never been overturned in court, nor has its 'correctness' really ever been questioned.
And even as I explain the marital practice, and the group involved, somehow the situation is considered to be entirely different than a homosexual marriage.
The group that had the United States Army instate martial law (within the US) because of its marital practices: The Mormons, in Utah, who were practicing polygamy.
Interestingly, the Mormons are now more anti-polygamist than the government is, excommunicating members who are found to be practicing polygamy.
Legally, there isn't a difference between these two marital practices; there is court precedent in which individuals have not only had their 'marriage' deemed null and void, but have also been incarcerated by the government because they practiced their 'right' to such a marriage (even as recently as the 21st century).
So, yes, the states can and do choose what is legal with reguard to marriages, and yes, the federal government has upheld the state's rights to do so.
Whether you agree with it or not isn't relevant, whether it is 'right' or not isn't relevant, history and fact do not care about either.
I learned from a wise man years ago -- there is a world of difference between 'Justice' and 'The Law'. Courts only deal with 'the law', which, doesn't always side with justice.
Frankly, sometimes tyrrany of the majority isn't always a bad thing; we do it all the time with many criminals. There are many who (discouragingly) feel it is not only 'right', but a moral obligation to kill other human beings (for various reasons, race, religion, ideologies).
The majority chooses to disagree, and either incarcerates such individuals for their natural lives, or chooses to end that individual's life.
Democracy is a weird thing; with it, you worry about the 'Tyranny of the Majority'; no small problem.
However, Republics (and monarchies/dictatorships) often suffer from the opposite problem: "Tyranny of the Minority".
So a balance must be struck, and usually patience and tolerance wins the day over political grandstanding and litigous gerrymandering; and this because patience almost always wins the heart of the majority; litigation and political grandstanding typically cements opposition in the hearts of the majority.
Yeah, well, international politics being the wonder that it is, let's see how long it takes anybody to come to an agreement on where else they decide to point the DNS servers. The fighting over where the root servers would be hosted (physically) would take years by itself. (Just look at the ITER stalemate; a multi-lateral stalemate that lasted years...)
Then figure out how the governing body would be organized, who would control what, etc.
The bottom line is that it works because everybody decided to play by the same rules. For it to continue to work, everybody has to decide on a different rule book.
And it's a lot easier to convince every ISP in the world to stick with the known state (in which case the ISP owners have to do jack squat of work), or to point their DNS servers elsewhere, and deal with the customer service nightmare.
You might as well say to entire world 'go pick up a shovel and move mount everest'. The current DNS system is quite entrenched; people expect it to 'just work', and 99.99999% of the human populace doesn't give a tiny rat's ass where it is, and who controls it, so long as it works.
So go ahead and get cozy, make yourself some popcorn (or whatever snack you prefer), and watch the fireworks. Because even if the US relinquishes control (probability: next to zero), it will be a hell of a show watching every country in the world (including the US) fight tooth and nail, demanding that their small coalition of countries should have control, they get the contract, etc, etc.
You've got some very good points sl3xd. I guess I just wished that Internet was managed by a group that we are 100% sure is independant and hermetic to lobying, government pressure, etc... But you're right that, so far, the US didn't abuse their position. So far. Call me a pessimist, but just because it didn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.
The problem there is that it's impossible to have a group to manage a global resource, and have certainty that it's shielded off from 'lobbying, government pressure, etc.'
So the question should be: 'What is a better solution than what we have now?' Unfortunately, unless the US decides to abuse its position, there isn't much incentive to dig too deeply into the matter. A much less centralized system is a desirable thing, but the internet is evolving to that point without the help of any governmental agency.
The off-the-cuff 'let the UN handle it' response is made by individuals who have a deeply disturbing belief in the technical competence of the United Nations. The UN is a diplomatic and political body -- not a catch-all solution to every problem.
You know, a lot of non-Americans don't understand this; but even fewer Americans do...
The US Constitution actually puts the juristiction over marriage (actually, juristiction over just about everything) in the hands of the states. The individual states actually have a significant amount of control over what they can and cannot do and/or allow. The US/Federal government is absolutely toothless when it comes to governing how a state handles marriage. The "Defense of Marriage Act" and "Marriage Protection" are political gestures; they have no real weight and never will (in fact, this was great fodder for pundits from all sides of the debate), as the Federal government has absolutely no say in the matter, and never has.
The entire idea was that there would not be 'one' set of laws for the entire country. Believe it or not, this was one of the founding ideals of the United States. If you don't like the laws of a particular state, then you're free to move to a state that you like more. It's a quite normal practice, actually. There is nothing to stop you from moving to a state whose laws are more to your liking.
The idea of a certain amount of state soverignty has always been a big deal in US politics; ie. let New York decide what is best for New York. Let Utah decide what is good for Utah. But don't force either to accept what California wants them to do.
For some states, it quite literally is the 'tyranny of the majority' to force a small state to accept the ideals of a large state. (ie. for Wyoming to accept gay marriage because there are more people in California who support it than there are citizens of Wyoming who oppose it.)
It's possible to appease both sides of the gay marriage debate;
Let California allow gay marriage, and if the people don't like it, let them move to Utah.
Let the people of Utah oppose gay marriage, and let those who want it move to California.
Let each state deal with the consequences of their decisions.
Both sides have perfectly valid feelings in the matter; and both sides have a place where their way is the law and can be comfortable, nobody is forced to accept either way of life. Isn't that a better solution than forcing only one solution to everyone?
This was the entire point behind letting the states have a large degree of self-government. The US. Constitution has widespead opposal at its inception precicely because many were concerned that the federal government would have too much control, and the majority in one state would make legislation for the entire populace of another state.
The bottom line is that the UN is a diplomatic body. It's original conception was for the purpose of diplomacy, not to create legislation for the world's countries.
/glacial/ pace; often the technologies the ITU standard addresses is obsolete before the ITU finishes its job.
Most of the wonderful administrative bodies of the UN haven't shown themselves to be particularly competant or useful (there are examples of things that do work, however). But in a great many cases other (non-governmental) bodies are doing the same things with greater levels of success.
The ITU has been pointed to as a great success of the UN; however it can be argued (quite convincingly) that the IEEE is a far more influential body than the ITU-- and that's in the field of communications. In many cases the ITU adopts the IEEE standard almost verbatim. The IEEE isn't a governmental body; yet it fills the role of an international standards organization better than the official UN body (the ITU). The ITU's processes move at a
Just because the UN is one of a great many international bodies doesn't mean that the UN is the one best suited to the task.
In spite of any arguments about it being 'wrong' for the US to keep (or let go of) 'control of the internet', there is, for all practical purposes, little reason to go with one or the other (aside from national pride or politics).
The US has yet to purposefully break the internet for anybody; FUD and mistrust about the US's current stewardship in the matter is exactly that -- fear, uncertainty, doubt, and mistrust. Just because somebody doesn't like the US's control in the matter is not a valid reason to force a change; it's a global population, and quite frankly, there will always be people who don't like any given system.
The fact of the matter is that the US hasn't abused its stewardship; there simply isn't a compelling reason to make any change at all. The internet isn't broken (well, aside from miscellaneous issues arising from IPv4), countries aren't being shut off, and the US isn't censoring anybody. If the US were censoring groups, then why are half the entries in a google search for 'George W. Bush' decidedly unflattering to its current president?
There isn't a reason to spend anybody's time, money, or effort over it. If a handover were to take place, it's almost certain there will be additional problems that arise from the transition. Moving stewardship to the UN won't solve any of the internet's problems, and at best it would be a lateral move.
Until there is a bona-fide compelling reason to do so, the status quo is fine. There's nothing to stop governments from subverting the current system; they haven't because there is no advantage to be gained in doing so.
Not true; I say this mainly because the will of the voters has been turned over in courts /many/ times; try looking up refferendums reguarding using English as a State's official language, abortion, marriage, prohibition (of alcohol)...
People crying about such votes makes for good TV, but in the end it all becomes a non-issue, because it's one thing to vote on something, it's another thing entirely to:
a.) get it past the courts
b.) have the act/law/referrendum actually enforced.
If you are going to use a bioagent in war, you have to make sure that your own tropus are protected.
No argument there; however it's also the case that no military leader in his right mind would send his men into a war unprotected if he even suspected his enemy had bioagents as well. Vaccinating the troops costs less than feeding them a meal, so it's a fairly big PR failure if it doesn't happen.
This is espescially true of the US military, where the proverbial exrement hits the fan for every American casualty... espescially when it's for something that's trivially inexpensive compared to feeding the military.
You're right on the facts, but I think you're missing one point, which is that though you can set up application specific ACLs in Linux, it's not common or easy to do so.
I'd argue against that point because there isn't really an OS out there that makes ACL's easy to do. Windows has ACL's, but I know of no mere mortals that make use of them. Nearly every Windows user (ie. home users) doesn't make use of ACLs; those that do are either rather competent admins, or have had a good admin set things up for them.
Whether an OS commonly has ACLs is a moot point if they aren't implemented properly; there are very few people who have the ability to do this on any OS.
Linux's use of simple unix permissions (in spite of its flaws), is in the general use case a considerably better option than Windows's rather robust ACL system. This is largely because the simpler permission system used by Linux is actually implemented and working; this cannot be said of ACL's in Windows, for example.
Well, at least your confidential documents that aren't accessed through Mozilla. (Like online banking; Mozilla lost its passwords and there's a decent chance some of those passwords have been forgotten.)
Besides, ACL's like this do exist in Linux; which goes back to the argument of the parent about Linux having poor security in this reguard. Just because the author of the parent post doesn't know how to make use of Linux's ACL's doesn't mean they don't exist.
Too bad my _important_ personal files read/writable by any infected binary I run.
So what exactly are you suggesting is a decent way to handle this? Either a program you execute is going to be able to use these files or not -- there's no half-way about it. You have to be able to read/write to these important files for them to be anything more than a waste of disk space. ACL's aren't a magic bullet, neither is the concept of 'only this program can access this file'.
It's quite quaint to say the ability to read and write your personal files is a security problem. Espescially when you don't mention an alternative of any kind that is supported by any operating system.
So, I'll help out some: with SELinux installed properly, even root can be restricted from accessing files... Doesn't this solve the very problem you state?!? And doesn't every major distro support the installation of SELinux?
I'm sorry -- but it doesn't make sense to complain that your brains are splattered against the wall after you've shot yourself in the head. YOU executed the infected binary, YOU didn't make backups, YOU didn't make use of the features in Linux that alleviate these problems to begin with.
Similar arguments also hold true for people complaining about Windows security -- don't complain about the fatal results after you've taken the time to load the gun, point it at your head, and pull the trigger.
An OS is part of a machine. We can't make a gun that refuses to shoot its owner in the head either. We can't make a stove that will cook your food and not burn your skin.
What we can do is try to minimize negative effects; ie. you may have shot yourself in the head, but at least you haven't exterminated the entire human race.
Any user account that needs the ability to install software into /usr is probably going to also have write to /bin as well.
/home/my_login/programs. There is absolutely no excuse for ever allowing a user to write to a folder that is not the home folder (and the two temp folders -- /tmp and /var/tmp).
/usr, PERIOD; not unless the admin is actively trying to be stupid. And even if an admin was so out of his/her mind that s/he allowed a normal user to write to /usr, that doesn't mean that permissions for one folder has any bearing on permissions for another folder; quite frequently /usr and / are on entirely different partitions, meaning that one partition can be mounted read-only, and can never be written to unless it is re-mounted.
/home or temp folder.
/home and the tmp folders, you've got a serious problem; but fortunately its not one a large glass of antifreeze won't fix.
There's no such thing as a normal user that needs the ability to install software; the security problem is in thinking that this might somehow be true. I've compiled Mozilla, KDE, etc. such that they run from
You might as well do the world a favor and take a bath in gasoline while smoking yak turds.
User accounts don't have access to write into
If you want to go to a fair amount of pain to ensure your system is broken in this way, go ahead. But this is very, very far from a complete moron's level of stupidity; a moron would just run everything as root -- they'd be too stupid to reset the permissions on the entire filesystem to allow a normal user to write to a non
Users don't install software for the entire system; It's like saying don't douse yourself with gasoline and play with matches. Just because Windows allows this insane practice doesn't mean that everybody else should follow suit.
Only one login name (root) should ever be able to install systemwide software, and that login shouldn't be used for web browsing to begin with. The most a user should ever be able to play with home folder -- that's it.
If a normal user ever has write access anywhere outside
This is one bit of data I wouldn't mind seeing; are they relatively similar?
Of course, I'm simply curious...
The original poster's intent (which is clear enough to me) wasn't either for or against the "copyright infringement isn't theft" argument. His entire argument is that whether copyright infringement is technically defined as theft or not is a moot point. The original poster did nothing to refute the argument.
What the original poster did emphasize is that while copyright infringement isn't properly defined as theft, it does not in any way mean that copyright infringement is a legal practice, because it is most certainly not.
No matter what little theory you choose to delude yourself with, copyright infringement is illegal, punishible with fines up to $250,000.00 and 25 years in prison; that's a fact. Go ahead and see how well the argument that "copyright infringement isn't theft" will protect you. The courts will likely agree that copyright infringement isn't theft. "However," the courts will say, "we still have this rather heavy book of penalties for copyright infringment to throw at you. Your cell is waiting."
Although considering their workload, I'd bet a few wish they could.
You know, my goldfish could've done better than this... [STAMP] REJECTED
And I ate him for breakfast too...[STAMP] REJECTED
Although he does seem to be fighting his way back out...[STAMP] REJECTED
Um... Crap... I can't even read this one anymore... [STAMP] REJECTED
Oh well; they'll send in another eventually.
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Hey Sarah, feel like catching dinner? Work was a joke today.
I'm sure there are people who would find the comparisons between an overly-strict computer and a group that baked people in ovens offensive.
How about a little context? We (quite happily) tell children the fairy tale of Handsel and Gretel, where the evil witch tried to bake the children in an oven, but the children outwit her and shove the witch into the oven instead. Charming.
Besides, sometimes I think those trying to get past the firewalls (spammers & crackers for starters) should be given the same level of contempt and/or mercy the Nazis gave to their victims.
I'm sure there are more than a few days in which all of us wish we could do inhuman things to spammers...
Well, since there is a international treaty banning the use of nuclear rockets within a certain distance from the Earth's surface (I never can remember how far), I doubt we'll see nuclear rockets as launch vehicles anytime soon; nuke rockets may be a cargo that a launch vehicle puts into orbit, sure... but not the launch vehicle itself.
Vectoring thrust is one thing, generating it is another matter entirely.
No matter what way you cut it, in a liquid fuel rocket, the fuel must be pumped from the fuel tank to the combustion chamber in the first place; we have no alternative methods of achieving this at the present time. Goddard had some success simpy by pressurizing the fuel; while it worked fine in his proof-of-concept rockets, it doesn't scale well to a size that could launch a man into space. The turbopumps in a liquid-fueled rocket are probably the most extreme components in a liquid-fueled rocket, and malfunction is an all too common occurance. The obscene cost of the turbopumps required is another big negative for a liquid-fueled rocket.
IIRC, a substantial amount of the rocket's fuel is required to run the turbopumps (something on the range of 20% or more). So while it is necessary for operation, it also requires lifting a larger fuel cargo, reducing the amount of mission cargo that can be lifted.
A notebook computer is a luxury; so is a computer for that matter. At a university, students are there because they want to be there; in middle school (and even high school), students are there because they are leagally required to be there. More important, teachers cannot assign homework that requires a computer more powerful than the school's computer labs, simply because it would put those students of a less wealthy background at a significant disadvantage.
The argument falls flat; computers are rarely shown to provide a better educational experience than books and paper; the only exception is computer programming... and those lower-education facilities that teach programming have the computers in the classroom.
Giving a notebook to a mid-school student is little more than a status symbol, a way for an affluent child of privilige to justify his arrogance and stroke his ego. It's also a good reason for a bully to assault (and possibly kill) someone to get the computer... or has it been so quickly forgotten that kids have been killed over athletic shoes and iPods already? I certainly know that would have been the case in my mid/high schools.
Um... the LOX and LH2 are both imported as well... at a considerable expense and effort. I recall reading that a non-trivial amount of those liquid fuels literally evaporate into thin air during transit and fueling (something like 25-30%). There's also the order of magnitude of complexity and things that can go wrong with a liquid-fuel rocket versus a solid-fuel rocket.
Honestly... it's not that expensive to ship the SRB's from Utah to Florida; the shipping cost is negligible compared to the cost of the SRB itself. And a solid booster is an order of magnitude cheaper to produce (and espescially maintain!) than a liquid-propellant booster. Even if it's reused, the entire engine must be disassembled, carefully inspected and serviced between each and every flight; a process that takes significant amounts of time and money. Man-rated space propulsion systems don't enjoy the (relatively) easy to meet standards for unmanned (eg. Delta or Arianne) launch vechiles.
There is only one thing the liquid-fuel rocket has going for it: It can be throttled (some would add switched on/off, but isn't 'off' just another throttle setting?)
Even that advantage is rapidly dissapearing with the development of viable hybrid rocket engines. Even hybrids are largely a solid rocket design; the pumps used to push in the oxidizer don't have to be anywhere near as expensive or advanced as the turbopumps used in a liquid fuel rocket engine.
The problem isn't with the SRB's. The SRB is probably the most practical thing on the entire shuttle, because of the literal order of magnitude difference in cost per unit thrust between a solid fuel and liquid fuel booster (both per shot and over a reusable lifetime). There is also a similar order of magnitude increase in complexity (and chances of catastrophic failure) as one moves from a solid-fuel to a liquid fuel rocket... or has it not occured to you that having thousands of moving parts (some at many hundred thousand RPM's) is intrinsically more likely to fail than a rocket with zero moving parts?
There's a reason why Boeing, Lockheed, and Arianne all use solid rocket boosters on their heavy launch vehicles, and it's called 'bang for the buck'.
In the entire history of the shuttle program, not one SRB failed to produce the thrust required of it during takeoff; the Shuttle's main engines can't say this; there are more than a few flights where one of the three engines have failed during liftoff. The main engines also have to be completely overhauled between flights.
The SRB's are, on the other hand, extremely reliable, dependable, and inexpensive ways to produce massive quantities of thrust.
Many would point to the Challenger accident as the weakness in the SRB; but the SRB's have never failed to produce their design thrust during liftoff. (When Challenger was destroyed, the boosters were still burning away happily-- fully intact, and producing thrust within their design tolerances for the duration they were supposed to. The fuel tank for the liquid hydrogen was the fatal failure. (Granted, the fuel tank had been pushed well out of its design parameters by the solid rocket booster's o-ring leak; however the boosters themselves had been forced to operate outside their design parameters on that black day. In fact, Thiokol loudly and vigorously objected to NASA's launch of Challenger that day, expressing their concerns up to the point of liftoff, but since the engineers were unable to gather 'sufficient proof' that there was a problem, their objections were ignored.)
It's also no suprise that nearly every military rocket (like ICBM's) is solid-fueled. The bottom line is it's more dependable. Liquid fuel is a finicky hydra, whose costs and complexities are only justified by their ability to vary thrust output. With hybrid rockets coming into their own, a liquid fueled rocket's days are numbered.
As it's been pointed out -- it takes a tremendous amount of energy to make hydrogen for the fuel; more, in fact, than is produced by the rocket. And that energy comes from fossil fuels, mainly coal. It's arguably better for the environment to just use perchlorate.
I imagine it's a good thing that most of the larger graphics shops I've seen run Maya on either Linux or Mac; nothing like adding fuel to the fire!
No, because game designers can write for OpenGL and hit every non-xbox console. (Assuming Microsoft cuts off support for OpenGL in its 360). Hardware makers also have a significant incentive to keep OpenGL around -- as it's necessary for anything not Windows.)
Why chouldn't they mention this when they announced the move to Intel chips?
Too bad it's PS/2 only. I quite liked how Soul Calibur 2 was a tri-console release; have the Xbox and Gamecube versions. Too bad, though; I won't be getting SC3 because I'm not buying the PS/2 for that one game. (And it's the only game that even tempts me...)
Maybe it's just a problem in people who build rpms. It's just so frustrating to find cyclic dependencies or dependencies on nonexistent rpms.
The bottom line is that too many people don't understand what an RPM really is, and think that it is something it's not. An RPM is not a universal binary, never was, never will be. The problem exists in the idea that 'an RPM is an RPM is an RPM.' Somehow people came to think that an RPM is the equivalent of an Windows Installer -- it isn't even close! Windows is controlled by ONE entity, so it's much easier to keep track of which versions of Windows are compatible with the software to be installed; unless a particular library is included in Windows, it is usually installed with the program (resulting in multiple versions of the same library on a single Windows install.)
RPM's attempt to use dependancies to reduce the number of times a particular library gets installed; it does this in a fairly fragile way, and is quite easy to break by using packages not provided by the distro.
Different distros name the same software packages differently (eg. ssh, ssh-client, openssh, etc. The problem is made worse when the same distro (say SuSE) changes package names from one release to another. As long as you stick with 100% vendor-provided distro-specific RPM's, you're generally safe. The dependancy problem rears its head when people start to use RPM's that are not installed from the distro's library, using the distro's dependancy managment tools.
That's why most commercial distros will not support anyone who installs a package they did not provide. In some cases, installing a non-distro package voids the entire support contract.
If you don't like sticking with a pretty pure 'distro' release, then expect compatibility and dependancy problems. Debian, Ubunutu, the BSD's, etc. all expect their users to get 99% of all their software through the distro-provided mechanism. Few Debian users install software outside of apt-get or dselect (or GUI wrappers for the above). Gentoo users use 'emerge' and forget about it. And their users have very few dependancy problems to deal with as a result.