SMTP works like real mail. Anyone can walk up to your mailbox and leave an envelope addressed to you from "Bill Gates". Unless you know how to look for signs that it was properly handled by the post service, you have no idea if it's real or not. We've known this since around 2400BC (because wikipedia says so).
Actually, in the US, this is illegal, and it does get enforced. No one but the US Government is allowed to put something inside your mailbox, and you will probably find out if you try distributing leaflets for a commercial enterprise or political campaign. It may be illegal to forge an email, but that's different from delivering it.
Wang was really one of the great one-product companies, and it wasn't the product most people associate them with, word processors. An Wang invented the core memory, independently from IBM, who also invented it, but after Wang. Wang had taken the precaution of getting his notes notarized so he could prove he was first, and won a lawsuit and received huge royalties not only from IBM but everyone else, until integrated circuit RAM took over.
Wang invested that money into other projects including calculators (desktop, programmable machines, some with integrated printers and tape drives - really small computers) and word processors, and did achieve some success with those lines in the 70's, but never established the kind of critical mass that could keep up with all the fast changes in those markets. They also never really got their minds around the real problem, which was to come up with the best software for their niche markets. Wang was always a hardware company at heart, and getting the ideal look and feel for a word processor was simply out of their league.
Wang came up with some good OEM hardware, but really never established themselves as a company who understood the end user. In that sense I don't think they fell so much as they got passed by by the companies that understood software and their customers better.
All logic can do is determine whether a collection of axioms and rules of inference is consistent, and if it is, what the consequences are. It can't tell you what axioms and rules of inference to adopt in order to develop a "correct" system of ethics. A classic example would be excluded middle - p|~p (p or not p). Although this is standard in mathematics, it is not absolutely necessary, and lots of mathematics can be done without it. You could argue for an eternity whether it should be part of you logical system for ethics or not, but logic alone will not tell you.
Logic does not answer questions of morality.
Of course it does. It is just that you (and a lot of other people) really, really do not like the answers.
Remember, virtually all the electricity you use is being dissipated as heat, and so heating your house. If you live in a cold place, you aren't wasting that much energy. If you live in a hot place, you are using quite a bit more, since your air conditioner has to work that much harder to expell all that extra heat.
Piloting drones for the military, or one of those rovers on the moon or another planet, or submersibles used for underwater repairs or construction or treasure hunting, or robots that work with bombs or hazardous materials, and things like that. It's not professional gaming, but gaming will prepare you for those jobs at least as well as anything else will
Because the article doesn't have any technical detail either. I would assume that the new features allow them to connect through some sort of peering mechanism, but the article doesn't go into detail.
Well, I thought there was some useful detail in the article, particularly this:
Overall, the modifications to Conficker B++ appear relatively minor as compared to the significant upgrade in functionality, performance, and reliability, that occurred from Conficker A to B. These smaller and more surgical changes to B appear to address some of the realities that are currently impacting Conficker's binary update strategy. In particular, in Conficker A and B, there appeared only one method to submit Win32 binaries to the digitial signature validation path, and ultimately to the CreateProcess API call. This path required the use of the Internet rendezvous point to download the binary through an HTTP transaction. Under Conficker B++, two new paths to binary validation and execution have been introduced to Conficker drones, both of which bypass the use of Internet Rendezvous points: an extension to the netapi32.dll patch and the new named pipe backdoor. These changes suggest a desire by the Conficker's authors to move away from a reliance on Internet rendezvous points to support binary update, and toward a more direct flash approach.
However, Conficker A and B did support through the previous netapi32.dll patch an ability to accept new DLLs, as long as the shell code submitted through the RPC buffer overflow matched the original Conficker infection shell code. This approach was limiting both in the requirement that direct flashing required an easily identifiable shellcode string and a single DLL method loading procedure, both of which are now subject to detection by security software. Conficker B++ dramatically increases the flexibilty of the direct flash mechanisms, offering an ability to load digitally signed Win32 executables directly to a Conficker host.
There has been a lot of good advice posted already, but I'll add what I can from my own experience. I was a computer science professor at a larger (~15,000) university for 20 years, and we used open source for virtually everything, but it was like pulling teeth to get the university to switch, mostly because of attitudes of people in the Data Center. The first thing, back in the 80's, was to get them to connect to the Internet. They thought their IBM Bitnet connectivity was all anyone would ever need. It was a very painful process, and people actually got fired
The fact that you asked about how to find out what the licenses cost suggest that you feel you can't just ask the people in your Data Center. If that is true, be prepared for a long guerilla war, but you will be able to make progress. As far as finding out what those things cost, you can't just get a standard price. Every contract is negotiated individually, with all sorts of mini-grants and bundling going on to help close the deal. If you can't get the information from the Data Center, try the Purchasing office. They may be more helpful.
In my experience, one department going its own way isn't real effective. I think that the Data Center spread the word that we were "different" and what worked for us "wouldn't work" for anyone else. Some people were puzzled as to why we never seemed to be bothered by viruses and worms, but they kept getting new stuff and it kept them happy.
One place where we managed to get a little purchase was when money got tight, and we pointed out that dropping some licenses might be preferable to laying people off. The good thing about that is that then they had to get some people with some open-source expertise, and that's how you really make progress, when there are some open-source advoctes inside the belly of the beast.
The most important thing is not to be impatient, and not to give up. When you get an opportunity, show the deans and vice presidents your $300 netbook, or whatever else, or show how effectively you can use open office and create documents that everyone else can use. They will start asking questions, and eventually the Data Center will have to come up with some real reasons why they go with proprietary products.
First off, does this kind of approach work against any rationally designed secure software? All that would seem to be needed to defeat this is for the the login procedure to have a few seconds of delay before it responds yes or no, and no speedup in the guessing will help. This is why we have shadow password files, right? Or have I just been using *nix too long?
Also, I've seen people using GPUs in all sorts of non-graphics computation environments for some time now. When push comes to shove, is this just about money, and that CPUs have extra features that makes it easier to run an operating system, but aren't needed for pure computation? I'm not a hardware guy, so this is probably a stupid question, but I just don't get it.
I don't agree. I think there is an obligation to do something, but not necessarily for that project. If you are putting in 30 hours a week, or more, to one widely used open source project, there is no need for you to support other ones, no matter how much you use them
Some people would go further and say if you are donating your time to any worthy cause, it absolves you of the responsibility to provide any support to F/OSS. That water is a little murky for my taste, especially when deciding what causes are "worthy", e.g., a political campaign, or converting people to your chosen religion. But I view F/OSS as one community, and while we all have to be involved, we don't have to be involved in every project that we use.
Exactly. If you want support from an open source project, you need to help that project out. Whether that's in the form of development work, testing, documentation writing, helping uses in the forums or lists out, or good old fashioned cash depends on what the project needs. Most projects are more than happy to list what they need, and if they don't, e-mail the project's lead(s) or e-mail their support list -- they'll be very happy to hear from you.
You get out of it what you put into it. Like anything else in life.
Harry Shearer collects "Tales of Airport Security" for Le Show, and some of them are pretty funny. Search on "airport" and you'll get them, although I recommend the whole show.
That strategy worked great for Apple back in the late 1970s / early 1980s. Get Apples in front of schoolchildren and by the time the IBM PC came along it was too late. Kids were already in love with the Apples, and many "stuck with what they knew." It was the most effective long term marketing move Apple ever could have made, and I doubt they even realized it at the time.
Times have changed, though, and the ability to monopolize the hearts and minds of kids with the only computer they're exposed to is long gone. Many of the kids will already have PCs at home, many will have (or at least have played) X-Boxes, PS3s, Wiis and a host of other devices, including smart phones. I don't think this can have the same social effect that Apple had on us 30 years ago, because the environment is now so different. The novelty won't be there.
I agree, but there is still something very positive for Linux going on here, and that is that now Microsoft has to run around trying to put out fires like this one, and has less time to spend doing... other things. I know that people here think Microsoft has more money than God, but eventually the moles start popping up faster than you can whack them down, and you have to start losing some.
Australian students may not choose Linux when they leave school, but they will be more likely to have a choice when the time comes.
The problem is not that people aren't informed about science, but that they aren't informed about the scientific method.
Scientific Creationists come up with a "theory" and present it as some sort of equal competitor with Evolution. The notion that a theory has to allow one to make predictions, and to test the theory with experiments, and thus to be experimentally falsifiable, isn't well understood, and it is critical. Scientific Creationists would never admit of an experiment which, if performed, could prove their theory was wrong as stated, and needed modification or simply had to be discarded. This is what makes Creationism dogma and not scientific.
This extends to popular opinions about controversial scientific questions, like Global Warming. Everyone from George Will to Al Franken has an opinion about the subject, and all but a handful of them desperately avoided taking a college course that involved labs and any real interaction with the scientific method when they had the chance. But they figure they have as much right as anyone else to weigh in on the subject.
Of course, they do have such a right, but it doesn't help the general understanding when they ignore the scientific method, which they do not understand, but claim that their innate intelligence allows them to understand something which scientists have to sweat over for years.
The net result, I fear, is a "science without tears" society, where students are given to believe that it is not necessary to actually study a subject in order to assert a competence in it. Employers may want to see certain courses on the transcript, but public policy won't be driven by fact and empirical observation - it will be driven (moreso than it already is) by who has the biggest microphone.
...are a big part of it. If you develop some software, and get it out there where people can try it, and comment on it, and you can react to those comments, it says a great deal about the skill set you possess. Generally speaking, open source is going to be the quickest way to accomplish this.
Our CS students seem to understand this innately - many of them develop open source projects - small, relatively specialized ones that are appropriate to to some of the specialties that exist in our department. To some extent, they have trained the local employers, who now want to see what kind of project the student has completed and what kind of reaction it gets from its community.
The problem, however, is that our department has been slanted in this direction for a long time, using Linux and other FOSS for just about everything, so we attract students and prospective employers who appreciate that. There may be a large cadre of local employers who feel ill-served by our approach, but if they exist they are almost invisible to us.
Why accept the reservation and then cancel it? Why not just not let the reservation get created in the first place? Is their software too dumb to accomplish that, but good enough to tag the reservation so it can be cancelled later?
If people saw the flight they wanted on a third party website, but couldn't make the reservation, they might go over to the Ryanair site to buy the ticket. Then the third party website probably drops Ryanair, but they can't be bothered by that, can they?
to ask slashdotters for advice in improving the draft of an explanation of cryptography and certificates that I have begun. You can find it at my website
I submit that this is not off-topic, since one point several people have made is that most people don't understand certificates well enough to be able to deal with the warning that ff3 gives, so if we could get some explanations out there, it might help the situation.
Or they could have radio controlled shutoff switches on more air conditioners. I have one on mine, and it's great. I pay less for my power, and it only gets shut off at a time like that - there is a contractual arrangement about how often it can be shut off, and it isn't often.
There are a lot of ways that the program could be expanded, not least making it a bigger difference in the amount one pays for power - more people would sign up, the ones who didn't would pick up the cost.
The software engineers try to get a handle on how many bugs are left after a certain number have been found, but how do we get a handle on how many events like these might be happening after one has come to light?
It has long been pretty clear that these voting machine vendors, Diebold chief among them, have had something to hide because of how cagy they have been about allowing people to examine their machines. It's very frustrating that their arguments seem to always win out - it makes you wonder how many Secretaries of State (for non-US readers, that is a state-level office that is frequently in charge of elections. Not to be confused with the Federal level Foreign Minister) want to know what is going on, or really d know what is going on, and just want deniability.
The University of Wisconsin CS Dept. used cheeses. Never seemed to have a problem with running out, although they named two machines kraft-slices and velveeta, and the lawyers moved in and made them change.
Incidentally, included among the cheeses were puff, whiz, and head (the latter is also a popular Wisconsin food product, so it's all good).
While most people probably don't consider them malware, a lot of people find internet ads intrusive and obnoxious and we install popup blockers to get away from some of them. But the advertisers wouldn't pay for them if someone wasn't reading them and clicking on them.
More to the point, there is a huge difference in what people care about regarding their computers. Many of my friends think I "put up" with a lot because I use Linux and install things relatively methodically, always keeping control of my system. I think they "put up" with a lot, because they have no idea what is running on their computers and what the machines might be doing with their information.
It concerns me that the anti-privacy people have time on their side, because after a few more years, they will just point out how so many people haven't been enjoying much privacy anyway, so what's the big deal?
I disagree with your point that it was Microsoft that brought "unification to the desktop", a point that is often repeated.
It was IBM, not least through there open hardware policy, that wiped out any significant competition and brought a single platform to the desktop. Microsoft, very shrewdly, hung on for the ride and then jumped off at just the right time. It was a brilliant business plan, maybe the most perfectly executed business plan ever, but they were not the ones that created the common platform. Nor did MSOffice, et al, accomplish anything in that department other than bring most of the desktop under the auspices of the same company. Heck, they completely blew it in the database department, after acquiring the most promising company out there, Fox. IE did nothing for "unification", quite the contrary, and the list goes on with malware protection, email clients, and all the other standard stuff on the desktop. People were sharing documents and spreadsheets before Word Or Excel came on the scene.
What Microsoft accomplished was to replace other products with their own, not so much with better engineering as better marketing, and get their name out there as the most ubiquitous --> preeminent name in desktop computing.
Great, but isn't justice delayed justice denied? If the RIAA lawyers are permitted to make a career out of this before they are sanctioned, and get disbarred in an early, comfortable retirement, what is accomplished? And more to the point, what is "officer of the court" worth, if this is the case?
First of all, while you are right that there is no shame in failing to prove the RH, there is some shame involved in announcing in such a high-profile way that you have done it, and effectively requiring everyone to stop what they are doing to read your proof.
Having said that, Li is no crank. I had not heard of him, but that's no surprise since I'm not a number theorist. But he has published several refereed papers in this area, has a position at BYU, and really ought to have known better than to explode on the scene like this.
I've gotten communications from genuine crackpots, wanting my comments on their work. Early in my career, I wrote back, gently pointing out the mistake. To my horror, friends then received slightly modified but still absurd drafts, listing me as a collaborator! Li is a real mathematician, probably with poor social skills, and a bad proof.
Slashdot Mirror
SMTP works like real mail. Anyone can walk up to your mailbox and leave an envelope addressed to you from "Bill Gates". Unless you know how to look for signs that it was properly handled by the post service, you have no idea if it's real or not. We've known this since around 2400BC (because wikipedia says so).
Actually, in the US, this is illegal, and it does get enforced. No one but the US Government is allowed to put something inside your mailbox, and you will probably find out if you try distributing leaflets for a commercial enterprise or political campaign. It may be illegal to forge an email, but that's different from delivering it.
Wang was really one of the great one-product companies, and it wasn't the product most people associate them with, word processors. An Wang invented the core memory, independently from IBM, who also invented it, but after Wang. Wang had taken the precaution of getting his notes notarized so he could prove he was first, and won a lawsuit and received huge royalties not only from IBM but everyone else, until integrated circuit RAM took over.
Wang invested that money into other projects including calculators (desktop, programmable machines, some with integrated printers and tape drives - really small computers) and word processors, and did achieve some success with those lines in the 70's, but never established the kind of critical mass that could keep up with all the fast changes in those markets. They also never really got their minds around the real problem, which was to come up with the best software for their niche markets. Wang was always a hardware company at heart, and getting the ideal look and feel for a word processor was simply out of their league.
Wang came up with some good OEM hardware, but really never established themselves as a company who understood the end user. In that sense I don't think they fell so much as they got passed by by the companies that understood software and their customers better.
Of course it does. It is just that you (and a lot of other people) really, really do not like the answers.
See above.
Remember, virtually all the electricity you use is being dissipated as heat, and so heating your house. If you live in a cold place, you aren't wasting that much energy. If you live in a hot place, you are using quite a bit more, since your air conditioner has to work that much harder to expell all that extra heat.
Piloting drones for the military, or one of those rovers on the moon or another planet, or submersibles used for underwater repairs or construction or treasure hunting, or robots that work with bombs or hazardous materials, and things like that. It's not professional gaming, but gaming will prepare you for those jobs at least as well as anything else will
Because the article doesn't have any technical detail either. I would assume that the new features allow them to connect through some sort of peering mechanism, but the article doesn't go into detail.
Well, I thought there was some useful detail in the article, particularly this:
Overall, the modifications to Conficker B++ appear relatively minor as compared to the significant upgrade in functionality, performance, and reliability, that occurred from Conficker A to B. These smaller and more surgical changes to B appear to address some of the realities that are currently impacting Conficker's binary update strategy. In particular, in Conficker A and B, there appeared only one method to submit Win32 binaries to the digitial signature validation path, and ultimately to the CreateProcess API call. This path required the use of the Internet rendezvous point to download the binary through an HTTP transaction. Under Conficker B++, two new paths to binary validation and execution have been introduced to Conficker drones, both of which bypass the use of Internet Rendezvous points: an extension to the netapi32.dll patch and the new named pipe backdoor. These changes suggest a desire by the Conficker's authors to move away from a reliance on Internet rendezvous points to support binary update, and toward a more direct flash approach.
However, Conficker A and B did support through the previous netapi32.dll patch an ability to accept new DLLs, as long as the shell code submitted through the RPC buffer overflow matched the original Conficker infection shell code. This approach was limiting both in the requirement that direct flashing required an easily identifiable shellcode string and a single DLL method loading procedure, both of which are now subject to detection by security software. Conficker B++ dramatically increases the flexibilty of the direct flash mechanisms, offering an ability to load digitally signed Win32 executables directly to a Conficker host.
There has been a lot of good advice posted already, but I'll add what I can from my own experience. I was a computer science professor at a larger (~15,000) university for 20 years, and we used open source for virtually everything, but it was like pulling teeth to get the university to switch, mostly because of attitudes of people in the Data Center. The first thing, back in the 80's, was to get them to connect to the Internet. They thought their IBM Bitnet connectivity was all anyone would ever need. It was a very painful process, and people actually got fired
The fact that you asked about how to find out what the licenses cost suggest that you feel you can't just ask the people in your Data Center. If that is true, be prepared for a long guerilla war, but you will be able to make progress. As far as finding out what those things cost, you can't just get a standard price. Every contract is negotiated individually, with all sorts of mini-grants and bundling going on to help close the deal. If you can't get the information from the Data Center, try the Purchasing office. They may be more helpful.
In my experience, one department going its own way isn't real effective. I think that the Data Center spread the word that we were "different" and what worked for us "wouldn't work" for anyone else. Some people were puzzled as to why we never seemed to be bothered by viruses and worms, but they kept getting new stuff and it kept them happy.
One place where we managed to get a little purchase was when money got tight, and we pointed out that dropping some licenses might be preferable to laying people off. The good thing about that is that then they had to get some people with some open-source expertise, and that's how you really make progress, when there are some open-source advoctes inside the belly of the beast.
The most important thing is not to be impatient, and not to give up. When you get an opportunity, show the deans and vice presidents your $300 netbook, or whatever else, or show how effectively you can use open office and create documents that everyone else can use. They will start asking questions, and eventually the Data Center will have to come up with some real reasons why they go with proprietary products.
Good luck
First off, does this kind of approach work against any rationally designed secure software? All that would seem to be needed to defeat this is for the the login procedure to have a few seconds of delay before it responds yes or no, and no speedup in the guessing will help. This is why we have shadow password files, right? Or have I just been using *nix too long?
Also, I've seen people using GPUs in all sorts of non-graphics computation environments for some time now. When push comes to shove, is this just about money, and that CPUs have extra features that makes it easier to run an operating system, but aren't needed for pure computation? I'm not a hardware guy, so this is probably a stupid question, but I just don't get it.
I don't agree. I think there is an obligation to do something, but not necessarily for that project. If you are putting in 30 hours a week, or more, to one widely used open source project, there is no need for you to support other ones, no matter how much you use them
Some people would go further and say if you are donating your time to any worthy cause, it absolves you of the responsibility to provide any support to F/OSS. That water is a little murky for my taste, especially when deciding what causes are "worthy", e.g., a political campaign, or converting people to your chosen religion. But I view F/OSS as one community, and while we all have to be involved, we don't have to be involved in every project that we use.
Exactly. If you want support from an open source project, you need to help that project out. Whether that's in the form of development work, testing, documentation writing, helping uses in the forums or lists out, or good old fashioned cash depends on what the project needs. Most projects are more than happy to list what they need, and if they don't, e-mail the project's lead(s) or e-mail their support list -- they'll be very happy to hear from you.
You get out of it what you put into it. Like anything else in life.
Harry Shearer collects "Tales of Airport Security" for Le Show, and some of them are pretty funny. Search on "airport" and you'll get them, although I recommend the whole show.
That strategy worked great for Apple back in the late 1970s / early 1980s. Get Apples in front of schoolchildren and by the time the IBM PC came along it was too late. Kids were already in love with the Apples, and many "stuck with what they knew." It was the most effective long term marketing move Apple ever could have made, and I doubt they even realized it at the time.
Times have changed, though, and the ability to monopolize the hearts and minds of kids with the only computer they're exposed to is long gone. Many of the kids will already have PCs at home, many will have (or at least have played) X-Boxes, PS3s, Wiis and a host of other devices, including smart phones. I don't think this can have the same social effect that Apple had on us 30 years ago, because the environment is now so different. The novelty won't be there.
I agree, but there is still something very positive for Linux going on here, and that is that now Microsoft has to run around trying to put out fires like this one, and has less time to spend doing... other things. I know that people here think Microsoft has more money than God, but eventually the moles start popping up faster than you can whack them down, and you have to start losing some.
Australian students may not choose Linux when they leave school, but they will be more likely to have a choice when the time comes.
maybe Microsoft will threaten to leave. Now that would be entertaining.
Please mod the parent as funny. Look up Congreve Rockets if you have to.
The problem is not that people aren't informed about science, but that they aren't informed about the scientific method.
Scientific Creationists come up with a "theory" and present it as some sort of equal competitor with Evolution. The notion that a theory has to allow one to make predictions, and to test the theory with experiments, and thus to be experimentally falsifiable, isn't well understood, and it is critical. Scientific Creationists would never admit of an experiment which, if performed, could prove their theory was wrong as stated, and needed modification or simply had to be discarded. This is what makes Creationism dogma and not scientific.
This extends to popular opinions about controversial scientific questions, like Global Warming. Everyone from George Will to Al Franken has an opinion about the subject, and all but a handful of them desperately avoided taking a college course that involved labs and any real interaction with the scientific method when they had the chance. But they figure they have as much right as anyone else to weigh in on the subject.
Of course, they do have such a right, but it doesn't help the general understanding when they ignore the scientific method, which they do not understand, but claim that their innate intelligence allows them to understand something which scientists have to sweat over for years.
The net result, I fear, is a "science without tears" society, where students are given to believe that it is not necessary to actually study a subject in order to assert a competence in it. Employers may want to see certain courses on the transcript, but public policy won't be driven by fact and empirical observation - it will be driven (moreso than it already is) by who has the biggest microphone.
...are a big part of it. If you develop some software, and get it out there where people can try it, and comment on it, and you can react to those comments, it says a great deal about the skill set you possess. Generally speaking, open source is going to be the quickest way to accomplish this.
Our CS students seem to understand this innately - many of them develop open source projects - small, relatively specialized ones that are appropriate to to some of the specialties that exist in our department. To some extent, they have trained the local employers, who now want to see what kind of project the student has completed and what kind of reaction it gets from its community.
The problem, however, is that our department has been slanted in this direction for a long time, using Linux and other FOSS for just about everything, so we attract students and prospective employers who appreciate that. There may be a large cadre of local employers who feel ill-served by our approach, but if they exist they are almost invisible to us.
Why accept the reservation and then cancel it? Why not just not let the reservation get created in the first place? Is their software too dumb to accomplish that, but good enough to tag the reservation so it can be cancelled later?
If people saw the flight they wanted on a third party website, but couldn't make the reservation, they might go over to the Ryanair site to buy the ticket. Then the third party website probably drops Ryanair, but they can't be bothered by that, can they?
to ask slashdotters for advice in improving the draft of an explanation of cryptography and certificates that I have begun. You can find it at my website
I submit that this is not off-topic, since one point several people have made is that most people don't understand certificates well enough to be able to deal with the warning that ff3 gives, so if we could get some explanations out there, it might help the situation.
Or they could have radio controlled shutoff switches on more air conditioners. I have one on mine, and it's great. I pay less for my power, and it only gets shut off at a time like that - there is a contractual arrangement about how often it can be shut off, and it isn't often.
There are a lot of ways that the program could be expanded, not least making it a bigger difference in the amount one pays for power - more people would sign up, the ones who didn't would pick up the cost.
The software engineers try to get a handle on how many bugs are left after a certain number have been found, but how do we get a handle on how many events like these might be happening after one has come to light?
It has long been pretty clear that these voting machine vendors, Diebold chief among them, have had something to hide because of how cagy they have been about allowing people to examine their machines. It's very frustrating that their arguments seem to always win out - it makes you wonder how many Secretaries of State (for non-US readers, that is a state-level office that is frequently in charge of elections. Not to be confused with the Federal level Foreign Minister) want to know what is going on, or really d know what is going on, and just want deniability.
Just in case there are a few slashdotters not familiar with The Story of Mel, you owe it to yourself to take a few minutes to read it.
The University of Wisconsin CS Dept. used cheeses. Never seemed to have a problem with running out, although they named two machines kraft-slices and velveeta, and the lawyers moved in and made them change.
Incidentally, included among the cheeses were puff, whiz, and head (the latter is also a popular Wisconsin food product, so it's all good).
While most people probably don't consider them malware, a lot of people find internet ads intrusive and obnoxious and we install popup blockers to get away from some of them. But the advertisers wouldn't pay for them if someone wasn't reading them and clicking on them.
More to the point, there is a huge difference in what people care about regarding their computers. Many of my friends think I "put up" with a lot because I use Linux and install things relatively methodically, always keeping control of my system. I think they "put up" with a lot, because they have no idea what is running on their computers and what the machines might be doing with their information.
It concerns me that the anti-privacy people have time on their side, because after a few more years, they will just point out how so many people haven't been enjoying much privacy anyway, so what's the big deal?
I disagree with your point that it was Microsoft that brought "unification to the desktop", a point that is often repeated.
It was IBM, not least through there open hardware policy, that wiped out any significant competition and brought a single platform to the desktop. Microsoft, very shrewdly, hung on for the ride and then jumped off at just the right time. It was a brilliant business plan, maybe the most perfectly executed business plan ever, but they were not the ones that created the common platform. Nor did MSOffice, et al, accomplish anything in that department other than bring most of the desktop under the auspices of the same company. Heck, they completely blew it in the database department, after acquiring the most promising company out there, Fox. IE did nothing for "unification", quite the contrary, and the list goes on with malware protection, email clients, and all the other standard stuff on the desktop. People were sharing documents and spreadsheets before Word Or Excel came on the scene.
What Microsoft accomplished was to replace other products with their own, not so much with better engineering as better marketing, and get their name out there as the most ubiquitous --> preeminent name in desktop computing.
Great, but isn't justice delayed justice denied? If the RIAA lawyers are permitted to make a career out of this before they are sanctioned, and get disbarred in an early, comfortable retirement, what is accomplished? And more to the point, what is "officer of the court" worth, if this is the case?
Having said that, Li is no crank. I had not heard of him, but that's no surprise since I'm not a number theorist. But he has published several refereed papers in this area, has a position at BYU, and really ought to have known better than to explode on the scene like this.
I've gotten communications from genuine crackpots, wanting my comments on their work. Early in my career, I wrote back, gently pointing out the mistake. To my horror, friends then received slightly modified but still absurd drafts, listing me as a collaborator! Li is a real mathematician, probably with poor social skills, and a bad proof.