I disagree. It's not copy control, it's access control.
Illegal copies are the excuse that's being used to push this through, but, when you read some data, how does the drive (or any other part of the computer) know whether you're making a copy or not? It can't. So, to control copying, it must control all access.
"Copy control" is definitely more honest than "copy protection", but how many people will recognize that a "copy control" system will affect them when they're not making copies?
Why is it that Microsoft code is "assumed" (and you know what that means) to be BETTER than 3rd party code?
Who said anything about this scheme assuming MS code is better? It's based on the notion that MS is a trusted agent which will make responsible decisions about whether code is safe and add a signature to those programs which are found to be trustworthy.
This has nothing to do with quality. It's all about trust.
(Now, I don't consider MS to be particularly trustworthy, nor do I consider them competent enough at assessing security issues to be willing to give them responsibility for doing a security review on code that will run on my boxes. Most of the market, however, currently does trust MS and their judgement.)
Yes, they would have. The 'don't run unsigned apps' setting didn't exist at the time Melissa, etc. ran their course.
If this goes in as described and it's turned on by default and IS departments prevent their users from turning it off, it might prevent another Melissa from getting off the ground. But, without a way to selectively mark specific apps as safe (instead of it being all-or-nothing), that would also effectively make all noncommercial software unusable without giving up your protection from Melissa-like worms.
But more importantly no one, and I mean no one, is forced to buy Microsoft Office.
Technically, you are correct. However, those of us who don't use Office occasionally find that this choice makes our lives somewhat more difficult. For instance, I've recently encountered two recruiting firms which expect you to submit resumes in Word.doc format. One was quite reasonable about it and happily accepted my HTML resume once I pointed out that Word reads HTML without any problems. The other, however, insisted that all resumes must be in.doc format and refused to accept mine in any format other than.doc - even though I was specifically responding to a posting for a Unix position.
So, no, nobody will hold a gun to your head and force you to buy or use Office. But there are people out there who won't want to deal with you (or at least will refuse to take you seriously) if you don't.
Besides would you develop apps for the OS you're running or the one you run on the virtual machine?
Depends on who's paying for it.
It's not exactly a virtual machine, but I write code for Windows on a Linux box and then start up VNC to have a WinNT box compile it. Why? Because my boss says we write code for Windows. (He's been promising me a Linux port for the last year, which is probably why I managed to get a Linux box on my desk, but I don't really believe him about the port any more...)
The ZDNet article's headline claims that Kylix is being Open Sourced. The article body, however, does not substantiate that claim. It just says that the source is being released to the GNOME developers.
First off, there's nothing in the article itself to indicate that GNOME will be free to do anything with the code except look at it and maybe make a few changes to improve interoperability with GNOME.
Secondly, this isn't anything radically new. Borland has always sold the source for Delphi's component library. They haven't kept it locked up where nobody on the outside could see it
While this is news (they're now developing strong support for GNOME as well as KDE), it's not necessarily so earth-shattering as the headline might make you think.
Also snooping on what people are searching with your search engine, isn't that an ethical question? I know that I don't want everyone knowing what I am searching about, a data analysis on every keyword I have searched for can tell you a lot about me.
He never said that searches are ever tracked, just that they're recorded. Not the same thing. We know that he can look at a log and see that there were 435 searches for "apache htaccess". We do not know (although you appear to assume) that those logs contain some indication that 42 of those searches were done by the same person or whether any of the "apache htaccess" searchers also looked for "liv taylor nude".
Assuming that this guy's search engine uses HTTP GET requests with all the params showing up in the URL (like most search engines do) and that it runs under apache, every set of search terms is, by default, logged (since, again, the terms are in the requested URL) along with their originating IP addresses. He has all the information he needs to make statements about how many people search for "Linux" in the Linux Search Engine by default.
One of the reasons why
people don't go hilly nilly with area codes is that is usually how long distance is calculated (meaning if you call outside you area code you are charged long distance charges
from your carrier and most people don't want to pay long distance talking to someone from say across the street).
Umm... No.
That's what I used to think, but the Minneapolis/St. Paul area has gone from one area code to four in the last few years. It's still a local call from one side of town to the other, even though it's an area code or two away. Just dial aaa-nnn-nnnn, no 1- prefix required.
On the flip side, it's a toll call to dial up someone over a certain number of miles away, even if they're in the same area code. (You have to dial 1-nnn-nnnn; the area code isn't needed.)
My impression of the earlier comment was that their understanding of the.NET presentation was along the lines of "if you can't do it in C#, you can't do it in.NET". As an example, he suggested that, even though Eiffel supports multiple inheritance, a theoretical Eiffel# would omit that feature because C# doesn't support MI.
This is, however, just my interpretation of the original comment. I have no idea whether it has any connection to reality, as I don't know anything of substance about C# or.NET beyond the basic concept.
It seems like insurance companies increasingly want to avoid risk. They want to collect premiums from everyone. But when disaster strikes someone, they don't want to pay out.
Of course not. The purpose of the insurance industry is not to spread risk. The purpose of the insurance industry is to sell insurance policies and make the brokers rich.
A couple of other posts have mentioned having to pay extra in insurance premiums over and above the actual costs of treatment. This is true. But how many realize how much extra they're paying?
I've worked on databases for insurance companies. I've seen the numbers. 60% of what you pay in insurance premiums goes to commissions. Only 40% of what you pay is actually used to 'spread risk', the rest goes right into some insurance agent's pocket. (The cynical might suspect that they're so reluctant to pay out because every dollar paid in benefits is a dollar less to pay in commissions.)
I don't think that TiVO is out to break any of their privacy promises, but, just to play the devil's advocate...
They don't need to have your serial number in the filename. When your box calls in, it has to identify itself so that they know you're a subscriber, right? Unless it makes two separate calls each day (one identified to get program data, one anonymous to send viewing information), the server already knows who's sending the file.
Filenames are irrelevant. Caller ID is irrelevant. They've looked up your subscription information and can use it to tie everything related to that call back to you.
I'll point out that patents and copyrights are in the US Constitution; the idea that they are the result of "lobbying" is literally ridiculous.
The concepts of patents and copyrights are in the Constitution. Their current forms, however, are the result of lobbying. (ISTR the Constitution saying something about them remaining in force for a limited time. Copyrights which last longer than the life of the author do not, IMO, match that criterion. It also says something about them being there to promote creativity and scientific advancement, but when the laws have shaped them into forms which require you to consult a lawyer before creating anything, it would appear that their intended purpose has been subverted.)
that serial number is probably
easily matched up to the store where you picked up your cuecat device, or even to your name if you gave it to the clerk at the store.
Ummm... No.
I don't know about you, but the guy at Radio Shack who gave me mine just grabbed a bag and a catalog out of a box and handed them to me. Yes, he took my name, but there was no obvious way to have accessed the serial number, much less associated it with my name.
Of course, if I use my CueCat to scan something from the Radio Shack catalog, get zapped to their web site, and order it there, I expect that my name would get tied to my CueCat's serial number as a side effect of that transaction, but if you don't buy anything using the scanner, you should be safe.
an infinite loop? If not, what would you consider to qualify as an infinite loop? If so, does it become non-infinite when someone issues a kill -9 or turns off the power switch?
evolutionary mining robots would have two ways to reach the defined objective of keeping reported numbers high: learning how to mine really well, or killing the humans and sending in fake reports themselves.
That is, of course, assuming that the person is 100% transparent. If you were, say, 95% transparent, people would be unlikely to notice you, but you would be able to (darkly) see them. 75% transparency would probably be sufficient to make you effectively invisible to most people without dimming your view as badly.
Similar to the principle that one-way mirrors work, but not quite the same.
Interesting example, considering that, in Minnesota, people over the age of 12 are not required to wear a seatbelt unless they're riding in the front seat. So the example you provided of how not wearing a seatbelt could hurt someone else happens to be a case where a seatbelt isn't required anyhow under MN law... (Or at least that was the original MN seatbelt law. It may have changed since then.)
the development environment would talk to Visio via OLE automation, pull out a highly structured description about the flowchart (basically, a list of all the symbols and their types
Hmm... That sounds suspiciously like a text string (or at least something that would be easily represented as a text string) to me.
and build a simple C++ representation of the chart that the code generator could then take as input.
Last time I checked, C++ source code was a string of text, too.
X/*nix isn't limited by the "everything is a file" approach, even if you assume that "file" in this context means "string of text". The limitations you're thinking of stem from the assumption that the string of text is unstructured.
What we need to overcome those limitations are well-thought-out and documented ways of handling structured data. A *nix version of Visio, for instance, could spew all the information you need about the diagram as a text stream and, as long as the format and structure of that stream are documented, you would have all the functionality that OLE provides.
Which is why Apache pre-spawns processes. If I recall the defaults correctly, Apache tries to keep a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 10 idle worker processes at all times. (If it falls below the minimum, it spawns 1 process in the first second, 2 in the next second, 4 in the next, etc. to avoid swamping the machine with process creation overhead.) Also, on Linux, forking new processes uses a copy-on-write scheme which significantly reduces the overhead involved.
Context switches between processes take longer than switching between threads, of course, but the difference is far less under *nixes than under Windows. Interestingly enough, Win2K has much better process-switching optimization than previous versions and MS is now talking about (may have even released - I don't follow them that closely) a version of IIS that runs multiprocess instead of multithreaded to improve stability.
But yes, you're right - none of this does anything about the TCP/IP stack.
(Note: I poked around a bit on the ServerBench site, but was not able to verify the server software used under Linux. I assume it was Apache, but it may have been something else.)
Although Apache is single-threaded (prior to 2.0, when multithread becomes an option), each request is run in a separate process. If one request stalls, it will still give up its CPU time for other tasks just as nicely as it would under a multithreaded Windows server.
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Illegal copies are the excuse that's being used to push this through, but, when you read some data, how does the drive (or any other part of the computer) know whether you're making a copy or not? It can't. So, to control copying, it must control all access.
"Copy control" is definitely more honest than "copy protection", but how many people will recognize that a "copy control" system will affect them when they're not making copies?
Who said anything about this scheme assuming MS code is better? It's based on the notion that MS is a trusted agent which will make responsible decisions about whether code is safe and add a signature to those programs which are found to be trustworthy.
This has nothing to do with quality. It's all about trust.
(Now, I don't consider MS to be particularly trustworthy, nor do I consider them competent enough at assessing security issues to be willing to give them responsibility for doing a security review on code that will run on my boxes. Most of the market, however, currently does trust MS and their judgement.)
If this goes in as described and it's turned on by default and IS departments prevent their users from turning it off, it might prevent another Melissa from getting off the ground. But, without a way to selectively mark specific apps as safe (instead of it being all-or-nothing), that would also effectively make all noncommercial software unusable without giving up your protection from Melissa-like worms.
Technically, you are correct. However, those of us who don't use Office occasionally find that this choice makes our lives somewhat more difficult. For instance, I've recently encountered two recruiting firms which expect you to submit resumes in Word .doc format. One was quite reasonable about it and happily accepted my HTML resume once I pointed out that Word reads HTML without any problems. The other, however, insisted that all resumes must be in .doc format and refused to accept mine in any format other than .doc - even though I was specifically responding to a posting for a Unix position.
So, no, nobody will hold a gun to your head and force you to buy or use Office. But there are people out there who won't want to deal with you (or at least will refuse to take you seriously) if you don't.
Depends on who's paying for it.
It's not exactly a virtual machine, but I write code for Windows on a Linux box and then start up VNC to have a WinNT box compile it. Why? Because my boss says we write code for Windows. (He's been promising me a Linux port for the last year, which is probably why I managed to get a Linux box on my desk, but I don't really believe him about the port any more...)
First off, there's nothing in the article itself to indicate that GNOME will be free to do anything with the code except look at it and maybe make a few changes to improve interoperability with GNOME.
Secondly, this isn't anything radically new. Borland has always sold the source for Delphi's component library. They haven't kept it locked up where nobody on the outside could see it
While this is news (they're now developing strong support for GNOME as well as KDE), it's not necessarily so earth-shattering as the headline might make you think.
I reject the notion that the morality of my actions is in any way affected by someone else's foresight or lack thereof.
He never said that searches are ever tracked, just that they're recorded. Not the same thing. We know that he can look at a log and see that there were 435 searches for "apache htaccess". We do not know (although you appear to assume) that those logs contain some indication that 42 of those searches were done by the same person or whether any of the "apache htaccess" searchers also looked for "liv taylor nude".
Assuming that this guy's search engine uses HTTP GET requests with all the params showing up in the URL (like most search engines do) and that it runs under apache, every set of search terms is, by default, logged (since, again, the terms are in the requested URL) along with their originating IP addresses. He has all the information he needs to make statements about how many people search for "Linux" in the Linux Search Engine by default.
IIRC, the technically correct term is collective nouns. (Is "Borg" a collective noun?)
Umm... No.
That's what I used to think, but the Minneapolis/St. Paul area has gone from one area code to four in the last few years. It's still a local call from one side of town to the other, even though it's an area code or two away. Just dial aaa-nnn-nnnn, no 1- prefix required.
On the flip side, it's a toll call to dial up someone over a certain number of miles away, even if they're in the same area code. (You have to dial 1-nnn-nnnn; the area code isn't needed.)
This is, however, just my interpretation of the original comment. I have no idea whether it has any connection to reality, as I don't know anything of substance about C# or .NET beyond the basic concept.
Of course not. The purpose of the insurance industry is not to spread risk. The purpose of the insurance industry is to sell insurance policies and make the brokers rich.
A couple of other posts have mentioned having to pay extra in insurance premiums over and above the actual costs of treatment. This is true. But how many realize how much extra they're paying?
I've worked on databases for insurance companies. I've seen the numbers. 60% of what you pay in insurance premiums goes to commissions. Only 40% of what you pay is actually used to 'spread risk', the rest goes right into some insurance agent's pocket. (The cynical might suspect that they're so reluctant to pay out because every dollar paid in benefits is a dollar less to pay in commissions.)
Why do I have this picture in my head of two guys in some seedy IRC channel debating the price of a quarter key of data?
They don't need to have your serial number in the filename. When your box calls in, it has to identify itself so that they know you're a subscriber, right? Unless it makes two separate calls each day (one identified to get program data, one anonymous to send viewing information), the server already knows who's sending the file.
Filenames are irrelevant. Caller ID is irrelevant. They've looked up your subscription information and can use it to tie everything related to that call back to you.
The concepts of patents and copyrights are in the Constitution. Their current forms, however, are the result of lobbying. (ISTR the Constitution saying something about them remaining in force for a limited time. Copyrights which last longer than the life of the author do not, IMO, match that criterion. It also says something about them being there to promote creativity and scientific advancement, but when the laws have shaped them into forms which require you to consult a lawyer before creating anything, it would appear that their intended purpose has been subverted.)
The wages I'd flip burgers for are more than what I'm getting paid to write software. A lot more.
Ummm... No.
I don't know about you, but the guy at Radio Shack who gave me mine just grabbed a bag and a catalog out of a box and handed them to me. Yes, he took my name, but there was no obvious way to have accessed the serial number, much less associated it with my name.
Of course, if I use my CueCat to scan something from the Radio Shack catalog, get zapped to their web site, and order it there, I expect that my name would get tied to my CueCat's serial number as a side effect of that transaction, but if you don't buy anything using the scanner, you should be safe.
while (1) ;
an infinite loop? If not, what would you consider to qualify as an infinite loop? If so, does it become non-infinite when someone issues a kill -9 or turns off the power switch?
In other words, they'll evolve into managers.
Similar to the principle that one-way mirrors work, but not quite the same.
Interesting example, considering that, in Minnesota, people over the age of 12 are not required to wear a seatbelt unless they're riding in the front seat. So the example you provided of how not wearing a seatbelt could hurt someone else happens to be a case where a seatbelt isn't required anyhow under MN law... (Or at least that was the original MN seatbelt law. It may have changed since then.)
Hmm... That sounds suspiciously like a text string (or at least something that would be easily represented as a text string) to me.
and build a simple C++ representation of the chart that the code generator could then take as input.
Last time I checked, C++ source code was a string of text, too.
X/*nix isn't limited by the "everything is a file" approach, even if you assume that "file" in this context means "string of text". The limitations you're thinking of stem from the assumption that the string of text is unstructured.
What we need to overcome those limitations are well-thought-out and documented ways of handling structured data. A *nix version of Visio, for instance, could spew all the information you need about the diagram as a text stream and, as long as the format and structure of that stream are documented, you would have all the functionality that OLE provides.
Response:
I agree.
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If you aren't browsing in -1,Nested you aren't getting the whole story.
Oh, the irony...
Context switches between processes take longer than switching between threads, of course, but the difference is far less under *nixes than under Windows. Interestingly enough, Win2K has much better process-switching optimization than previous versions and MS is now talking about (may have even released - I don't follow them that closely) a version of IIS that runs multiprocess instead of multithreaded to improve stability.
But yes, you're right - none of this does anything about the TCP/IP stack.
Although Apache is single-threaded (prior to 2.0, when multithread becomes an option), each request is run in a separate process. If one request stalls, it will still give up its CPU time for other tasks just as nicely as it would under a multithreaded Windows server.