Well, part of Shirky's point is that it is so lacking in usefulness that there will be no advantage to anybody for display their content that way. I think he's right. I've watched AI based on these kind of logical rules and semantics stumble along for years without producing anything useful, and then along comes some program that takes little pieces of what other people said and 'mindlessly' strings them together in new ways and it wins a Turing contest.
Logical reasoning of this kind, despite all the hype, is extremely overrated.
Yeah, but it's the name that's stuck.:-/ It sort of makes sense in that most of these programs that let you search and grab the contents of other people's HDs also put stuff from yours out for public consumption too, thus 'swapping' files with the world.
Re:Why does anybody take this guy seriously anymor
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McVoy Strikes Back
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It's a marketing problem.:-) But, yes, I agree with you about that.
One problem in the tech industry is teaching people why your product is better than what they've been doing. And that can be a very difficult task.
Yes, content. That's what it is. I so love that word. It makes ideas sound so special, and non-commodity like. *chuckle* That's advertiser thinking. Ideas are just a commodity you use to try to sell stuff.
Try asking the question from a different angle. What can be done that's not a huge impact to society as a whole that will encourage people to create more stuff? The purpose of copyright was not to try to manifest some fictitious 'ownership' right, it was to try to create a social benefit (people creating stuff) in exchange for giving up an (at the time) unimportant freedom to copy.
It's even more insane to criminalize file swapping than it is to criminalize drug use. Catching file swappers basically requires the violation of either the 4th ammendment or the first.
At one point in time the freedom to copy was so unimportant to the average person that the trading away that freedom in the hopes of some greater social benefit made sense. Now things have changed, and it's time to re-evaluate how the social benefit might be achieved without trading away an important and easily exercised freedom.
Why does anybody take this guy seriously anymore?
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McVoy Strikes Back
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· Score: 1
Shouldn't this really have gone into the humor section? Larry McVoy is practically a self-parody.
Even better, when Linux gets patched, everything I have installed is patched whether or not the programmer who wrote it came from RedHat. No separate update programs for every single piece of software I've installed. And that has always been true too.
Near as I can tell, this happens for me automatically on my nice RedHat box. Maybe it hasn't always, but it has for as long as I've payed attention to the problem, which is several years.
I really have no idea how the report can possibly come to the conclusions it does. Patching on my Linux boxes has always been much easier and faster than any Windows box I've watched people use. Even at work where it's all done for me. There my laptop randomly reboots to apply patches and my Linux box never does.
I think you severely underestimate the amount of community ire about this. The fork wouldn't have had the immense level of support that Xorg got when they forked XFree86, but the support wouldn't have been trivial either. I bet they would've had the Java removed within a month or three, and I bet they'd have had replacement database functionality within 6-18 months.
Stallman has a bit of pragmatism in him. If you notice, before there was a viable kernel to run all the GNU code on, he didn't complain bitterly about people who ported it to whatever random proprietary Unix they wanted to run it on.
I agree with him. Relying on proprietary BIOSes is the way to get something like Palladium snuck into your computer and suddenly preventing you from running anything on it the manufacturer doesn't approve of. Goodbye general purpose computing.
As for patented microprocessors and such... well, read the other reply to your post and read what Stallman has to say. He has a consistent and reasonable viewpoint on those.
I have come to the conclusion that any computer that runs proprietary software (even this Powerbook I've comprimised on and am using now) is not really my computer at all, and I might as well just be leasing it and expecting it to exhibit all kinds of behaviors that are not in my best interests. Software freedom is as essential to having real freedom in a technological society as freedom of speech is.
Nothing can prove string theory. You can only show that the observed behavior of something is consistent with string theory.
But, from what you say, it sounds like there are a number of competing theories which all predict a certain kind of supersymmetric behavior for fermions and bosons.
So, if this experiment works as string theory predicts, string theory and a number of other theories that predict the same thing get a feather in their collective caps.
And here is born a new class of troll. At least it's a new topic, even if not terribly imaginative. I hereby name you the single-minded singularity troll.:-)
That is, of course, unless you are a mass-mind.:-)
I'm still wondering if you could manage an attack based on the shared execution unit.
Side-channel and timing attacks are amusing voodoo to hit people with sometimes. It tells you a lot about how flexible they are in their thinking. I told someone that I thought you could do a keystroke timing attack against ssh, and they told me I was nuts. Then a few months later someone writes a paper on it. I was amused.
I was close, but not exactly right. I should've thought of the cache. I'm wondering if you could develop an attack based on the shared execution unit though. That would be interesting.
Actually, my guess is a bit different. My guess is that it's a timing attack related to the fact that certain resources are being shared by two threads that wouldn't be shared in a dual core or multi-CPU setup. I'm betting you can get a detailed profile of each instruction another thread executes and how long it takes to run if you can get your thread running at the same time.
Yes, most of the comments I saw along that line, it wasn't obvious whether or not the person was a customer. That would be a good test to run. Who has $800 to spend?:-)
If you read the other comments, they have refused to share source with customers. Also, they do not sell you it under the terms of the GPL, but under some other license terms, which is also a violation of the GPL.
The first is that you cannot prevent people from sharing. So, if you sell someone a GPL program, you can't prevent them from handing a copy to a friend under the GPL.
The second is that you must allow people to make their own modified versions of the software. In order for this to work, they have to have the source code to the software. So, you must provide the source code if asked, and you are not allowed to charge extra for source code.
The thing that determines whether or not radiation has enough energy to ionize is the frequency of the radiation, not the amount of it.
So, as long as the radiation is the same frequency, increasing the amount is an experimental technique that can't be dismissed so casually as you suggest.
Also, microwave frequencies aren't energetic enough to knock electrons out of things, but they are energetic enough to add energy to molecular bonds. I imagine there might be weaker bonds than microwaves effect that lower frequency cell phone radiation might be able to affect.
I tell them that when they don't use Open Source software, they're selling their freedom. I give numerous instances of how this is true.
I don't tell them it's the only thing they should use though. I just try to give them enough data to do a cost-benefit analysis that makes sense for them. For example, I personally (with much distaste) use the nVidia drivers.
I agree, but there are some people who have an issue with monopoly laws. I'm trying to build up some kind of justification for their existence that would make a little bit of sense to someone who called themselves a libertarian.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, part of Shirky's point is that it is so lacking in usefulness that there will be no advantage to anybody for display their content that way. I think he's right. I've watched AI based on these kind of logical rules and semantics stumble along for years without producing anything useful, and then along comes some program that takes little pieces of what other people said and 'mindlessly' strings them together in new ways and it wins a Turing contest.
Logical reasoning of this kind, despite all the hype, is extremely overrated.
Yeah, but it's the name that's stuck. :-/ It sort of makes sense in that most of these programs that let you search and grab the contents of other people's HDs also put stuff from yours out for public consumption too, thus 'swapping' files with the world.
It's a marketing problem. :-) But, yes, I agree with you about that.
One problem in the tech industry is teaching people why your product is better than what they've been doing. And that can be a very difficult task.
Yes, content. That's what it is. I so love that word. It makes ideas sound so special, and non-commodity like. *chuckle* That's advertiser thinking. Ideas are just a commodity you use to try to sell stuff.
Try asking the question from a different angle. What can be done that's not a huge impact to society as a whole that will encourage people to create more stuff? The purpose of copyright was not to try to manifest some fictitious 'ownership' right, it was to try to create a social benefit (people creating stuff) in exchange for giving up an (at the time) unimportant freedom to copy.
It's even more insane to criminalize file swapping than it is to criminalize drug use. Catching file swappers basically requires the violation of either the 4th ammendment or the first.
At one point in time the freedom to copy was so unimportant to the average person that the trading away that freedom in the hopes of some greater social benefit made sense. Now things have changed, and it's time to re-evaluate how the social benefit might be achieved without trading away an important and easily exercised freedom.
Shouldn't this really have gone into the humor section? Larry McVoy is practically a self-parody.
Even better, when Linux gets patched, everything I have installed is patched whether or not the programmer who wrote it came from RedHat. No separate update programs for every single piece of software I've installed. And that has always been true too.
Near as I can tell, this happens for me automatically on my nice RedHat box. Maybe it hasn't always, but it has for as long as I've payed attention to the problem, which is several years.
I really have no idea how the report can possibly come to the conclusions it does. Patching on my Linux boxes has always been much easier and faster than any Windows box I've watched people use. Even at work where it's all done for me. There my laptop randomly reboots to apply patches and my Linux box never does.
I think you severely underestimate the amount of community ire about this. The fork wouldn't have had the immense level of support that Xorg got when they forked XFree86, but the support wouldn't have been trivial either. I bet they would've had the Java removed within a month or three, and I bet they'd have had replacement database functionality within 6-18 months.
The decision not to fork is a true concession.
Not forking. Being willing to accept an OpenOffice version that had Java in it at all.
Stallman has a bit of pragmatism in him. If you notice, before there was a viable kernel to run all the GNU code on, he didn't complain bitterly about people who ported it to whatever random proprietary Unix they wanted to run it on.
I agree with him. Relying on proprietary BIOSes is the way to get something like Palladium snuck into your computer and suddenly preventing you from running anything on it the manufacturer doesn't approve of. Goodbye general purpose computing.
As for patented microprocessors and such... well, read the other reply to your post and read what Stallman has to say. He has a consistent and reasonable viewpoint on those.
I have come to the conclusion that any computer that runs proprietary software (even this Powerbook I've comprimised on and am using now) is not really my computer at all, and I might as well just be leasing it and expecting it to exhibit all kinds of behaviors that are not in my best interests. Software freedom is as essential to having real freedom in a technological society as freedom of speech is.
Nothing can prove string theory. You can only show that the observed behavior of something is consistent with string theory.
But, from what you say, it sounds like there are a number of competing theories which all predict a certain kind of supersymmetric behavior for fermions and bosons.
So, if this experiment works as string theory predicts, string theory and a number of other theories that predict the same thing get a feather in their collective caps.
It's a new species of troll.
And here is born a new class of troll. At least it's a new topic, even if not terribly imaginative. I hereby name you the single-minded singularity troll. :-)
That is, of course, unless you are a mass-mind. :-)
I'm still wondering if you could manage an attack based on the shared execution unit.
Side-channel and timing attacks are amusing voodoo to hit people with sometimes. It tells you a lot about how flexible they are in their thinking. I told someone that I thought you could do a keystroke timing attack against ssh, and they told me I was nuts. Then a few months later someone writes a paper on it. I was amused.
I was close, but not exactly right. I should've thought of the cache. I'm wondering if you could develop an attack based on the shared execution unit though. That would be interesting.
I should've thought of the cache.
Actually, my guess is a bit different. My guess is that it's a timing attack related to the fact that certain resources are being shared by two threads that wouldn't be shared in a dual core or multi-CPU setup. I'm betting you can get a detailed profile of each instruction another thread executes and how long it takes to run if you can get your thread running at the same time.
Hey, you can even sell it, as long as you also hand over a copy of the source. The problem would be finding a buyer. :-)
Gee, can you point me to the democratic (or at least claims to be) government that hired this illegal immigrant to perform these atrocities?
Yes, most of the comments I saw along that line, it wasn't obvious whether or not the person was a customer. That would be a good test to run. Who has $800 to spend? :-)
If you read the other comments, they have refused to share source with customers. Also, they do not sell you it under the terms of the GPL, but under some other license terms, which is also a violation of the GPL.
There are two basic ideas in the GPL.
The first is that you cannot prevent people from sharing. So, if you sell someone a GPL program, you can't prevent them from handing a copy to a friend under the GPL.
The second is that you must allow people to make their own modified versions of the software. In order for this to work, they have to have the source code to the software. So, you must provide the source code if asked, and you are not allowed to charge extra for source code.
The thing that determines whether or not radiation has enough energy to ionize is the frequency of the radiation, not the amount of it.
So, as long as the radiation is the same frequency, increasing the amount is an experimental technique that can't be dismissed so casually as you suggest.
Also, microwave frequencies aren't energetic enough to knock electrons out of things, but they are energetic enough to add energy to molecular bonds. I imagine there might be weaker bonds than microwaves effect that lower frequency cell phone radiation might be able to affect.
I tell them that when they don't use Open Source software, they're selling their freedom. I give numerous instances of how this is true.
I don't tell them it's the only thing they should use though. I just try to give them enough data to do a cost-benefit analysis that makes sense for them. For example, I personally (with much distaste) use the nVidia drivers.
I agree, but there are some people who have an issue with monopoly laws. I'm trying to build up some kind of justification for their existence that would make a little bit of sense to someone who called themselves a libertarian.