And what of the entreprenuer who starts up a firm that cures AIDS? treats Diabetes? etc. Would you have us believe that only one party is better served by this invention/innovation? Money may be transferred from one party to another, but obviously the purchasing party finds more VALUE in that item than they do in their cash.
Furthermore, money IS created. You can't explain a growing economy by mere transference of money (zero-sum)...unless of course you're leftish and believe that we're just selling wares to the ignorant masses in third world countries. Or stealing their money, or what have you...
Just because ones' parents are rich doesn't mean they don't have to work for a living. Children of wealthy parents are normally provided with a decent education and they tend to be a little bit more mobile. But being rich doesn't mean that you get carte blanche. Secondly, taxes are a bitch. Even if you want to transfer all your money to your kids after your death, its suprising how little you actually can. eg: Capital Gains, Estate Taxes, legal fees, etc. Unless you're a billionaire, your kids aren't going to be living in the same kind of lifestyle for the rest of their lives (assuming the parents live an extravagant lifestyle).
I, for one, have wealthy extreprenuereal parents. Yes, my education is mostly paid for. College? no problem? A small loan for grad school? maybe. A Little seed capital? maybe.
I can't claim that i'd rather be born poor. However, its not always win-win. There are certain tradeoffs that are made many times. Parents of wealthy kids are expected to do certain things, and behave certain ways that others simply aren't. eg: Sports after school every season (mandatory), 3 hours minimum of homework since 6th grade, moves, no TV, get into a top college, etc etc etc. My parents and most of my friends' parents certainly required us to get jobs during the summer and during vacations. It has nothing to do with money. They simply have principles. In order to be a productive member of society, you must know the meaning of work. When I wanted something growing up, say a new stereo, I had to earn the money myself.
There are a certain percentage of elitists who sort of cruise through life with a sense of entitlement. eg: Go to the right prep school, get into the right college, land a cushy job at some leading firm, country club... But they are for the most part a minority. And I feel that they're becoming a dying breed. The world is simply becoming more and more competitive; just going through the motions and resting on your laurels isn't enough.
While I have a great deal more respect for individuals that manage to climb their way to the top without any advantages, it is extremely difficult (statistically). Would you really propose that rich people aren't allowed to support their children, and educate them decently? That they must go to the same public schools, no matter how poor? Might it have ever occured to you that one of the incentives to get 'rich', is to be able to provide your kids with a decent chance in life (eg: education).
I do find the notion of redistributing wealth by means of law out of 'principle' a bit disturbing. That is leaning towards socialism...
....it may require a partial audit trail. However, this doesn't mean that standard TCP connections would be included. My point is that an ISP could be setup to not allow the FBI to trace past communications to a specific user. I'm not really concerned about script kiddies here.
However, to protect themselves from the uplink denying them service, they could filter out common DOS attacks. eg: ICMP, UDP, SYN-floods, etc. The ISP could detect such attacks in a rather small window (eg: 60 minutes or less), rather than large windows. (days, months,and years.) And respond before outside sources get that involved. Also many uplinks and providers aren't all that responsive to begin with. It takes a great deal of complaints with many of them before they even contact the ISP in question. (take @home for example, with all the wingates and abuses originating from them). There are plenty of examples of providers (eg: internet cafes, libraries, schools, anonymous internet proxies, etc) that can't accurately finger the responsible party. You're assuming the uplink and provider treshhold for abuse is too low and script kiddy activity would be too great; I don't. High fees alone would keep many script kiddies away(especially since most of them get away with it -- until the 'big' bust atleast) With a little bit of carefull planning and administration, I believe it could be done. Hell, such an ISP might even get fewer complaints than most of these large unwieldy national ISPs.
There might also be certain cryptographic techniques which they could employ to protect privacy, but still monitor potential abusive activities and validate accusations.
Ok, perhaps what Guiliani technically did here was censorship. But you must remember, these art exhibits are based largely on city funds. There is NOTHING stopping them from privately creating and exhibiting such 'art'. And there is nothing in our Constitution which says we must support and pay for others speach. Public funds should be spent to please the greater public, not just some fringe liberals.
Turn this censorship argument around. If this were a Neo-Nazi or Anti-Black exhibit, would the liberals still be crying blooding murder? If Guiliani rushed to their defence, what do you think they would say? While both have a constitutional right to free speach, they don't have the right to do so on the city dollars. The central theme here is, if it is against the "established majority" (aka: WASPs and christianity), all is fine and well. But if anyone dare make such an assault on any other group, be it Islam, Blacks, you name it; holy hell will be raised. It is hypocritical, plain and simple.
Besides I think the artwork sucks, where is the artistry? Why should a city spend millions on this crap, when there are better places to spend it?
Bill Gates is no genius, but he isn't a fool either. He's certainly alot smarter than most politicians. You can be sure that he knows what he is getting into here.
Also, just because this Paxman is smart doesn't mean that he'll be particularly in tune with the software industry. He may smell bullshit when he hears it, but will he really know what to lock onto? That remains to be seen.
I suspect Bill Gates has a game plan.... but if this reporter is all he is cracked up to be, I'd love to see it. I live in the US, can anyone tape and convert it to an mpeg or something?
Ok, I don't want to say this is an end game for RedHat. But it does partially confirm my feelings about the viability of commercial OSS development. First Mandrakes sales, now Turbo Linux is moving in....
The gist of the problem is: the company which spends millions of dollars on R&D does not necessarily have a better product than its competitors. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it to spend 10 million dollars developing a GUI that your competitors will copy byte for byte? You simply can't differentiate yourself based on your product itself. Futhermore, the competitors can copy your work byte for byte, and add in a few nominal contributions at the 11th hour making their product nominally better, not to mention cheaper.
I'm sure plenty of geeks will say "but RedHat is building up a reputation". While this may be partially true, the geeks are only sliver of the real market. Furthermore, many of these geeks aren't buying Redhat. They're downloading it.
I really do want to see RedHat succeed. But I have my doubts. I don't believe that this business model is anywhere near proven. The fact is that for all the "support" arguments, RedHat's profits aren't coming from support (yet). They're coming from what I'd term 'convenience sales'. That is, they're making profits by SELLING their product based on the fact that its a bit easier to install and document. For this reason, I have serious doubts about RedHat being able to grasp MS's market share. They've enjoyed relative obscurity. While would-be clones (byte for byte) can't garner enough attention to pick away at RedHat's sales profitably.
Essentially all RedHat has is a trademark, or a series of trademarks. Many people think this is enough, and they frequently point to Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In my opinion, these are entirely different. The different colas enjoy unique formulas. While they may, in reality, taste the same, many people would argue differently. Neither of them can, nor would they, claim that they are the exact same formula. The same can not be said for GPL software. Your competitors can make an exact copy of all your work. They can also pile software on, and still allow the customers exact same software.
I'm not agame developer. But I am familiar with MS tactics. Obviously having to change APIs makes any porting effort significantly tougher. I doubt MS did this to make a quality product, or to improve the windows experience for the sake of improving it. They do it to make it that much harder for developers and users to switch. Thus I doubt the quality is all that good. It may be sufficient, it may be a good idea. Though from what little I've heard from other developers, and Carmack's.plan (I think), its not a very good option.
Even if it is a good today. Do you really think MS is going to keep improving on it? Another product such as *GL* can be better in the future, but because the developer base already has so much committed to MS APIs, the advantages of switching aren't sufficient to merit an actual switch. MS will continue to get away with "good enough" (aka: mediocre), with just enough development or hype to prevent an exodus. Meanwhile precious dollars and resources that could have been spent on other efforts never make it...
No matter what you personally feel about MS's ethics, it can't be good in the long run to have one company with all the balls in their court. If for no other reason; you kill the threat of up and coming players developing their "skills", and thus nothing to keep MS on their toes.
I don't have the numbers. However, I doubt it is significant enough. The difference between proportion of warez'ing *nix users and windows users is probably more than offset by the proportion of Linux users who're simply opposed to non-GPL, non-open source, or commercial software.
That being said however, in some regards they're very different markets. A linux user is probably more likely to be impressed by good game play, than the newest eye candy....
I, obviously, am not Carmack. However, I think we (linux users) need to ask ourself, why would a game company develop a game exclusively for linux, or develop for Linux first, when the Windoze gaming market is: a) definetly there b) definetly much larger? The only reason I can think of, is if the game has such nerd appeal that the Linux has more paying customers.... Or if the game is substandard by Windows standards (eg: doesn't have that 'look and feel' that windoze users seem to want).
I'm sure there are API and performance issues as well, but until the market is there, why risk it? Also another possible reason, I think, is that many of these game companies are becoming increasingly wed to Microsoft APIs (eg: DirectX, Direct3D...). I'm sure Microsoft does this intentionally to make it that much harder to port games to _any_ OS, regardless of how much better the other APIs may be. (though a better API would help).
Just my two cents. It'd be nice to hear what Carmack has to say about this.
I have. Its nothing impressive. I've yet to see non-derivitive code from them that actually _does_ something. Most of it is trivial crap, or doesn't work as claimed.
gH is not a "real" hacking group for christs sake. I'm not sure who LoU is (not that involved). but they're probably much the same. I know/knew plenty of gH, they're hardly what you'd call sophisticated hackers. They're maybe half a notch up from these wanna-bes.....
Sure, in most every case the FBI can merely approach the ISP. But most everyone understands this risk. My point is that there IS a way using MAC addresses to trace someone -- not that it is necessarily an all important issue. You should atleast analyze the risks. While you may not agree that it is an excessive risk (not that I do), it is real.
I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if anonymous ISPs start popping up. There is no law which says you must keep logs,...atleast not yet. While not keeping logs may cause the ISP in question to encounter the wrath of various parties, it is not neccesarily stupid from a business stand point. Clear abuse issues (eg: SYN floods, ICMP attacks, port scanning, etc) can be audited internally. As long as they could curb ongoing abusive behavior, it is not such an issue. If a company is able to charge twice as much for such a service, it could be a huge boon (huge profit margins, compared to the relatively narrow ones of most ISPs today) The reasons for anonymomity isn't necessarily to evade law enforcement. As long as there is a sufficient legitimate reason, it would be hard for the government to stop the company.
When the FBI asks to sniff/tap for a certain user (or a specific act), then it might present a problem. The FBI probably would not be allowed to tap EVERYONEs traffic. However, there was a case a couple years ago of a hacker in Brazil (I think), who hacked Harvard and a couple other places. They caught him by setting up some kind of 'intelligent' program that recognized and filtered his keystroke/traffic from everyone elses on a router, or backbone, or something to that effect. However, I'm referring more to actions in the past tense. eg: not ongoing traffic. Which would be immune to sniffing.
Regarding Naziism vs Marxism, my point still stands. They both have alot more in common with each other than Capitalism and Naziism do. Capitalism believes in free and open markets, the others are polar opposites insofar as they believe in central structure, redistribution, and "guidance". If you can't comprehend this most fundamental difference, then you are hopeless.
You tell me what exactly it is that Congress has done to advocate any particular religion. I understand Federalism just fine. In fact, if you read my comment you would have also seen that I said _most_ states also have state constitutions to that effect. I really doubt that we'll see the theory of evolution, and the like, cast out of our schools on a large scale. At the very most, it'll become an elective. Which I personally don't have that much of a problem with.
What polls are you referring to? There is a saying: There are three kinds of lies in this world: lies, damn lies, and statistics. I'm suspicious of most polls. Just because one is religious doesn't mean one must be against Darwin. Even the Catholic church is not so clear about it.
You see the world as black and white. You believe: If the people want it and there has been any error what so ever in the application and enforcement of the constitution, then it must happen (the constitution be damned). THAT is over simplification if I ever heard it (assuming even your premise is right). To accept this belief of yours, one must ignore history. What about the civil rights moment (not to mention many others). Many of these issues were unpopular with the vast majority of Americans at the time. The constitution obviously was not uniformly enforcing civil rights prior. Yet many advances in civil rights were made none the less.
While the constitution may be a mere piece of paper, it has withstood the popular vote before. If Congress were to suddenly mandate that all schools convert to Methodism, this would clearly violate the first amendment. I know it wouldn't stand. There is really no way to 'prove' that this will or won't happen. You simply need an intuitive feel. Unfortunately, people such as yourself are hopeless.
If you wish to believe this rubbish, then do so. But don't think that getting loud and offensive is a substitute for one's own intuitition and reasoning. Hopefully in a few years, you'll see that your vision never came to fruition and you'll grow up a little.
The nazis did NOT believe in free markets. They, like the Marxists, were intent on shaking up the distribution of wealth. The primary difference being that the nazi's targeted the middle class (originally), and Marx the lower classes. And yes, they did turn control of industry and capital over to the state. Both depend on military (top down) regulation to make it a reality.
Both naziism and marxism advocate central planning. Capitalism is the exact opposite. Decisions are distributed. Capitalism doesn't demand that 'right' industries are subsidized, and that 'wrong' industries are taken apart. Marxism might be more planned than Naziism, but both believed that the state knows best. American capitalism doesn't make such value judgements (those few subsidies which we have aren't representive). It is free enterprise, plain and simple. It may setup some ground rules(eg: laws, intellectual property, antitrust laws, etc), but that is not the same thing is artificially allocating resources.
The failure of socialism/communism extends far beyond mere flaws in human nature. Its flaw is that it doesn't trust human nature, and thus is forced to relegate all decisions to a central authority. It assumes that centrally allocating resources is an acceptable substitute for free markets. Even if all people worked "hard" and where "honest", socialism would still fail. It really amazes me how few people still don't get it, especially on slashdot. You can populate your entire country with people as virtuous as mother theresa and still fail miserably.
Most americans, such as myself, believe that government and industry have seperate places. And hey, I'm an American. I believe in Seperation of Church and State. If you ever read our constitution you'd know that it is rather clear about it. The church has absolutely no role in our state. If anything, its a bit overboard. To the extent of NOT allowing students to even use school facilities for private church meeting. Most states, if not all, have similar statements in their constitutions.
While I don't agree with all of ESR's views(BeOS, etc), and I don't espouse libertarian notions, I respect him. He's provided some of the most intelligent and honest commentary on the virtues of Open Source software. He does this from a rational point of view, not with emotional plees that propietary software is immoral. Futhermore, he's got balls and he doesn't mince words.
I'd far rather have someone who says what needs to be said and steps on toes in the process, than someone who says whatever his 'people' want to hear. eg: Bill Clinton, Perens, etc.
Socialism by definition mandates that property and wealth are redistributed to the people/state. Communism may impliment it a bit differently, but in either case its naive, offensive, and just plain stupid. The nazis, too, believed in state owned enterprise. In fact, if you examine the facts a little closer you'd discover that Marxism and Naziism have a great deal in common. A fascist dictatorship is not required to draw such parallels.
Regarding socialist Europe, many would argue that it is the socialist policies that have weakened it. Take France's labor laws, for example, it is virtually impossible to fire someone. As a result it makes employeers (particularly small employeers) rethink any hiring decisions...its just too much of a liability.
I never said they had to. The card manufacturer knows that it shipped 200 NICs to store A, and their corresponding MAC addresses. The FBI then approaches the store. And asks for a list of all sales of that particular NIC type at store A. This produces a list of 200 names (mostly credit cards). This list is then cross-referenced for possible candidates (eg: known crypto-buffs). It isn't that improbable. Cross-referencing is common practice.
Perhaps, there are other avenues by which the FBI could pursue you. But the risks should be known. Futhermore, I don't believe my scenario to be all that farfetched. There have been enough similar cases and parallels that the creation of such a case is almost inevitable.
Some people have said that the FBI could just ask the ISP to reveal it. But if this ISP is an "anonymous" one... For a premium, let us imagine, they randomly assign ip addresses. And they keep no logs of which users were assigned which ip numbers at which date. If the user pool was large enough, it would be difficult to eliminate many people. Or if perhaps, payment as well was arranged in cash.... It might very well be more practical for the FBI to take the NIC route.
I agree that the idea of a central database is ridiculous. However, playing devil's advocate, an organization such as the FBI could take a specific MAC addy, and trace it back to you.
The manufacturer undoubtably produces the cards in batches, and the MAC addresses are assigned sequentially most likely. Using this they could relate a given set of MAC addresses to a batch. Given the batch, they can link to a shipment (eg: to a specific store) and so on. The store can then link this to a credit card (or a range of credit card) sale...and on to the user(s).
Though this hardly conjurs up images of the NSA or any other organization doing this on a regular basis. There are certain situations where I see it being an issue. For example, lets say if you are a crypto expert. And you, using some anonymous internet service (which can't and won't reveal your address) post some ground breaking algorithm which the gov't legally doesn't want published. The forum which you post on discloses your ip address. So the gov't armed with your MAC addy traces the addy back to a certain retail store. Even if they can't exactly determine which sale was which MAC addy, they can narrow the search down to, say, 200 possible people. They can also reasonably infer that you're a known crypto-buff or local math professor, or something along those lines. And the odds are very high that they would come up with just your name. None of these techniques are too far beyond what the FBI has used to the past to trace other criminals(flecks of car paint, shoeprints, etc).
I personally don't find this news that concerning, but its something to think about.
I'll agree to disagree...
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Lets agree to disagree... I've been fan of novels ever since I was a kid. I really don't see why its necessary to bring Randy in. Why? WWII provides plenty of material. What exactly is it that Randy brought into the story? Besides, even though public knowledge of crypto has improved thousandfold in recent years, it doesn't mean that WWII crypto is merely outdated. A great deal of advances in crypto were made during the war effort, some of this is still classified.... Its not merely outdated.
Stephenson has talent, but Cryptonomicon...
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Cryptonomicon is overrated in my opinion. While it definetly has some interesting parts, the novel falls apart by pandering too much to techihood. I don't like to nitpick at novels, after all i'm looking for entertainment, not academic/literary value. However, Stephenson can't seem to decide if he wants a good plot, a story on WWII, or discuss various crypto technologies. The coverage of WWII crypto was interesting, but I think present day plotline (eg: Randy) was just extraneous.
Perhaps, the readers who are particularly impressed by this novel are nerds who otherwise don't read novels regularly. It is the attention to crypto that undoubtably draws them out of the woodwork. The techiness detracts from its coherance and storyline, and I feel even the biggest nerds missed something because of it.
I believe Stephenson could be an excellent author if he focused a bit more: introduced fewer subplots, and worried less about the techie aspects. He has certain insights and his techie leanings could make him an author to be remembered....
As a user, I love google's search engine. However, I noticed their 'jobs' page a couple weeks ago. And some of the job offers are really extravagant, especially for a startup firm. It really makes me wonder what they're doing over there. I've seen a few highly sucessfull startup firms, hi-tech firms at that, and they'd never consider hiring a cook or massuese (ph.) If they're willing to hire with such abandon, I wonder how sound their business plan really is....
On another note, I find google's belief that they can create sufficient revenue without banner ads intriguing. Does anyone know how they're doing thus far? They profitable yet...how many years/months away?
I'm working on a project, an internet site, and i'm curious if anyone has any other alternative ways to generate revenues w/o the use of banner ads. Unfortunately, I can't disclose the concept behind the project at this point, but it would be of much help. It is not necessarily going to be commercial,...so just covering costs (eg: hosting/bw) is enough for a proposition. I personally find that banners detract from websites a great deal (although/. does a decent job); I'd love to avoid them. Please respond here or email me, tnx!
A decision to euthanize is not necessarily a decision without regard to our 'human factor', as you like to call it. If the greater good is to care for one thousand people, rather than dwindling it away on one retarded invidivual, I wouldn't say this is ignoring our humanity. Decisions of this gravity are made all the time, the primary difference in this case is that it demands a positive act -- the baby must be euthanized.
Futhermore, I believe that Singer's position is more than just mere disability, there is an extra condition in there as to the persons' mental and emotional capacity. I personally believe a human is more than just flesh and bones. If the person is effectively incapable of human communication, thought, reason, etc; why insist that it is on par with the rest of humanity?
I also take issue with the argument that we technically can provide sufficient care for both. Many people are all too willing to espouse such views, but I find that when push comes to shove most people are unwilling to ante-up (eg: sacrifice their career to sponge bath such people -- even family).
Even if in modern society it is technically possible, given our current economic state, it isn't necessarily economically sustainable. If taxes are high enough, or if you start to tax the 'rich' excessively, you may find that the 'rich' loose their incentive to create new industries...and as a result the rest of the economy falls back -- people suffer even more.
Finally, you must acknowledge that we humans are never going to be absolutely willing to make such sacrifices. Given this knowledge, how can you in good conscious bring a creature into existence if it is only going to suffer. The decision to abort/euthanize, does not necessarily mean that it was done without regard to humanity.
I can see why many people find such reasoning frightning, as it enters grey areas and might possibly lead to other more distateful acts. But I don't think these arguments are sufficient to totally abandon logic and reasoning. If I were to make such a decision, I would want more facts (eg: economics, costs, physical and mental capacity, etc etc etc).
First off, the NYSE is not the only market. Markets are present in virtually every aspect of modern western life. From going to the grocery store, to CPU prices, to car prices, to house prices, to business prices, to...you name it. There is a certain dynamic to these markets, in that NO ONE sets the price and the quantity.
Even big businesses are subject to these market influences. They don't operate in a vacumm. Furthermore, not even the largest fortune 500 firms are anywhere near the size of the USSR bureaucracy. To even make such a comparison is naive at best.
Many would argue that big businesses are victims of their size. But in either case, their sucess or failure doesn't cause people to starve. When a big business performs poorly, their profits or sales are affected since no one is forced to buy from them.
In a communist bureaucracy, some group is always setting prices, quantities, etc. When they choose badly (and believe me, they do) there is no immediate recourse for the people. Everything is administated, and legislated. It is simply impossible to legislate for every eventuality. And even if there were laws on the book, it requires that there be some supreme intellect that knows best.
Try not to think of companies themselves as being infallible. Think of it in a more darwinian light. That is: Individual companies can and do fail, nor is any one company 100% efficient. Rather companies on the whole compete in an open market, and governed by market influences, they are constantly pursuing these certain efficiencies.
It is not what I know that counts, it is what is going to turn the most heads. Cracking RSA relatively trivially may be huge news to cryptobuffs and those who rely on it, but its not going to be a huge industry. That this is the only claim that i've read, makes me a little incredulous to say the least.
If you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, is your first announcement really going to be "We can topple public key cryptography"? It is far more likely going to be a statement as to its marketable potential
Ok, I don't want to say this is an end game for RedHat. But it does partially confirm my feelings about the viability of commercial OSS development.
The gist of the problem is: the company which spends millions of dollars on R&D does not necessarily have a better product than his competitors. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it to spend 10 million dollars developing a GUI that your competitors will copy byte for byte? You simply can't differentiate yourself based on your product itself. Futhermore, the competitors can copy your work byte for byte, and add in a few nominal contributions at the 11th hour making their product nominally better, not to mention cheaper.
I'm sure plenty of geeks will say "but RedHat is building up a reputation". While this may be partially true, the geeks are only sliver of the real market. Furthermore, many of these geeks aren't buying Redhat. They're downloading it.
I really do want to see RedHat succeed. But I have my doubts. I don't believe that this business model is anywhere near proven. The fact is that for all the "support" arguments, RedHat's profits aren't coming from support (yet). They're coming from what I'd term 'convenience sales'. That is, they're making profits by SELLING their product based on the fact that its a bit easier to install and document. For this reason, I have serious doubts about RedHat being able to grasp MS's market share. They've enjoyed relative obscurity. While would-be clones (byte for byte) can't garner enough attention to pick away at RedHat's sales profitably.
Essentially all RedHat has is a trademark, or a series of trademarks. Many people think this is enough, and they frequently point to Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In my opinion, these are entirely different. The different colas enjoy unique formulas. While they may, in reality, taste the same, many people would argue differently. Neither of them can, or would, claim that they are the exact same formula. The same can not be said for GPL software. Your competitors can make an exact copy of all your work. They can also pile software on, and still allow the customers exact same software.
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And what of the entreprenuer who starts up a firm that cures AIDS? treats Diabetes? etc. Would you have us believe that only one party is better served by this invention/innovation? Money may be transferred from one party to another, but obviously the purchasing party finds more VALUE in that item than they do in their cash.
Furthermore, money IS created. You can't explain a growing economy by mere transference of money (zero-sum)...unless of course you're leftish and believe that we're just selling wares to the ignorant masses in third world countries. Or stealing their money, or what have you...
Just because ones' parents are rich doesn't mean they don't have to work for a living. Children of wealthy parents are normally provided with a decent education and they tend to be a little bit more mobile. But being rich doesn't mean that you get carte blanche. Secondly, taxes are a bitch. Even if you want to transfer all your money to your kids after your death, its suprising how little you actually can. eg: Capital Gains, Estate Taxes, legal fees, etc. Unless you're a billionaire, your kids aren't going to be living in the same kind of lifestyle for the rest of their lives (assuming the parents live an extravagant lifestyle).
I, for one, have wealthy extreprenuereal parents. Yes, my education is mostly paid for. College? no problem? A small loan for grad school? maybe. A Little seed capital? maybe.
I can't claim that i'd rather be born poor. However, its not always win-win. There are certain tradeoffs that are made many times. Parents of wealthy kids are expected to do certain things, and behave certain ways that others simply aren't. eg: Sports after school every season (mandatory), 3 hours minimum of homework since 6th grade, moves, no TV, get into a top college, etc etc etc. My parents and most of my friends' parents certainly required us to get jobs during the summer and during vacations. It has nothing to do with money. They simply have principles. In order to be a productive member of society, you must know the meaning of work. When I wanted something growing up, say a new stereo, I had to earn the money myself.
There are a certain percentage of elitists who sort of cruise through life with a sense of entitlement. eg: Go to the right prep school, get into the right college, land a cushy job at some leading firm, country club... But they are for the most part a minority. And I feel that they're becoming a dying breed. The world is simply becoming more and more competitive; just going through the motions and resting on your laurels isn't enough.
While I have a great deal more respect for individuals that manage to climb their way to the top without any advantages, it is extremely difficult (statistically). Would you really propose that rich people aren't allowed to support their children, and educate them decently? That they must go to the same public schools, no matter how poor? Might it have ever occured to you that one of the incentives to get 'rich', is to be able to provide your kids with a decent chance in life (eg: education).
I do find the notion of redistributing wealth by means of law out of 'principle' a bit disturbing. That is leaning towards socialism...
....it may require a partial audit trail. However, this doesn't mean that standard TCP connections would be included. My point is that an ISP could be setup to not allow the FBI to trace past communications to a specific user. I'm not really concerned about script kiddies here.
However, to protect themselves from the uplink denying them service, they could filter out common DOS attacks. eg: ICMP, UDP, SYN-floods, etc. The ISP could detect such attacks in a rather small window (eg: 60 minutes or less), rather than large windows. (days, months,and years.) And respond before outside sources get that involved. Also many uplinks and providers aren't all that responsive to begin with. It takes a great deal of complaints with many of them before they even contact the ISP in question. (take @home for example, with all the wingates and abuses originating from them). There are plenty of examples of providers (eg: internet cafes, libraries, schools, anonymous internet proxies, etc) that can't accurately finger the responsible party. You're assuming the uplink and provider treshhold for abuse is too low and script kiddy activity would be too great; I don't. High fees alone would keep many script kiddies away(especially since most of them get away with it -- until the 'big' bust atleast) With a little bit of carefull planning and administration, I believe it could be done. Hell, such an ISP might even get fewer complaints than most of these large unwieldy national ISPs.
There might also be certain cryptographic techniques which they could employ to protect privacy, but still monitor potential abusive activities and validate accusations.
"Fun fact of the day: even frozen pizza and Hostess cupcakes are made from farm products!"
Haha. Yeah, sort of like how PentiumIIIs, Alpha, and Cray super computers are built from rocks. They're about the same number of generations apart. =)
Ok, perhaps what Guiliani technically did here was censorship. But you must remember, these art exhibits are based largely on city funds. There is NOTHING stopping them from privately creating and exhibiting such 'art'. And there is nothing in our Constitution which says we must support and pay for others speach. Public funds should be spent to please the greater public, not just some fringe liberals.
Turn this censorship argument around. If this were a Neo-Nazi or Anti-Black exhibit, would the liberals still be crying blooding murder? If Guiliani rushed to their defence, what do you think they would say? While both have a constitutional right to free speach, they don't have the right to do so on the city dollars. The central theme here is, if it is against the "established majority" (aka: WASPs and christianity), all is fine and well. But if anyone dare make such an assault on any other group, be it Islam, Blacks, you name it; holy hell will be raised. It is hypocritical, plain and simple.
Besides I think the artwork sucks, where is the artistry? Why should a city spend millions on this crap, when there are better places to spend it?
Bill Gates is no genius, but he isn't a fool either. He's certainly alot smarter than most politicians. You can be sure that he knows what he is getting into here.
Also, just because this Paxman is smart doesn't mean that he'll be particularly in tune with the software industry. He may smell bullshit when he hears it, but will he really know what to lock onto? That remains to be seen.
I suspect Bill Gates has a game plan.... but if this reporter is all he is cracked up to be, I'd love to see it. I live in the US, can anyone tape and convert it to an mpeg or something?
Ok, I don't want to say this is an end game for RedHat. But it does partially confirm my feelings about the viability of commercial OSS development. First Mandrakes sales, now Turbo Linux is moving in....
The gist of the problem is: the company which spends millions of dollars on R&D does not necessarily have a better product than its competitors. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it to spend 10 million dollars developing a GUI that your competitors will copy byte for byte? You simply can't differentiate yourself based on your product itself. Futhermore, the competitors can copy your work byte for byte, and add in a few nominal contributions at the 11th hour making their product nominally better, not to mention cheaper.
I'm sure plenty of geeks will say "but RedHat is building up a reputation". While this may be partially true, the geeks are only sliver of the real market. Furthermore, many of these geeks aren't buying Redhat. They're downloading it.
I really do want to see RedHat succeed. But I have my doubts. I don't believe that this business model is anywhere near proven. The fact is that for all the "support" arguments, RedHat's profits aren't coming from support (yet). They're coming from what I'd term 'convenience sales'. That is, they're making profits by SELLING their product based on the fact that its a bit easier to install and document. For this reason, I have serious doubts about RedHat being able to grasp MS's market share. They've enjoyed relative obscurity. While would-be clones (byte for byte) can't garner enough attention to pick away at RedHat's sales profitably.
Essentially all RedHat has is a trademark, or a series of trademarks. Many people think this is enough, and they frequently point to Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In my opinion, these are entirely different. The different colas enjoy unique formulas. While they may, in reality, taste the same, many people would argue differently. Neither of them can, nor would they, claim that they are the exact same formula. The same can not be said for GPL software. Your competitors can make an exact copy of all your work. They can also pile software on, and still allow the customers exact same software.
I'm not agame developer. But I am familiar with MS tactics. Obviously having to change APIs makes any porting effort significantly tougher. I doubt MS did this to make a quality product, or to improve the windows experience for the sake of improving it. They do it to make it that much harder for developers and users to switch. Thus I doubt the quality is all that good. It may be sufficient, it may be a good idea. Though from what little I've heard from other developers, and Carmack's
Even if it is a good today. Do you really think MS is going to keep improving on it? Another product such as *GL* can be better in the future, but because the developer base already has so much committed to MS APIs, the advantages of switching aren't sufficient to merit an actual switch. MS will continue to get away with "good enough" (aka: mediocre), with just enough development or hype to prevent an exodus. Meanwhile precious dollars and resources that could have been spent on other efforts never make it...
No matter what you personally feel about MS's ethics, it can't be good in the long run to have one company with all the balls in their court. If for no other reason; you kill the threat of up and coming players developing their "skills", and thus nothing to keep MS on their toes.
I don't have the numbers. However, I doubt it is significant enough. The difference between proportion of warez'ing *nix users and windows users is probably more than offset by the proportion of Linux users who're simply opposed to non-GPL, non-open source, or commercial software.
That being said however, in some regards they're very different markets. A linux user is probably more likely to be impressed by good game play, than the newest eye candy....
I, obviously, am not Carmack. However, I think we (linux users) need to ask ourself, why would a game company develop a game exclusively for linux, or develop for Linux first, when the Windoze gaming market is: a) definetly there b) definetly much larger? The only reason I can think of, is if the game has such nerd appeal that the Linux has more paying customers.... Or if the game is substandard by Windows standards (eg: doesn't have that 'look and feel' that windoze users seem to want).
I'm sure there are API and performance issues as well, but until the market is there, why risk it? Also another possible reason, I think, is that many of these game companies are becoming increasingly wed to Microsoft APIs (eg: DirectX, Direct3D...). I'm sure Microsoft does this intentionally to make it that much harder to port games to _any_ OS, regardless of how much better the other APIs may be. (though a better API would help).
Just my two cents. It'd be nice to hear what Carmack has to say about this.
-Fall
I have. Its nothing impressive. I've yet to see non-derivitive code from them that actually _does_ something. Most of it is trivial crap, or doesn't work as claimed.
gH is not a "real" hacking group for christs sake. I'm not sure who LoU is (not that involved). but they're probably much the same. I know/knew plenty of gH, they're hardly what you'd call sophisticated hackers. They're maybe half a notch up from these wanna-bes.....
Sure, in most every case the FBI can merely approach the ISP. But most everyone understands this risk. My point is that there IS a way using MAC addresses to trace someone -- not that it is necessarily an all important issue. You should atleast analyze the risks. While you may not agree that it is an excessive risk (not that I do), it is real.
I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if anonymous ISPs start popping up. There is no law which says you must keep logs,
When the FBI asks to sniff/tap for a certain user (or a specific act), then it might present a problem. The FBI probably would not be allowed to tap EVERYONEs traffic. However, there was a case a couple years ago of a hacker in Brazil (I think), who hacked Harvard and a couple other places. They caught him by setting up some kind of 'intelligent' program that recognized and filtered his keystroke/traffic from everyone elses on a router, or backbone, or something to that effect. However, I'm referring more to actions in the past tense. eg: not ongoing traffic. Which would be immune to sniffing.
Regarding Naziism vs Marxism, my point still stands. They both have alot more in common with each other than Capitalism and Naziism do. Capitalism believes in free and open markets, the others are polar opposites insofar as they believe in central structure, redistribution, and "guidance". If you can't comprehend this most fundamental difference, then you are hopeless.
You tell me what exactly it is that Congress has done to advocate any particular religion. I understand Federalism just fine. In fact, if you read my comment you would have also seen that I said _most_ states also have state constitutions to that effect. I really doubt that we'll see the theory of evolution, and the like, cast out of our schools on a large scale. At the very most, it'll become an elective. Which I personally don't have that much of a problem with.
What polls are you referring to? There is a saying: There are three kinds of lies in this world: lies, damn lies, and statistics. I'm suspicious of most polls. Just because one is religious doesn't mean one must be against Darwin. Even the Catholic church is not so clear about it.
You see the world as black and white. You believe: If the people want it and there has been any error what so ever in the application and enforcement of the constitution, then it must happen (the constitution be damned). THAT is over simplification if I ever heard it (assuming even your premise is right). To accept this belief of yours, one must ignore history. What about the civil rights moment (not to mention many others). Many of these issues were unpopular with the vast majority of Americans at the time. The constitution obviously was not uniformly enforcing civil rights prior. Yet many advances in civil rights were made none the less.
While the constitution may be a mere piece of paper, it has withstood the popular vote before. If Congress were to suddenly mandate that all schools convert to Methodism, this would clearly violate the first amendment. I know it wouldn't stand. There is really no way to 'prove' that this will or won't happen. You simply need an intuitive feel. Unfortunately, people such as yourself are hopeless.
If you wish to believe this rubbish, then do so. But don't think that getting loud and offensive is a substitute for one's own intuitition and reasoning. Hopefully in a few years, you'll see that your vision never came to fruition and you'll grow up a little.
The nazis did NOT believe in free markets. They, like the Marxists, were intent on shaking up the distribution of wealth. The primary difference being that the nazi's targeted the middle class (originally), and Marx the lower classes. And yes, they did turn control of industry and capital over to the state. Both depend on military (top down) regulation to make it a reality.
Both naziism and marxism advocate central planning. Capitalism is the exact opposite. Decisions are distributed. Capitalism doesn't demand that 'right' industries are subsidized, and that 'wrong' industries are taken apart. Marxism might be more planned than Naziism, but both believed that the state knows best. American capitalism doesn't make such value judgements (those few subsidies which we have aren't representive). It is free enterprise, plain and simple. It may setup some ground rules(eg: laws, intellectual property, antitrust laws, etc), but that is not the same thing is artificially allocating resources.
The failure of socialism/communism extends far beyond mere flaws in human nature. Its flaw is that it doesn't trust human nature, and thus is forced to relegate all decisions to a central authority. It assumes that centrally allocating resources is an acceptable substitute for free markets. Even if all people worked "hard" and where "honest", socialism would still fail. It really amazes me how few people still don't get it, especially on slashdot. You can populate your entire country with people as virtuous as mother theresa and still fail miserably.
Most americans, such as myself, believe that government and industry have seperate places. And hey, I'm an American. I believe in Seperation of Church and State. If you ever read our constitution you'd know that it is rather clear about it. The church has absolutely no role in our state. If anything, its a bit overboard. To the extent of NOT allowing students to even use school facilities for private church meeting. Most states, if not all, have similar statements in their constitutions.
While I don't agree with all of ESR's views(BeOS, etc), and I don't espouse libertarian notions, I respect him. He's provided some of the most intelligent and honest commentary on the virtues of Open Source software. He does this from a rational point of view, not with emotional plees that propietary software is immoral. Futhermore, he's got balls and he doesn't mince words.
I'd far rather have someone who says what needs to be said and steps on toes in the process, than someone who says whatever his 'people' want to hear. eg: Bill Clinton, Perens, etc.
Socialism by definition mandates that property and wealth are redistributed to the people/state. Communism may impliment it a bit differently, but in either case its naive, offensive, and just plain stupid. The nazis, too, believed in state owned enterprise. In fact, if you examine the facts a little closer you'd discover that Marxism and Naziism have a great deal in common. A fascist dictatorship is not required to draw such parallels.
Regarding socialist Europe, many would argue that it is the socialist policies that have weakened it. Take France's labor laws, for example, it is virtually impossible to fire someone. As a result it makes employeers (particularly small employeers) rethink any hiring decisions...its just too much of a liability.
I never said they had to. The card manufacturer knows that it shipped 200 NICs to store A, and their corresponding MAC addresses. The FBI then approaches the store. And asks for a list of all sales of that particular NIC type at store A. This produces a list of 200 names (mostly credit cards). This list is then cross-referenced for possible candidates (eg: known crypto-buffs). It isn't that improbable. Cross-referencing is common practice.
Perhaps, there are other avenues by which the FBI could pursue you. But the risks should be known. Futhermore, I don't believe my scenario to be all that farfetched. There have been enough similar cases and parallels that the creation of such a case is almost inevitable.
Some people have said that the FBI could just ask the ISP to reveal it. But if this ISP is an "anonymous" one... For a premium, let us imagine, they randomly assign ip addresses. And they keep no logs of which users were assigned which ip numbers at which date. If the user pool was large enough, it would be difficult to eliminate many people. Or if perhaps, payment as well was arranged in cash.... It might very well be more practical for the FBI to take the NIC route.
I agree that the idea of a central database is ridiculous. However, playing devil's advocate, an organization such as the FBI could take a specific MAC addy, and trace it back to you.
The manufacturer undoubtably produces the cards in batches, and the MAC addresses are assigned sequentially most likely. Using this they could relate a given set of MAC addresses to a batch. Given the batch, they can link to a shipment (eg: to a specific store) and so on. The store can then link this to a credit card (or a range of credit card) sale...and on to the user(s).
Though this hardly conjurs up images of the NSA or any other organization doing this on a regular basis. There are certain situations where I see it being an issue. For example, lets say if you are a crypto expert. And you, using some anonymous internet service (which can't and won't reveal your address) post some ground breaking algorithm which the gov't legally doesn't want published. The forum which you post on discloses your ip address. So the gov't armed with your MAC addy traces the addy back to a certain retail store. Even if they can't exactly determine which sale was which MAC addy, they can narrow the search down to, say, 200 possible people. They can also reasonably infer that you're a known crypto-buff or local math professor, or something along those lines. And the odds are very high that they would come up with just your name. None of these techniques are too far beyond what the FBI has used to the past to trace other criminals(flecks of car paint, shoeprints, etc).
I personally don't find this news that concerning, but its something to think about.
Lets agree to disagree... I've been fan of novels ever since I was a kid. I really don't see why its necessary to bring Randy in. Why? WWII provides plenty of material. What exactly is it that Randy brought into the story? Besides, even though public knowledge of crypto has improved thousandfold in recent years, it doesn't mean that WWII crypto is merely outdated. A great deal of advances in crypto were made during the war effort, some of this is still classified.... Its not merely outdated.
Cryptonomicon is overrated in my opinion. While it definetly has some interesting parts, the novel falls apart by pandering too much to techihood. I don't like to nitpick at novels, after all i'm looking for entertainment, not academic/literary value. However, Stephenson can't seem to decide if he wants a good plot, a story on WWII, or discuss various crypto technologies. The coverage of WWII crypto was interesting, but I think present day plotline (eg: Randy) was just extraneous.
Perhaps, the readers who are particularly impressed by this novel are nerds who otherwise don't read novels regularly. It is the attention to crypto that undoubtably draws them out of the woodwork. The techiness detracts from its coherance and storyline, and I feel even the biggest nerds missed something because of it.
I believe Stephenson could be an excellent author if he focused a bit more: introduced fewer subplots, and worried less about the techie aspects. He has certain insights and his techie leanings could make him an author to be remembered....
As a user, I love google's search engine. However, I noticed their 'jobs' page a couple weeks ago. And some of the job offers are really extravagant, especially for a startup firm. It really makes me wonder what they're doing over there. I've seen a few highly sucessfull startup firms, hi-tech firms at that, and they'd never consider hiring a cook or massuese (ph.) If they're willing to hire with such abandon, I wonder how sound their business plan really is....
On another note, I find google's belief that they can create sufficient revenue without banner ads intriguing. Does anyone know how they're doing thus far? They profitable yet...how many years/months away?
I'm working on a project, an internet site, and i'm curious if anyone has any other alternative ways to generate revenues w/o the use of banner ads. Unfortunately, I can't disclose the concept behind the project at this point, but it would be of much help. It is not necessarily going to be commercial,
A decision to euthanize is not necessarily a decision without regard to our 'human factor', as you like to call it. If the greater good is to care for one thousand people, rather than dwindling it away on one retarded invidivual, I wouldn't say this is ignoring our humanity. Decisions of this gravity are made all the time, the primary difference in this case is that it demands a positive act -- the baby must be euthanized.
Futhermore, I believe that Singer's position is more than just mere disability, there is an extra condition in there as to the persons' mental and emotional capacity. I personally believe a human is more than just flesh and bones. If the person is effectively incapable of human communication, thought, reason, etc; why insist that it is on par with the rest of humanity?
I also take issue with the argument that we technically can provide sufficient care for both. Many people are all too willing to espouse such views, but I find that when push comes to shove most people are unwilling to ante-up (eg: sacrifice their career to sponge bath such people -- even family).
Even if in modern society it is technically possible, given our current economic state, it isn't necessarily economically sustainable. If taxes are high enough, or if you start to tax the 'rich' excessively, you may find that the 'rich' loose their incentive to create new industries...and as a result the rest of the economy falls back -- people suffer even more.
Finally, you must acknowledge that we humans are never going to be absolutely willing to make such sacrifices. Given this knowledge, how can you in good conscious bring a creature into existence if it is only going to suffer. The decision to abort/euthanize, does not necessarily mean that it was done without regard to humanity.
I can see why many people find such reasoning frightning, as it enters grey areas and might possibly lead to other more distateful acts. But I don't think these arguments are sufficient to totally abandon logic and reasoning. If I were to make such a decision, I would want more facts (eg: economics, costs, physical and mental capacity, etc etc etc).
First off, the NYSE is not the only market. Markets are present in virtually every aspect of modern western life. From going to the grocery store, to CPU prices, to car prices, to house prices, to business prices, to
Even big businesses are subject to these market influences. They don't operate in a vacumm. Furthermore, not even the largest fortune 500 firms are anywhere near the size of the USSR bureaucracy. To even make such a comparison is naive at best.
Many would argue that big businesses are victims of their size. But in either case, their sucess or failure doesn't cause people to starve. When a big business performs poorly, their profits or sales are affected since no one is forced to buy from them.
In a communist bureaucracy, some group is always setting prices, quantities, etc. When they choose badly (and believe me, they do) there is no immediate recourse for the people. Everything is administated, and legislated. It is simply impossible to legislate for every eventuality. And even if there were laws on the book, it requires that there be some supreme intellect that knows best.
Try not to think of companies themselves as being infallible. Think of it in a more darwinian light. That is: Individual companies can and do fail, nor is any one company 100% efficient. Rather companies on the whole compete in an open market, and governed by market influences, they are constantly pursuing these certain efficiencies.
It is not what I know that counts, it is what is going to turn the most heads. Cracking RSA relatively trivially may be huge news to cryptobuffs and those who rely on it, but its not going to be a huge industry. That this is the only claim that i've read, makes me a little incredulous to say the least.
If you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, is your first announcement really going to be "We can topple public key cryptography"? It is far more likely going to be a statement as to its marketable potential
Ok, I don't want to say this is an end game for RedHat. But it does partially confirm my feelings about the viability of commercial OSS development.
The gist of the problem is: the company which spends millions of dollars on R&D does not necessarily have a better product than his competitors. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it to spend 10 million dollars developing a GUI that your competitors will copy byte for byte? You simply can't differentiate yourself based on your product itself. Futhermore, the competitors can copy your work byte for byte, and add in a few nominal contributions at the 11th hour making their product nominally better, not to mention cheaper.
I'm sure plenty of geeks will say "but RedHat is building up a reputation". While this may be partially true, the geeks are only sliver of the real market. Furthermore, many of these geeks aren't buying Redhat. They're downloading it.
I really do want to see RedHat succeed. But I have my doubts. I don't believe that this business model is anywhere near proven. The fact is that for all the "support" arguments, RedHat's profits aren't coming from support (yet). They're coming from what I'd term 'convenience sales'. That is, they're making profits by SELLING their product based on the fact that its a bit easier to install and document. For this reason, I have serious doubts about RedHat being able to grasp MS's market share. They've enjoyed relative obscurity. While would-be clones (byte for byte) can't garner enough attention to pick away at RedHat's sales profitably.
Essentially all RedHat has is a trademark, or a series of trademarks. Many people think this is enough, and they frequently point to Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In my opinion, these are entirely different. The different colas enjoy unique formulas. While they may, in reality, taste the same, many people would argue differently. Neither of them can, or would, claim that they are the exact same formula. The same can not be said for GPL software. Your competitors can make an exact copy of all your work. They can also pile software on, and still allow the customers exact same software.