An IP-PBX system is a PBX system on an IP network.;)
A PBX is a call center through which all phone calls for a specific area are routed - like a building or a telco's service area. It stands for Private Branch Exchange.
SIP = Session Initiation Protocol, it's the protocol that sets up and tears down the session on a VOIP call. After the initial setup, VoIP uses RTP, or Real-time Transmission Protocol to transfer the call data packets, while SIP manages the connection itself (adding callers, changing addresses, adding video, etc).
SIP is application layer protocol that sits on top of a transport protocol like TCP or UDP, which sits on top of the IP network layer. If not encrypted (it often isn't), it is vulnerable to everything TCP is, including DOS attacks, man in the middle attacks, packet sniffing, and various hardware related attacks like buffer overflows and such. Even encrypted it is still vulnerable to the hardware related attacks and DOS attacks.
What you can do with these attacks is the same as what you'd do with TCP attacks: eavesdropping, call re-routing, disconnecting calls, SIP agent impersonation to place new calls, etc.
If they have access to it, it's distribution and illegal. The ripping loophole is for personal backup purposes only. It's also illegal if you have to circumvent any sort of copy protection to rip the CD, so you're potentially super-screwed.
If your CD contains any form of copy protection, ripping that CD is illegal. Ripping DVD's is always illegal, same with Blue Ray. I can't think of an instance where you'd ever be violating copyright by ripping a disc, but there are a lot more laws than just copyright.
The DMCA makes circumventing any form of copy protection illegal, even if you have a legitimate right to copy the material. The DMCA says you do not have the right to circumvent the copy protection in order to exercise your legal right to copy the material.
Apparently they are doing the same thing on government computers in France and free software like OO.org will not run, because it costs cash money to register the software.
Before anyone storms in declaring that's what France gets for being a socialist country and that socialism inevitably leads to governments spying on their citizens: our current government is right wing (on our spectrum), and the Parti Socialiste is against HADOPI.
Right/Left Wing any more has little to nothing to do with socialism/individualism in the parties. And often one party is against a socialist idea because it doesn't go far enough, and they'd rather have all or nothing. I doubt your right-wing party is further right than the Republicans in the US, and they are basically just a little less socialist than the Democrats. They may feel that national health-care is a step too far, but they are more than happy to spend everybody's money on their state's pet projects. That's still socialism, and the right is just as good at it as the left. The only real difference is the right feels a little guilty about it, and so pretends they aren't socialist and fight the "Really Big Things" on the platform checklist, while spending trillions on smaller social programs via earmarks and the like. The left does not feel guilty about it, and so they tend to push it further.
In recent history "The Right" has tended to ward a fascist style of socialism (aka "corporatism"), while "The Left" has tended toward a communist style. Either way, it's still socialism. The only difference is exactly how it is structured. Who benefits doesn't even change that much between the two.
She said that in front of the entire Assemblée Nationale to the representative who had asked her if she had considered the problem of FOSS systems, including the half-dozen "évidemment" and the unfinished sentences.
Apparently, according to a person who speaks the language, she's a complete ninny and tosser.
Yet another lost cause for MPAA and RIAA with failing to provide a legit and legal way on their own to produce and distribute digital content to the masses
Well, not legit and legal yet, why do you think they are trying so hard to push this shit through? Why play nice by the definition of everyone else when you can change the definition of nice to mean whatever the hell you want it to?;)
Never once have I seen these two organizations do anything more than indictments, court battles and really lame 4 minute short films on why 'piracy of copyrighted material is bad'.
They don't do anything else because that is exactly what their stated purpose is. They are a group of lawyers from each of the major studios who's expressed goal is pretty much exactly what you said they are doing. That they have not been brought up for racketeering or anything similar is just absolutely amazing to me. It's exactly like the mafia, except somehow they get away with it because instead of operating individually, the mafia bosses have all pooled their thugs to work together. It also seems to help that they bludgeon you financially instead of figuratively.
Corporations aren't human. But somebody thought it would be a great idea to give them the same rights as individuals.
Actually there are a hell of a lot of corporations that are entirely composed of a single individual. It's often the first step you take when you realize that personal taxes are significantly higher (in raw dollars) than corporate taxes, because a corporation is taxed on profits, not gross income. Combine that with the significant number of potential business expenses and the personal liability reduction, and there is a great incentive for people making a moderate amount of money to incorporate. It's not too hard to take a $100k income (taxed at 28% for individuals) and get that below $50k for the corporate tax calculation (15%). It means you get to keep a lot more of your own money, and a lot of your liabilities are deferred and don't reflect on you personally.
In that sense, there are a lot of corporations that actually are individuals. I don't mind that we treat corporations as individuals, I just think individuals in the corporation should be responsible for their actions as well - like fining the corporation 10 million dollars and sending the officer who broke the law to jail for a few years. I don't see why the individuals and the corporations can't both be held responsible in a lot of cases.
It's not cyclical, it's sound IT policy. You pick a guy who knows what he is doing, and put him in charge of IT. He comes up with a policy, senior management approves it, and it becomes IT law.
The people who make and have authority to change these policies are generally very far above the admin's direct supervisors. Generally several layers of management.
A practical example, I work for a large oil company (global, one of the 100 biggest companies in the world). Up until a year or so ago, all of the upper level management for the local business (CEO, COO, etc) had free access to the server room. Policy above their heads changed, and their access was revoked, along with any other personnel that did not have a need to regularly access the server room. These people can easily fire the guy who manages the server room, however that still won't gain them access. The approval must come from outside.
In the Childs case, it sounded to me like the supervisors wanted free access to the equipment, which was against management's IT policy. These people may well have the ability to fire him, but that does not mean he should violate policy and give them access. There is always someone who has the authority to get the information in these cases, his supervisors just weren't those somebodies.
I have a chemist friend who works at a University, and he has to build his own computers and upgrade his own machines because the IT department won't. Not for any good reason either, it's University equipment, doing University research, but all the IT department seems to be good for is randomly deleting his email, disabling his internet connection, and shutting down his servers. They have to be his servers, of course, because IT won't support them, god only knows why.
The University pays bottom dollar for IT because they don't care about IT. They care about PH.D.'s and professorships and power-grabs, so for people who depend on the IT stuff to work right, they pretty much have to be their own admin. That's why teachers insist on being able to install their own software, manage their own switches, etc. Because if they actually relied on the IT department to do that they could be dead in the water for weeks, if not longer.
I know a chemist for a local university, and from what he tells me their IT is pretty much pure crap. The universities are structured to be very competitive between departments so cooperation is very uncommon. The culture is such that if you don't have a PH.D. you aren't worth much, and of course nobody in IT has a PH.D. so they are at the very bottom of the University food chain.
This means they don't get paid as much as their corporate counterparts, and there is not as much immediate pressure from anyone to get your work done. This draws in the least talented, laziest and least competent IT staff possible, and the results are obvious. I am constantly flabbergasted by my chemist friend's dealings with the University IT department, and I can't understand it for such a small environment. It's nothing short of amazing.
And have you ever tried to fire someone at a University? They don't fire anybody, there isn't any real oversight at the top, just a pool of sharks who couldn't care less about computers. Hell, the university still has Computer Science classes given in a lecture hall on pen and paper! That's just ridiculous!
It's actually what stars are made of, along with the vast majority of planets. When stars super-nova, then they create dust, which can then become earth-like rocky planets. In baby galaxies and in galaxies with an active super-massive black hole, gas is being sucked in to the black hole so fast that it glows, It's like an ultra-massive star with a super-massive black hole core. The radiation from these black holes comes from the gas surrounding it falling in, not from the black hole itself. This radiation can potentially kick start other stars further out to form.
Basically what the article is saying, is that a black hole can become so large, that if it activates again (new gas is introduced in some way, or it has simply had so much to consume that if finally hit the right size) that it can kill any young stars in the galaxy. That doesn't mean the older stars will be eliminated, because once a star reaches a certain size its own pressure maintains the reaction without external influence. It's the ones that are still collecting gas and are too small to maintain their own reaction that can be snuffed out.
Furthermore, the gravity of a black hole, even a supermassive, has limits. Our solar system, for example, is well outside the range of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole - we are held in orbit by proximity to the mass of stars further from the center of the galaxy. So what you will end up with is not giant, invisible galaxies, but galaxies with a giant hole in the middle (like all galaxies with a non-active supermassive) and zero new star formation. It would take close to the heat death of the universe for them to become dark, and most galaxies will be nearly dark by then anyway.
The main difference is that this isn't a constitutional case.
Except for the fact that patents are laid down in the US Constitution, sure. Of course, that shouldn't make it a constitutional issue, should it?
The Supreme Court certainly can and should decide whether or not restrictions placed on patents are constitutional. All laws are based on the constitution, and must not violate it. The SCOTUS's primary purpose is to ensure that this is the case.
Now, the portion of the Constitution that allows for Patents and Copyright is small, and it's the US Patent and Copyright codes that determine how we use it, which are both external to the constitution, so I couldn't tell you how the SCOTUS would go on this. The usually seem to err on the side of caution, so don't be surprised if they maintain the status quo.
You realize 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. were just conventions to make things easier, right? There is nothing that locks you into those patterns, it's just things can be a bitch to manage if you aren't in one.
There were 24 bit processors, 6 bit bytes, etc. Base 2 is every bit as flexible as base 10, it's just different, and conventions have evolved to make things consistent and easy.
For example, with a 24 bit processor, you'll want to scale to a 48 bit processor to make backwords compatibility easier. The 8 bit base just fits in very nicely between base 2, octals, hex, and finally decimal. Conversions among these units is much easier working with an 8 bit base than other setups, and so all scaling goes off the 8 bit base.
None of it was tied to a 4 bit base though, that's just ignorant.
The people who hate April Fools Day were probably the ones who were consistently pranked on as children - that or they were left out of the fun and games completely.
Such people grow up to be humorless, bitter men with no social lives and a refrigerator full of cheese that is going bad. I'm not sure what that last bit is about, but I swear it happens every time.
He's probably thinking of the aardvark, numbat, echidna, or pangolin, which are all colloquially known as "anteaters" but don't eat ants and aren't in the same family.
To be fair, anteaters do eat mostly termites, not ants.
Slashdot Mirror
An IP-PBX system is a PBX system on an IP network. ;)
A PBX is a call center through which all phone calls for a specific area are routed - like a building or a telco's service area. It stands for Private Branch Exchange.
SIP = Session Initiation Protocol, it's the protocol that sets up and tears down the session on a VOIP call. After the initial setup, VoIP uses RTP, or Real-time Transmission Protocol to transfer the call data packets, while SIP manages the connection itself (adding callers, changing addresses, adding video, etc).
SIP is application layer protocol that sits on top of a transport protocol like TCP or UDP, which sits on top of the IP network layer. If not encrypted (it often isn't), it is vulnerable to everything TCP is, including DOS attacks, man in the middle attacks, packet sniffing, and various hardware related attacks like buffer overflows and such. Even encrypted it is still vulnerable to the hardware related attacks and DOS attacks.
What you can do with these attacks is the same as what you'd do with TCP attacks: eavesdropping, call re-routing, disconnecting calls, SIP agent impersonation to place new calls, etc.
If they have access to it, it's distribution and illegal. The ripping loophole is for personal backup purposes only. It's also illegal if you have to circumvent any sort of copy protection to rip the CD, so you're potentially super-screwed.
If your CD contains any form of copy protection, ripping that CD is illegal. Ripping DVD's is always illegal, same with Blue Ray. I can't think of an instance where you'd ever be violating copyright by ripping a disc, but there are a lot more laws than just copyright.
The DMCA makes circumventing any form of copy protection illegal, even if you have a legitimate right to copy the material. The DMCA says you do not have the right to circumvent the copy protection in order to exercise your legal right to copy the material.
If it ain't registered, it ain't legal.
Apparently they are doing the same thing on government computers in France and free software like OO.org will not run, because it costs cash money to register the software.
Before anyone storms in declaring that's what France gets for being a socialist country and that socialism inevitably leads to governments spying on their citizens: our current government is right wing (on our spectrum), and the Parti Socialiste is against HADOPI.
Right/Left Wing any more has little to nothing to do with socialism/individualism in the parties. And often one party is against a socialist idea because it doesn't go far enough, and they'd rather have all or nothing. I doubt your right-wing party is further right than the Republicans in the US, and they are basically just a little less socialist than the Democrats. They may feel that national health-care is a step too far, but they are more than happy to spend everybody's money on their state's pet projects. That's still socialism, and the right is just as good at it as the left. The only real difference is the right feels a little guilty about it, and so pretends they aren't socialist and fight the "Really Big Things" on the platform checklist, while spending trillions on smaller social programs via earmarks and the like. The left does not feel guilty about it, and so they tend to push it further.
In recent history "The Right" has tended to ward a fascist style of socialism (aka "corporatism"), while "The Left" has tended toward a communist style. Either way, it's still socialism. The only difference is exactly how it is structured. Who benefits doesn't even change that much between the two.
She said that in front of the entire Assemblée Nationale to the representative who had asked her if she had considered the problem of FOSS systems, including the half-dozen "évidemment" and the unfinished sentences.
Apparently, according to a person who speaks the language, she's a complete ninny and tosser.
Yet another lost cause for MPAA and RIAA with failing to provide a legit and legal way on their own to produce and distribute digital content to the masses
Well, not legit and legal yet, why do you think they are trying so hard to push this shit through? Why play nice by the definition of everyone else when you can change the definition of nice to mean whatever the hell you want it to? ;)
Never once have I seen these two organizations do anything more than indictments, court battles and really lame 4 minute short films on why 'piracy of copyrighted material is bad'.
They don't do anything else because that is exactly what their stated purpose is. They are a group of lawyers from each of the major studios who's expressed goal is pretty much exactly what you said they are doing. That they have not been brought up for racketeering or anything similar is just absolutely amazing to me. It's exactly like the mafia, except somehow they get away with it because instead of operating individually, the mafia bosses have all pooled their thugs to work together. It also seems to help that they bludgeon you financially instead of figuratively.
Corporations aren't human. But somebody thought it would be a great idea to give them the same rights as individuals.
Actually there are a hell of a lot of corporations that are entirely composed of a single individual. It's often the first step you take when you realize that personal taxes are significantly higher (in raw dollars) than corporate taxes, because a corporation is taxed on profits, not gross income. Combine that with the significant number of potential business expenses and the personal liability reduction, and there is a great incentive for people making a moderate amount of money to incorporate. It's not too hard to take a $100k income (taxed at 28% for individuals) and get that below $50k for the corporate tax calculation (15%). It means you get to keep a lot more of your own money, and a lot of your liabilities are deferred and don't reflect on you personally.
In that sense, there are a lot of corporations that actually are individuals. I don't mind that we treat corporations as individuals, I just think individuals in the corporation should be responsible for their actions as well - like fining the corporation 10 million dollars and sending the officer who broke the law to jail for a few years. I don't see why the individuals and the corporations can't both be held responsible in a lot of cases.
It's not cyclical, it's sound IT policy. You pick a guy who knows what he is doing, and put him in charge of IT. He comes up with a policy, senior management approves it, and it becomes IT law.
The people who make and have authority to change these policies are generally very far above the admin's direct supervisors. Generally several layers of management.
A practical example, I work for a large oil company (global, one of the 100 biggest companies in the world). Up until a year or so ago, all of the upper level management for the local business (CEO, COO, etc) had free access to the server room. Policy above their heads changed, and their access was revoked, along with any other personnel that did not have a need to regularly access the server room. These people can easily fire the guy who manages the server room, however that still won't gain them access. The approval must come from outside.
In the Childs case, it sounded to me like the supervisors wanted free access to the equipment, which was against management's IT policy. These people may well have the ability to fire him, but that does not mean he should violate policy and give them access. There is always someone who has the authority to get the information in these cases, his supervisors just weren't those somebodies.
I have a chemist friend who works at a University, and he has to build his own computers and upgrade his own machines because the IT department won't. Not for any good reason either, it's University equipment, doing University research, but all the IT department seems to be good for is randomly deleting his email, disabling his internet connection, and shutting down his servers. They have to be his servers, of course, because IT won't support them, god only knows why.
The University pays bottom dollar for IT because they don't care about IT. They care about PH.D.'s and professorships and power-grabs, so for people who depend on the IT stuff to work right, they pretty much have to be their own admin. That's why teachers insist on being able to install their own software, manage their own switches, etc. Because if they actually relied on the IT department to do that they could be dead in the water for weeks, if not longer.
I know a chemist for a local university, and from what he tells me their IT is pretty much pure crap. The universities are structured to be very competitive between departments so cooperation is very uncommon. The culture is such that if you don't have a PH.D. you aren't worth much, and of course nobody in IT has a PH.D. so they are at the very bottom of the University food chain.
This means they don't get paid as much as their corporate counterparts, and there is not as much immediate pressure from anyone to get your work done. This draws in the least talented, laziest and least competent IT staff possible, and the results are obvious. I am constantly flabbergasted by my chemist friend's dealings with the University IT department, and I can't understand it for such a small environment. It's nothing short of amazing.
And have you ever tried to fire someone at a University? They don't fire anybody, there isn't any real oversight at the top, just a pool of sharks who couldn't care less about computers. Hell, the university still has Computer Science classes given in a lecture hall on pen and paper! That's just ridiculous!
What are these galaxies made of if not stars?
Gas, lots and lots of gas.
It's actually what stars are made of, along with the vast majority of planets. When stars super-nova, then they create dust, which can then become earth-like rocky planets. In baby galaxies and in galaxies with an active super-massive black hole, gas is being sucked in to the black hole so fast that it glows, It's like an ultra-massive star with a super-massive black hole core. The radiation from these black holes comes from the gas surrounding it falling in, not from the black hole itself. This radiation can potentially kick start other stars further out to form.
Basically what the article is saying, is that a black hole can become so large, that if it activates again (new gas is introduced in some way, or it has simply had so much to consume that if finally hit the right size) that it can kill any young stars in the galaxy. That doesn't mean the older stars will be eliminated, because once a star reaches a certain size its own pressure maintains the reaction without external influence. It's the ones that are still collecting gas and are too small to maintain their own reaction that can be snuffed out.
Furthermore, the gravity of a black hole, even a supermassive, has limits. Our solar system, for example, is well outside the range of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole - we are held in orbit by proximity to the mass of stars further from the center of the galaxy. So what you will end up with is not giant, invisible galaxies, but galaxies with a giant hole in the middle (like all galaxies with a non-active supermassive) and zero new star formation. It would take close to the heat death of the universe for them to become dark, and most galaxies will be nearly dark by then anyway.
The main difference is that this isn't a constitutional case.
Except for the fact that patents are laid down in the US Constitution, sure. Of course, that shouldn't make it a constitutional issue, should it?
The Supreme Court certainly can and should decide whether or not restrictions placed on patents are constitutional. All laws are based on the constitution, and must not violate it. The SCOTUS's primary purpose is to ensure that this is the case.
Now, the portion of the Constitution that allows for Patents and Copyright is small, and it's the US Patent and Copyright codes that determine how we use it, which are both external to the constitution, so I couldn't tell you how the SCOTUS would go on this. The usually seem to err on the side of caution, so don't be surprised if they maintain the status quo.
Everybody knows Alcohol knocks them out, the fool!
Seriously, I usually end up dead in these "chose your own adventure" stories. I totally kicked ass this time.
Do you seriously mean to tell me that there are no important tech stories taking place today?
No, I think they mean to tell you that none of the tech articles were ever all that important, and thus could wait a day.
Seriously, if you're life hangs on Slashdot, well, that's just sad.
Mod parent up!
You realize 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. were just conventions to make things easier, right? There is nothing that locks you into those patterns, it's just things can be a bitch to manage if you aren't in one.
There were 24 bit processors, 6 bit bytes, etc. Base 2 is every bit as flexible as base 10, it's just different, and conventions have evolved to make things consistent and easy.
For example, with a 24 bit processor, you'll want to scale to a 48 bit processor to make backwords compatibility easier. The 8 bit base just fits in very nicely between base 2, octals, hex, and finally decimal. Conversions among these units is much easier working with an 8 bit base than other setups, and so all scaling goes off the 8 bit base.
None of it was tied to a 4 bit base though, that's just ignorant.
No. :D
Awww, boohoo, does somebody need their bwanky?
Who's upset because their whole wife wevolves awound Swashdot?
Yes you are! Yes you are! Aren't you? Aren't you just a big cwy baby?
</baby voice>
Grow up a bit and have some fun, yeah? It wouldn't kill you to take the stick out of your ass for one day a year.
Lol April Fools!
The people who hate April Fools Day were probably the ones who were consistently pranked on as children - that or they were left out of the fun and games completely.
Such people grow up to be humorless, bitter men with no social lives and a refrigerator full of cheese that is going bad. I'm not sure what that last bit is about, but I swear it happens every time.
Damn man, lighten up!
Or did you just get a "Zero chips - you're a loser!" package for yourself?
He's probably thinking of the aardvark, numbat, echidna, or pangolin, which are all colloquially known as "anteaters" but don't eat ants and aren't in the same family.
To be fair, anteaters do eat mostly termites, not ants.
he could be dumb white trailer trash.
The proper name is "cracker".
Or, he might not be dumb at all, and simply an unfortunate victim of the American public school system.
I believe the proper terminology for that is "functionally idiotic". Not dumb, but you can't tell the difference.