(For all gasoline's faults, it is much safer in a crash than many alternative fuels such as ethanol, hydrogen, L[NP]G, etc., and it does not require complex, expensive, or heavy containment and fueling sytems.)
Actually, a hydrogen-driven vehicle is far, far safer than a gasoline powered vehicle, according to the following information from Fuelcells.org:
With regards to the probability of a rupture of the hydrogen storage tank, Pg 30: "Each tank is tested at 1.5 times its rated operating pressure, and samples from each lot are pressure tested to failure. Each tank design must be qualified at 2.25 times normal operating pressure. Each class of tank is also subjected to gunfire and must not explode but leak only through the bullet-hole." (Try doing that to a gasoline tank!)
Pg xi: "In a collision in open spaces, a safety-engineered hydrogen FCV shound have less potential hazard than either a natural gas vehicle or a gasoline vehicle due to four factors. First, carbon fiber wrapped composite storage tanks (the leading high pressure storage tank material due to its low weight) are able to withstand greater impacts than the vehicle itself without rupture, thereby minimizing the risks of a large release of hydrogen as a result of a collision. Second, hydrogen, if released, disperses much faster than gasoline due to much greater buoyancy, reducing the risks of a post-collision fire. Third, the FCV will carry 60% less total energy than a gasoline or natural gas vehicle, resulting in less potential hazard should it ignite. Finally, the design recommended here includes an inertially activated switch in each FCV that, in the event of a collision, will simultaneously shut off the flow of hydrogen via a slenoid valve or valves, and will cut electrical power from the battery."
Pg. xii: "Hydrogen has 52 times greater buoyancy and 12.2 times greater diffusion coefficient than gasoline. Thys hydrogen will disperse much more quickly than gasoline or natural gas. Similarly, hydrogen's lower flammability limit is four times greater than that of gasoline.
...on a similar note, the Fuelcells.org site also goes into the possible causes of the Hindenberg accident. While it is still agreed that the hydrogen contributed to the overall conflagration once it was started, the current theory of choice on why the Hindenberg went up is that the hydrogen really didn't come into the picture. The cellulose acetate or cellulose nitrate gas bladders reacted with the aluminum flakes in the covering material used to keep the skin cool; unfortunately, cellulose nitrate and metal chips are the ingredients of rocket fuel. (Add that to your "Great Decisions In Aviation History" collection...)
I guess we don't have AIDS, Social Security, Human Rights, etc. to worry about. No, no. No, no. We must legislate Digital Music.
Hello, and welcome! You must be new to life.
But honestly, do you actually live by this logic? How many times have you gone out to an expensive restaurant, when that money could have been used towards feeding starving kids in whatever god-forsaken nation needs it most right now? How can you pay for computer components and internet access when you could be using that money to help plant trees in your area? How many hours have you squandered on Slashdot when you could have been out building homes for those less fortunate?
"High priority" does not mean "only priority". There's an awful lot of stuff out there that needs to be addressed, and very little of it can wait for us to finish curing cancer, AIDS, and world hunger.
I agree, making environmental consciousness something that is fiscally attractive to the average joe is the best approach to take, and fuel cell cars will probably be able to do just that (hello, fuel efficiency!) I'm not from NY, but I've heard plenty of horror stories about the subway, and not all of them are from the mouth of John Rocker, either. While the subway may be horrible, it's still better than what most cities in the US have (nothing at all), and I'm told that trying to drive/park somewhere in New York is it's own little world of pain...
As a sidenote, I'm moving to Paris in a matter of weeks, and as such, I'll be making a fairly significant transportation change (I'm selling my Civic and not planning on buying a replacement.) It feels pretty good on the conscience right now. In the interim, I've been releasing some envorinmental steam in the form of laughing at people my age (early 20's) filling their full-sized SUV's at the pump (I live in Minneapolis, not exactly the most demanding driving environment out there, even in the winter.)
But I do agree, marketing environmentalism as something other than environmentalism is probably the best approach, especially since there's such a strong (and, IMHO, inexplicable) anti-environmentalist population here in the US. Maybe what we need is a significant downturn in the economy to make people feel the need to reduce and optimize their resources, or perhaps nightly killer city-storms...
You are confusing batteries with fuel cells. Fuel cells don't need to be 'charged', they convert air and hydrogen into energy and water vapor. Drop a gasoline converter into the mix to generate hydrogen from regular gasoline/ethanol/methanol, and you've got an amazingly clean, efficient vehicle. There are only a few major roadblocks remaining until we start seeing these things in passenger cars, mostly pertaining to getting the technology out of a lab environment and into a production environment.
But it goes beyond spam. It goes way beyond spam; spam is the least of my worries. How do you stop a DDoSer? How do you keep a commerce website viable if you have absolutely no way of tracking where a script kiddie's attack is coming from? What do you do when you discover that your website has taken a fifty-fold increase in traffic, has been running at 100% for the past ten hours, you have no orders at all coming through the door, and you have absolutely no way of knowing where the attack is coming from? Shut down your site for a day and hope they stop? Try to ride out the storm, and hope your company doesn't fold? Call the authorities, only to have them tell you what you already know (that there's no way of tracing it)? All it would take is one disgruntled former employee with rudimentary k1dd13 skillz to bring a major corporate website to a crashing halt. Or one/. zealot to bring Microsoft's website to a crashing halt. Or one M$ zealot to bring the/. website to a crashing halt. Lawlessness is exactly that; whatever benefit you could derive from your total privacy would very likely be lost to a rash of immature, criminal, or otherwise malignant users using that exact same anonymity to wreak havoc and commit criminal acts with impunity.
I agree completely that censorship is a horrible thing. The thought of any angst-filled script kiddie being able to cripple the 'net at their whim without any chance the of getting caught or even being stopped, however, sends a chill down my spine. I am not willing to embrace total anonymity and all the risks it carries for the sake of having a quick technical fix to a socially-rooted problem.
Disclaimer: I want very much to see my privacy protected. This isn't intended to be flamebait; it's an honest reservation that I've been harboring for some time.
I must admit to having somewhat mixed feelings about tools/methods that promise "total, untraceable anonymity". All technical issues aside, am I the only one who sees this as just as poetntially dangerous as it is beneficial? How does one stop a DDoS'er if he/she is running his/her own machine, as well as the zombies, behind something that is completely untraceable and anonymous? I'd much rather see personal privacy enforced through social engineering than by the creation of a truly untraceable Internet connection. To wit, a direct quote from the Fling website:
Fling is the weapon of last resort, but it is needed. Since the law is has become a tool to commit armed crimes against disarmed victims, Fling will make online communication forever lawless.
I fear that we have a lot more to lose from total lawlessness than anything we'd hope to gain from it--look at the sparkling success of other totally lawless societies in the world today. The makers of Fling are proposing the ICBM of online anonymity tools; let's just hope that the people who use it all have good intentions.
The other serious mistake the author makes is somehow equating Linux as a GUI, then the GUI is xfree86. Ironically, X Windows is one of the oldest GUI's in existance, and the author is trying to make the point that it is too "new" to be mature and compete.
Somebody really should call Red Hat and tell them to fix the title of their software package.
As it reads now, it is "Red Hat Linux".
Apparently, it should read, "Red Hat Linux (Now With Xwindows!)"(I could have said 'bundled', but...)
But really, the man was using "Linux" in the sense that the vast majority of people think of "Linux" as: Linux with the usual bells and whistles attached. I'd be beyond surprised if the author didn't realize that Xwindows is, in fact, not technically a part of Linux. It's OK to refer to a Linux distro as "Linux".
Xwindows is certainly one of the oldest GUIs on the market. It's also one of the crappiest out there, too. How long did it take to get anti-aliased fonts in Xwindows again? Why hasn't Xwindows, one of the longest-lived GUIs still in use today, far eclipsed the younger entries of the group? Can you think of a _single_ major modern GUI that doesn't surpass Xwindows?
As fun as it may be, declaring the author of this article "Ignorant" has somewhat of a backwards effect. Whatever nits one has to pick with the message itself, it's a pretty well-written piece, and raises a fair number of valid points. Counterpoints titled "Ignorant" consisting of a line-by-line flame based on personal opinion and single-example-as-general-rule logic tend to make the attacker look worse than his or her intended target...
Where this company is being unethical is in trying to do this activity as stealthily as possible. If a surveyor wants to try and map my neighborhood, fine. Let them show me their credentials and announce their presence. If I see someone skulking around in the middle of the night in a car with the lights dimmed, who pauses in front of each house for a while, I just may think they're up to no good. And someone else may think that and either call the cops (the offending visitor's ISP) or just shoot 'em.
...I'd use secretive instead of stealthy in this case. Why? If they were being stealthy, they wouldn't be setting off alarms everywhere they went and attracting the attention of network administrators. Rather, they're being secretive about why they're doing what they're doing, which, IMHO, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Instead of thinking of a car trolling your neighborhood with it's lights low at 3 AM, try this. Think of a guy who walks down the street, stopping in front of each house to jot a few notes down on a notepad. Now, do you have any right to know what he is writing? No. Is he under any obligation, legal or ethical, to tell you what he is writing? No and no. He is simply taking notes based on information that is available to the public and is being acquired through perfectly legal means. If you don't like the idea of anybody being able to walk past your house and take notes on it, you move into a gated community (set up a firewall, turn off services, etc., etc..) Even if you do this, though, what's to keep people from walking up to the gate and taking notes on it? Nothing.
If you are connected to the Internet, there will invariably be some part of your network which anybody will be able to look at (i.e. ping), and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Period. You can build a massive, opaque cube all around your house to keep people from looking at your house, but there is absolutely nothing you can do to keep people from looking at your cube. The only way to keep your network truly and completely secret is to disconnect it from the Internet entirely.
On a related note, this strikes me as an excellent example of the Catch-22 nature of privacy and anonymity as discussed here on Slashdot. Is this company not entitled to the same right to excersize both their anonymity and privacy (of both the data they're collecting and their intentions?) We'd be raising holy hell if this article were about a law or corporate policy that required users to disclose the purpose behind their actions when using the Internet; why, then, do we expect a private company doing private research on public information to do the same?
Wow. Photon sails and He3 harvesting, one right after the other. Why not combine the two--create giant sails that catch He3 particles as they fly through space? Then we could really get this party started!
Assuming, of course, it becomes even remotely feasible to do either one within the next few decades...heh. What's next?
What I found most disconcerting about OS X Server was the way they "Mac-ified" the filesystem . . . by default, hard drives are mounted on the root with terribly descriptive names like "Server_HD3" instead of putting them somewhere really useful (i.e., make the second drive/usr/local/share or/usr/local or something . ..).
...what makes nesting a hard drive within your filesystem tree more useful than placing it at a top level? The fact that you consider a hard drive called "/usr/local/share" more useful than one called "Server_HD3" is more a matter of conditioning and preference than usefulness. Myself, I like having my hard drives defined in the Mac style; I find having individual drives nested within the filesystem more confusing than useful, especially when I sit down at a system I'm unfamiliar with.
My experience with NeXT was as a user on a pretty hodge-podge (but nifty) network. Apps generally went in one of several locations, which annoyed me--there were the traditional/usr/bin and/usr/local/bin apps, but then there were other directories for the GUI-ish applications, and yet another directory in which 3rd party-ish apps went, and a few others to boot. Now, while I prefer a Mac-ish feel to my filesystem, I'd much rather have the old-school UNIX system if it meant keeping everything in order. If they keep everything in order and pretty much in the right places, I'll be happy, regardless of whether it feels more like Mac or UNIX.
But that aside, I don't really think that it's disconcerting that Apple has designed it's filesystem in such a manner as to make it familiar to their existing user base. Doing so doesn't sacrifice any real functionality, and I'd argue that it's more in Apple's interest to cater to the familiarities and desires of their existing user base than to those of the UNIX community at large.
Amen to that. Identifying Bové as a farmer is like identifying Bill Clinton as a saxophonist. Bové is, and has been for several decades, a professional political agitator. His exploits as a farmer serve primarily to advance his image as a simple man serving the will of the masses, as opposed to that of a seasoned veteran of social and environmental guerilla activism. Why is this distinction important? Simple. Read the following two opening sentences:
Even though he lives in France, cheese farmer Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a McDonald's franchise...
Even though he lives in France, professional political agitator Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a McDonald's franchise...
Now, tell me which one makes Bové sound like a hero. The man has devoted his life to bending the world to fit his own opinions, and has done a fair amount of damage in doing so.
My gut reaction to the question of is there enough bandwidth? is to say, "If not, we'll figure out a way to make it work." Each year, technology allows us to send more and more information over tighter and tighter bands. Should we ever actually run out of bandwidth (in the sense that we can no longer cram enough data into the space we have the technology for,) we'll compensate by re-structuring the airwaves, flooding transmission research with cash and resources, re-allocate certain transmissions to different media, etc. We're clever little creatures. We have a tendency to either fix problems or find ways around them.
Remember, there was a time when the biggest concern in the field of computing was how to go about fitting all the necessary wires into your computer without having the whole thing overheat or be too complex to troubleshoot. Then we discovered the microchip. We're clever little buggers.
I was thinking particularly of in-flight problems in my first post, but yes, there were seemingly endless pre- and during launch failures in the early days of our space program. I remember once watching a half-hour documentary in my youth that was dedicated exclusively to failed rocket launches in the space race.
Dude, India easily has ten times the technical expertise and resources today than the US had back in the late sixties for a space program. Remember, there were guys using their friggin' slide rules to calculate trajectories and such. You had duct-tape and sheet metal spacecraft that couldn't be sneezed on without screwing it up somehow; it's amazing that there wasn't anything worse than the Apollo 13 accident in space in the early days. To top it all off, these guys were doing something that had never been done before; nobody really knew exactly what sorts of things they'd be dealing with in a moon landing. (There was even speculation at one point that the moon's surface consisted of feet upon feet of loose dust, and the whole lander would simply sink into the moon and be lost.)
Today, we send rockets up so often that nobody even notices anymore. We can calculate in less than a second what an entire team of America's finest scientists would spend their whole day computing back when we went to the moon; I've got a better computer in my jacket pocket than they had for their entire operation. Today's spacecraft are durable, tested, and reliable--a far cry from the spindly, foil-wrapped craft of yesteryear. The guesswork of how to get to the moon no longer exists. What took the entire weight of the world's greatest superpower four decades ago could be done by any number of private companies today (assuming they wanted to devote their resources to a moon operation, of course.)
As fly-by-night as you'd like the ISRO to appear to the casual reader, they're clearly more organized and better funded than certain other space programs featured on/. as of late. True, a moon landing isn't a triviality by any stretch of the imagination. Given what we have and know today, though, I'd argue that they've got an excellent shot of pulling it off, should they move forward with it.
Given any programming language, one can present examples of well-written, elegant code, and horrid, stupefyingly bad code. Depending on several factors (such as developer base, experience, resources, time, and the language being used) there are two major considerations in the quality of resulting code: frequency and severity.
Consider the following possibilities:
Frequency of bad code is low, but severity is high: You've got pretty good developers, but the job requires integrating a Furby with a UNIVAC. Whatever little crap code may end up in the program will confound generations of users to come, but there shouldn't be too much of it.
Frequency of bad code is high, but severity is low: You need to release a program in half the time you should have to do it. Your developers will crank out a huge gob of unpleasant code, but in the end it's nothing that a good coder wouldn't be able to muddle his or her way through.
Both frequency and severity of bad code is low: You've got a star team of coders, they all know the language, and you crank out an award winning product that gets bought by Microsoft in a record nine days after it's release.
Both frequency and severity of bad code is high: You're coding in Scheme with the Knuth for Kninnies students, and it's time for their medicine.
same as #4, but with a chance of an absolutely brilliant piece of code: You've coded in Scheme all your life, and there's the chance that you'll throw together a stunningly beautiful piece of code, assuming you don't cadadr yourself to death.
...apart from being just a big ugly rambling 3 AM mess of a comment, I think what I was getting at is that there's the chance that C# might help fill a niche with certain groups of developers that would allow them to code in a manner that would minimize both the frequency and severity of ugly code. If I knew a bit more about the language, I might speculate on what types of developer groups would benefit from using C#, but since I admittedly don't have much insight into the language yet, I'll leave it at there is probably a type of development group out there for whom C# would be a good language to use. One group's syntactical sugar becomes another's bread and butter, and vice-versa. So much of the question is relative.
Actually, I found a gem of a camera in this respect. The Sony DSC-D770 is a low end professional model that uses a PCMCIA slot to store images to card (or memory stick, as it comes with an 8MB stick and PCMCIA adapter). It's geared towards the more serious photographer, but it's easy to find a really good price for it online (the one I got cost $800 at pcWonders; list price is $1500). Check out this review at Imaging Resource for more info on the camera.
The only catch is that it can't handle the Type III cards, so things like a microdrive are out. Still, it's a really nice system to have...
Ah, I see, when you refer to Daikatana it's a valid example, but when I refer to Win95 it's generalizing from a single example. My bad. I cringe before your debating skills.
Heck, now we're both stating that individual cases can't be used as a blanket solution. I agree with ya there.
Umm... If there's no *proof* of damage and there's no reason for a reasonable individual to suspect damage, then they can't sue for damages. So yes, if you don't suffer, you can't sue.
The operative words being 'reasonable' and 'suspect'. I'd file myself under the "reasonable individual" category, and I'd suspect that there's the potential that a company could be damaged by the unauthorized release of company private information..
It is not *right* to right to file a petty and pointless lawsuit just because copyright law says you can. Seems obvious to me.
Of course it's obvious to you. It's equally obvious to me that when a company is faced with a situation where a public website posts information that could only have been acquired through a breach of contract or other illegal means, they'd better give pretty big damn about it. If the case seems petty, where does one draw the line between "stuff it's okay to illegally disclose" and "stuff it's not okay to illegally disclose"? Perhaps they should consult the/. community first to see whether the privacy they're trying to protect is silly or piddling?
Can't see how I'd be irrepably harmed if you copied my 17 Gb archive of lesbian porn. Can't see how I'd be irrepably harmed if you saw a screenshot of my latest dev project either.
Hee hee...you said "lesbian porn". Heh. HAW HAW HAW! *sniff*
...nice dodge, though. You evaded the entire point of the question successfully and gracefully. Kudos.
Let's try another angle, a tad simpler approach. Assume, for a moment, that you have something of value that you wish to keep private. Now imagine that it gets stolen. Now imagine that I buy said thing from the thief and distribute said thing across the internet for anyone to see, maybe even turning a little profit in the matter. Would you still champion my 'right' to distribute said thing because I wasn't the party that actually committed the violation of contract/law?
Actually, I just wanted to make it clear that I didn't use a game with *some* resale value as a coaster. And my copy of half-life was pirated too.
Well then, I tip my hat to your mad pirating skillz. J00 0\/\/N |\/|3. 1 PH33R.
Yeah, and if you smack yourself in the testicles, and you get past the initial agony, the pain diminishes considerably.
Yeah, we know how all the pre-launch hype for win95 totally damaged sales and kept it from gaining market share...
Yes, that's an example where the pre-launch hype of a product helped with sales. Clearly, then, what happened with Win95 can be expected to hold true for all software, regardless of the possible, hypothetical existence of things referred to in some rogue scientific circles as "other factors".
So long as the potential for bad PR exists, is it really all that unreasonable of a company to want to keep it's private information private? Does a given individual's opinion that the company probably won't suffer for it somehow invalidate their right to pursue such a matter? Should we expect software companies to cease caring about such things as the leakage of company private information because "hey, Win95 did fine 'n' dandy"?
If I were to distribute the contents of your [hard drive/filing cabinet/tax records/secret video library hidden behind an access panel in your bedroom/something containing sensitive information about yourself] after buying them from an anonymous source (who may or may not have broken into your home to steal the; who am I to care how they got it?), would you consider me absolved of all responsibility? Would you glibly shrug your shoulders and say, "Well hey, I guess it's cool, seeing as you aren't the person who actually violated the law"? Would you still see me as an innocent vessel for the dissemination of information, even though said information was acquired at some point through the violation of a law or legally binding agreement?
The question here is not whether or not an individual can decree that the whole thing is silly and stupid in their humble opinion; any AC with a keyboard can do that. The question is whether or not Adobe is right to try and protect their own private intellectual property, regardless of how petty or pointless any of us may seem to think said information is.
(...oh, regarding Daikatana--the very fact that you carefully explained how you pirated the game instead of ever being caught dead paying for it kinda reveals your predisposition towards the game. Had you not already formed such a powerful disgust towards the game even before it came out, you wouldn't be so compelled to disown any constructive association to the game. Thing is, if you actually play Daikatana, and get past the first epoch, the game improves considerably. Mind you, it's not the greatest, and certainly not on par with the current FPS leaders, but it's by no means the atrocious heap of simmering dog crap that so many people make it out to be.)
Adobe requests the court to enjoin Macintosh News Network from soliciting or disclosing Adobe's trade secrets and for recovery of damages which it says "could conservatively amount to tens of millions of dollars."
I say that's a conservative estimate, nothing pisses of Wall Street more than shipping a new version of a flagship product. I bet their stock tanked after this leak.
...what if one of the features released turns out to be poorly received by the community? Even if they scrap the entire feature, they'll still have to deal with the "Well, thank god they at least got rid of that stupid thing!" chatter that goes about. Certainly, it is a far better scenario for Adobe to never have to deal with such criticisms in the first place. That is what could end up costing them money--having to fight negative PR for a product that hasn't even come out of development yet.
The complaint says, "Adobe will suffer lost sales of products currently on the market.
Totally believable -- I only buy software if I'm sure that the company has cancelled all future development efforts.
You'd better believe that Adobe would lose sales. If hype about Photoshop 6 starts to ramp up six months before the intended start of their PR campaign, they'll have to deal not only with the "Well, I'll just wait for the new version now!" mentality but the "Gosh, it's taking them an awfully long time...I wonder what's wrong!" mentality, as well. If you don't think this sort of thing makes a difference, just look at what happened to Romero with Daikatana. The game really is a passable game, in spite of it's faults, but because it has been so closely watched for four years now, it's been branded as the laughingstock of the industry for being far too little, far too late.
This sort of thing does make a difference. People judge things from the moment they first see them, and first impressions are hard to change; you don't want public eyes on a major product release before it's good enough to be seen by the public, plain and simple. Say what you will about the silliness of it all, but if it weren't for the fickleness of the consumer, they wouldn't even need to worry about these things in the first place.
As a game developer is able to kick more and more polygons out at higher and higher rates, they can return to a fun little thing called...
NEVERENDING, UNGODLY HORDES OF SHAMBLING EVIL!
or, many more objects on the screen at a time. Remember back in the days of games like DOOM and Abuse when you'd walk into a room and...er...'stage a tactical withdrawl' with about 50 baddies on your ass. Until recently, 3D games could only muster a few enemies at a time without grinding the system down. As cards improve, though, expect to see more tactical withdrawl situations in 3D games...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, a hydrogen-driven vehicle is far, far safer than a gasoline powered vehicle, according to the following information from Fuelcells.org:
With regards to the probability of a rupture of the hydrogen storage tank, Pg 30: "Each tank is tested at 1.5 times its rated operating pressure, and samples from each lot are pressure tested to failure. Each tank design must be qualified at 2.25 times normal operating pressure. Each class of tank is also subjected to gunfire and must not explode but leak only through the bullet-hole." (Try doing that to a gasoline tank!)
Pg xi: "In a collision in open spaces, a safety-engineered hydrogen FCV shound have less potential hazard than either a natural gas vehicle or a gasoline vehicle due to four factors. First, carbon fiber wrapped composite storage tanks (the leading high pressure storage tank material due to its low weight) are able to withstand greater impacts than the vehicle itself without rupture, thereby minimizing the risks of a large release of hydrogen as a result of a collision. Second, hydrogen, if released, disperses much faster than gasoline due to much greater buoyancy, reducing the risks of a post-collision fire. Third, the FCV will carry 60% less total energy than a gasoline or natural gas vehicle, resulting in less potential hazard should it ignite. Finally, the design recommended here includes an inertially activated switch in each FCV that, in the event of a collision, will simultaneously shut off the flow of hydrogen via a slenoid valve or valves, and will cut electrical power from the battery."
Pg. xii: "Hydrogen has 52 times greater buoyancy and 12.2 times greater diffusion coefficient than gasoline. Thys hydrogen will disperse much more quickly than gasoline or natural gas. Similarly, hydrogen's lower flammability limit is four times greater than that of gasoline.
Hello, and welcome! You must be new to life.
But honestly, do you actually live by this logic? How many times have you gone out to an expensive restaurant, when that money could have been used towards feeding starving kids in whatever god-forsaken nation needs it most right now? How can you pay for computer components and internet access when you could be using that money to help plant trees in your area? How many hours have you squandered on Slashdot when you could have been out building homes for those less fortunate?
"High priority" does not mean "only priority". There's an awful lot of stuff out there that needs to be addressed, and very little of it can wait for us to finish curing cancer, AIDS, and world hunger.
As a sidenote, I'm moving to Paris in a matter of weeks, and as such, I'll be making a fairly significant transportation change (I'm selling my Civic and not planning on buying a replacement.) It feels pretty good on the conscience right now. In the interim, I've been releasing some envorinmental steam in the form of laughing at people my age (early 20's) filling their full-sized SUV's at the pump (I live in Minneapolis, not exactly the most demanding driving environment out there, even in the winter.)
But I do agree, marketing environmentalism as something other than environmentalism is probably the best approach, especially since there's such a strong (and, IMHO, inexplicable) anti-environmentalist population here in the US. Maybe what we need is a significant downturn in the economy to make people feel the need to reduce and optimize their resources, or perhaps nightly killer city-storms...
Go to http://www.fuelcells.org/ for more information.
Sundiata (wondering why his original post got moderated down...)
I agree completely that censorship is a horrible thing. The thought of any angst-filled script kiddie being able to cripple the 'net at their whim without any chance the of getting caught or even being stopped, however, sends a chill down my spine. I am not willing to embrace total anonymity and all the risks it carries for the sake of having a quick technical fix to a socially-rooted problem.
I must admit to having somewhat mixed feelings about tools/methods that promise "total, untraceable anonymity". All technical issues aside, am I the only one who sees this as just as poetntially dangerous as it is beneficial? How does one stop a DDoS'er if he/she is running his/her own machine, as well as the zombies, behind something that is completely untraceable and anonymous? I'd much rather see personal privacy enforced through social engineering than by the creation of a truly untraceable Internet connection. To wit, a direct quote from the Fling website:
Fling is the weapon of last resort, but it is needed. Since the law is has become a tool to commit armed crimes against disarmed victims, Fling will make online communication forever lawless.
I fear that we have a lot more to lose from total lawlessness than anything we'd hope to gain from it--look at the sparkling success of other totally lawless societies in the world today. The makers of Fling are proposing the ICBM of online anonymity tools; let's just hope that the people who use it all have good intentions.
The other serious mistake the author makes is somehow equating Linux as a GUI, then the GUI is xfree86. Ironically, X Windows is one of the oldest GUI's in existance, and the author is trying to make the point that it is too "new" to be mature and compete.
- As it reads now, it is "Red Hat Linux".
- Apparently, it should read, "Red Hat Linux (Now With Xwindows!)"(I could have said 'bundled', but...)
But really, the man was using "Linux" in the sense that the vast majority of people think of "Linux" as: Linux with the usual bells and whistles attached. I'd be beyond surprised if the author didn't realize that Xwindows is, in fact, not technically a part of Linux. It's OK to refer to a Linux distro as "Linux".Instead of thinking of a car trolling your neighborhood with it's lights low at 3 AM, try this. Think of a guy who walks down the street, stopping in front of each house to jot a few notes down on a notepad. Now, do you have any right to know what he is writing? No. Is he under any obligation, legal or ethical, to tell you what he is writing? No and no. He is simply taking notes based on information that is available to the public and is being acquired through perfectly legal means. If you don't like the idea of anybody being able to walk past your house and take notes on it, you move into a gated community (set up a firewall, turn off services, etc., etc..) Even if you do this, though, what's to keep people from walking up to the gate and taking notes on it? Nothing.
If you are connected to the Internet, there will invariably be some part of your network which anybody will be able to look at (i.e. ping), and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Period. You can build a massive, opaque cube all around your house to keep people from looking at your house, but there is absolutely nothing you can do to keep people from looking at your cube. The only way to keep your network truly and completely secret is to disconnect it from the Internet entirely.
On a related note, this strikes me as an excellent example of the Catch-22 nature of privacy and anonymity as discussed here on Slashdot. Is this company not entitled to the same right to excersize both their anonymity and privacy (of both the data they're collecting and their intentions?) We'd be raising holy hell if this article were about a law or corporate policy that required users to disclose the purpose behind their actions when using the Internet; why, then, do we expect a private company doing private research on public information to do the same?
Assuming, of course, it becomes even remotely feasible to do either one within the next few decades...heh. What's next?
Maybe this...
My experience with NeXT was as a user on a pretty hodge-podge (but nifty) network. Apps generally went in one of several locations, which annoyed me--there were the traditional /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin apps, but then there were other directories for the GUI-ish applications, and yet another directory in which 3rd party-ish apps went, and a few others to boot. Now, while I prefer a Mac-ish feel to my filesystem, I'd much rather have the old-school UNIX system if it meant keeping everything in order. If they keep everything in order and pretty much in the right places, I'll be happy, regardless of whether it feels more like Mac or UNIX.
But that aside, I don't really think that it's disconcerting that Apple has designed it's filesystem in such a manner as to make it familiar to their existing user base. Doing so doesn't sacrifice any real functionality, and I'd argue that it's more in Apple's interest to cater to the familiarities and desires of their existing user base than to those of the UNIX community at large.
- Even though he lives in France, cheese farmer Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a McDonald's franchise...
- Even though he lives in France, professional political agitator Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a McDonald's franchise...
Now, tell me which one makes Bové sound like a hero. The man has devoted his life to bending the world to fit his own opinions, and has done a fair amount of damage in doing so.Remember, there was a time when the biggest concern in the field of computing was how to go about fitting all the necessary wires into your computer without having the whole thing overheat or be too complex to troubleshoot. Then we discovered the microchip. We're clever little buggers.
Oh, wow. You guys have added a self-awareness algorithm to JonKatz()?
I was thinking particularly of in-flight problems in my first post, but yes, there were seemingly endless pre- and during launch failures in the early days of our space program. I remember once watching a half-hour documentary in my youth that was dedicated exclusively to failed rocket launches in the space race.
Today, we send rockets up so often that nobody even notices anymore. We can calculate in less than a second what an entire team of America's finest scientists would spend their whole day computing back when we went to the moon; I've got a better computer in my jacket pocket than they had for their entire operation. Today's spacecraft are durable, tested, and reliable--a far cry from the spindly, foil-wrapped craft of yesteryear. The guesswork of how to get to the moon no longer exists. What took the entire weight of the world's greatest superpower four decades ago could be done by any number of private companies today (assuming they wanted to devote their resources to a moon operation, of course.)
As fly-by-night as you'd like the ISRO to appear to the casual reader, they're clearly more organized and better funded than certain other space programs featured on /. as of late. True, a moon landing isn't a triviality by any stretch of the imagination. Given what we have and know today, though, I'd argue that they've got an excellent shot of pulling it off, should they move forward with it.
Given any programming language, one can present examples of well-written, elegant code, and horrid, stupefyingly bad code. Depending on several factors (such as developer base, experience, resources, time, and the language being used) there are two major considerations in the quality of resulting code: frequency and severity.
Consider the following possibilities:
What do you think?
syntactical sugar.
"Just gimme the damn plant, I'll roast the beans myself, thank you very much!"
</joke>
The only catch is that it can't handle the Type III cards, so things like a microdrive are out. Still, it's a really nice system to have...
Heck, now we're both stating that individual cases can't be used as a blanket solution. I agree with ya there.
Umm... If there's no *proof* of damage and there's no reason for a reasonable individual to suspect damage, then they can't sue for damages. So yes, if you don't suffer, you can't sue.
The operative words being 'reasonable' and 'suspect'. I'd file myself under the "reasonable individual" category, and I'd suspect that there's the potential that a company could be damaged by the unauthorized release of company private information..
It is not *right* to right to file a petty and pointless lawsuit just because copyright law says you can. Seems obvious to me.
Of course it's obvious to you. It's equally obvious to me that when a company is faced with a situation where a public website posts information that could only have been acquired through a breach of contract or other illegal means, they'd better give pretty big damn about it. If the case seems petty, where does one draw the line between "stuff it's okay to illegally disclose" and "stuff it's not okay to illegally disclose"? Perhaps they should consult the /. community first to see whether the privacy they're trying to protect is silly or piddling?
Can't see how I'd be irrepably harmed if you copied my 17 Gb archive of lesbian porn. Can't see how I'd be irrepably harmed if you saw a screenshot of my latest dev project either.
Hee hee...you said "lesbian porn". Heh. HAW HAW HAW! *sniff*
Let's try another angle, a tad simpler approach. Assume, for a moment, that you have something of value that you wish to keep private. Now imagine that it gets stolen. Now imagine that I buy said thing from the thief and distribute said thing across the internet for anyone to see, maybe even turning a little profit in the matter. Would you still champion my 'right' to distribute said thing because I wasn't the party that actually committed the violation of contract/law?
Actually, I just wanted to make it clear that I didn't use a game with *some* resale value as a coaster. And my copy of half-life was pirated too.
Well then, I tip my hat to your mad pirating skillz. J00 0\/\/N |\/|3. 1 PH33R.
Yeah, and if you smack yourself in the testicles, and you get past the initial agony, the pain diminishes considerably.
Hee hee....'testicles'! HAW HAW HAW HAW!
10 PRINT "This is a"
20 PRINT "Haiku program!"
30 GOTO 10
Just what we need--another reason for our employers to skimp out and get cheapo 15" monitors instead of the nice 21" ones...
Yes, that's an example where the pre-launch hype of a product helped with sales. Clearly, then, what happened with Win95 can be expected to hold true for all software, regardless of the possible, hypothetical existence of things referred to in some rogue scientific circles as "other factors".
So long as the potential for bad PR exists, is it really all that unreasonable of a company to want to keep it's private information private? Does a given individual's opinion that the company probably won't suffer for it somehow invalidate their right to pursue such a matter? Should we expect software companies to cease caring about such things as the leakage of company private information because "hey, Win95 did fine 'n' dandy"?
If I were to distribute the contents of your [hard drive/filing cabinet/tax records/secret video library hidden behind an access panel in your bedroom/something containing sensitive information about yourself] after buying them from an anonymous source (who may or may not have broken into your home to steal the; who am I to care how they got it?), would you consider me absolved of all responsibility? Would you glibly shrug your shoulders and say, "Well hey, I guess it's cool, seeing as you aren't the person who actually violated the law"? Would you still see me as an innocent vessel for the dissemination of information, even though said information was acquired at some point through the violation of a law or legally binding agreement?
The question here is not whether or not an individual can decree that the whole thing is silly and stupid in their humble opinion; any AC with a keyboard can do that. The question is whether or not Adobe is right to try and protect their own private intellectual property, regardless of how petty or pointless any of us may seem to think said information is.
(...oh, regarding Daikatana--the very fact that you carefully explained how you pirated the game instead of ever being caught dead paying for it kinda reveals your predisposition towards the game. Had you not already formed such a powerful disgust towards the game even before it came out, you wouldn't be so compelled to disown any constructive association to the game. Thing is, if you actually play Daikatana, and get past the first epoch, the game improves considerably. Mind you, it's not the greatest, and certainly not on par with the current FPS leaders, but it's by no means the atrocious heap of simmering dog crap that so many people make it out to be.)
I say that's a conservative estimate, nothing pisses of Wall Street more than shipping a new version of a flagship product. I bet their stock tanked after this leak.
The complaint says, "Adobe will suffer lost sales of products currently on the market.
Totally believable -- I only buy software if I'm sure that the company has cancelled all future development efforts.
You'd better believe that Adobe would lose sales. If hype about Photoshop 6 starts to ramp up six months before the intended start of their PR campaign, they'll have to deal not only with the "Well, I'll just wait for the new version now!" mentality but the "Gosh, it's taking them an awfully long time...I wonder what's wrong!" mentality, as well. If you don't think this sort of thing makes a difference, just look at what happened to Romero with Daikatana. The game really is a passable game, in spite of it's faults, but because it has been so closely watched for four years now, it's been branded as the laughingstock of the industry for being far too little, far too late.
This sort of thing does make a difference. People judge things from the moment they first see them, and first impressions are hard to change; you don't want public eyes on a major product release before it's good enough to be seen by the public, plain and simple. Say what you will about the silliness of it all, but if it weren't for the fickleness of the consumer, they wouldn't even need to worry about these things in the first place.
As a game developer is able to kick more and more polygons out at higher and higher rates, they can return to a fun little thing called...
NEVERENDING, UNGODLY HORDES OF SHAMBLING EVIL!
or, many more objects on the screen at a time. Remember back in the days of games like DOOM and Abuse when you'd walk into a room and...er...'stage a tactical withdrawl' with about 50 baddies on your ass. Until recently, 3D games could only muster a few enemies at a time without grinding the system down. As cards improve, though, expect to see more tactical withdrawl situations in 3D games...