By optimizing software to complete a process with less instructions to execute, energy is actually saved. Many of the high-level frameworks that provide hundreds of layers of abstraction, and many programs that are implemented as scripts which must be parsed during execution, really serve to expend energy unnecessarily when the same result can be achieved through less steps. Thus, it should be "back to basics" and the techniques described in Knuth's works should be employed to compute the number of operations and reduce them whenever possible. Yes, because computer time is cheap compared with human time, you should slop together code and get it going, but now that energy costs are going up, it may actually become more economical to spend more time optimizing code.
The best way to increase the available bandwidth is to run more trunk lines and increase the number of connections between individual switching stations. The goal should be that every U.S. city with a population of 100,000 or more should eventually have a direct trunk to every other such U.S. city. Such a direct connection will reduce the number of hops, but more importantly, there will be that many additional "lanes" of traffic to get the data where it needs to go.
The studios and copyright holders have it all wrong, in my opinion. Instead of charging $20 for a movie with all kinds of copy protection that doesn't prevent piracy (the pirates will ALWAYS find a way around copy protection), they should take Steve Jobs' approach (where do you put the apostrophe on a name that ends with "s"?). Charge $5 for a movie on a media that contains all the copy protection in the world. Charge $20 for the same movie on a media that has NO copy protection. The average viewer doesn't have the technical prowess to copy either type of movie so it doesn't matter anyway. The low price for a movie will mean that it won't make sense to pirate some crappy quality movie and waste the time downloading and burning it onto a disc, so most viewers won't bother; they'll just pay the $5 and purchase it legitimately. For those who feel that non-DRM is somehow better, they'll pay $20. And for those who are going to pirate the movies anyway just because they feel they need a library of 10,000 movies they'll never get around to watching, well, what difference does it make? Suppose they copy the movie. Even if it were NOT available for easy copying, chances are they would NOT shell out any money, even if it were a penny, to buy the movie legitimately. So the studios don't really lose money in this case. Yes, an additional copy of the movie was made and they weren't paid for it, but they wouldn't have been paid for it even if the copy were not made. In other words, make the movies cheap to buy legitimately and the majority of the population won't bother to pirate them because there won't be any incentive to do so. Chances are the studios will make more profit even though the price per unit is lower because more movies will be sold. Would you pay $3 to rent a movie when you can buy your own copy for $5? Would you bother to burn a copy from a friend that costs $1 for the disc, more if the burn fails a bunch of times and you have to re-do it, and waste the time bothering with it and jumping through all the hoops to make a watchable disc? No way! You'd just drop five bucks and get the damn movie!! I think it's a win-win. Any economist will tell you that when prices are higher, demand is lower and vice versa.
The laws on all this cyber stuff are totally wrong. It should be stated quite simply in the law that:
If you provide a service, such as a communication service, a file transfer service, a web-based service, or any kind of Internet-based service, and someone else who is using that service is doing something illegal or something they shouldn't be doing, then that someone else should be liable and you should NOT.
Think of it this way. You are a state. You build roads and freeways. Someone speeding along those roads gets in an accident and kills someone. Is it your fault or theirs? Theirs!
Another example: You are a state. You build roads and freeways. Someone is transporting illegal drugs around in a vehicle, using your roads and freeways to do so. Is it your fault or theirs? Theirs!
So why should a service that is based on the Internet be any different? Why should those providing the infrastructure be liable for bad things people do with that infrastructure? If infrastructure-providers were supposed to be liable because they somehow facilitate something bad, then why don't we go back to being cave-men, because anything and everything that we have in the world can be used for some bad purpose.
I really think that something needs to be done about this sort of thing. I've heard many stories of people unknowingly racking up bills anywhere from a thousand dollars to many thousands of dollars. If it happened only once to one person, you could argue that they should have understood how the billing works. But it's happened many, many times. One possibility is that the phone companies should implement a system similar to the one that credit card companies have. If your bill suddenly reaches, say, $350 more than your average monthly total bill, they should put a hold on your service and you should hear a recorded message or something to the effect that there are unusual charges. You can then either call the customer service center, where they can verify your personal information and verify that you indeed wish to make additional charges at these rates, or you can report to them that someone is using your account without your knowledge, in which case something can be done. This way, if your bill is $350 higher one month, the worst that happens is that you need to come up with that extra dough, which could be difficult for some people. But at least it wouldn't be in the thousands of dollars. A $20,000 bill might take years to pay off! It would help immensely against people inadvertently racking up such high bills.
Smothering your personal info all over the place might be a bad idea, but doing so in a bar is infinitely less dangerous than doing it on the www where every future employer/mother in law can find you back years later.
Which is why I'm gonna write a book, for which I haven't made up the title yet, about an underground gang of 1337z h4x0rz who, for a high fee, of course, hack into all kinds of social networking sites and whatnot and fix peoples' information. So that girl who had some revealing pictures taken can have them mysteriously disappear. That dude who wrote a bunch of anti-country stuff and later grew up and decided to run for office can have that text changed to something a bit more appropriate, etc.
I'd appreciate it very much if someone could please explain to me, how is it possible that one company sells something at a loss and it's called "dumping" (which you can get in trouble for, IIUC), and another company sells something at a loss and it's called a "loss leader?" Wtf? It's especially clear in this case, when you have orange rings of death and whatnot, that the purpose is to bankrupt the competition by selling yours for less. By the time someone spent their Christmas money on one product, they won't buy the other. Hence, dumping.
First of all, let's get something straight. Social networking is a BAD idea. Especially the sort of social networking that takes place at bars, clubs, parties, etc. The only safe place in the world is safe and sound all by your lonesome in your parents' basement.
You didn't expect something innovative, did you? I mean, the Apple ads, not to be one of those pestering fanboys like the poll showed, but the Apple ads speak to you in a manner that is humorous and informative, and you get the message. And you don't have to be some computer genius to get it. In fact, it targets people who are not some assembly-coding black magic gurus who grok the difference between a SLUB allocator and a SLAB allocator. They get across the message that using a "PC" (which has come to mean a computer running Windblows -- Linux/*BSD users call their computers a "box," not a PC) is the suxx0rz, while using a Mac is easy, fun, and gets what you want done plainly, simply, without any hassle. Everyone out there who isn't the aforementioned guru knows that using a PC means you sit around all day waiting for the hard drive to grind its platters into dust while looking at spam and popups, giving your personal information to thieves via spyware, getting your files deleted via viruses, and just plain having problems all the time. Those who use Macs know that despite the cute animations and graphical shit, they're still quick and mostly reliable, and being that they're based on the UNIX philosophy and run on billions of lines of F/OSS code (which many Mac users either don't know or don't care), the risk of the aforementioned malware is much reduced (which all Mac users know AND care about). For mortal lusers, it's a great thing; for *NIX lovers, it's *NIX, and for those that buy VMware or Parallels (or use Sun's virtual box although I'm not familiar with it except in knowing that it exists), a Mac can run any program for any OS, and it looks damn stylish doing it. On the other hand, a PC is the suxx0rz for mortal lusers. Yeah, using nLite, you can make Brick Walls XP SP2 install in such a manner that it is ALMOST a joy to use it (by changing ALL options to the opposite of their default), but most lusers buy a box with that thing preinstalled in such a manner that it's a burden rather than a tool. In many ways, you can compare Microsoft and Apple and come to a simple conclusion. That's left as an exercise for the reader.
Instead of writing bugmenot.com, just say, "d00dz, ignore the word 'fuck' in the following and go to www dot bug fuck me fuck not fuck dot com d00dz!!"
Why, I think it was only five years or so into the useful life of DVD that development was already taking place on Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and the first battle cry of the latest format war was heard. I am not surprised to hear this prediction because no matter how much data capacities grow, it never seems to be enough nowadays. I think what will really supersede all of these formats will be when the available Internet bandwidth skyrockets to make possible video on demand in HDTV resolutions. Television will then come in two varieties: Live broadcasts and pre-recorded content of all types that can be watched at any time. When that happens, it's unlikely that anyone will want these plastic discs anymore.
Knowing how a memory is stored and how the brain can recreate it might lead to some crazy new technologies in the future, such as being able to load gigabytes of data into your brain by using energy to manipulate the brain into "remembering" things that were never there. Of course, it could lead to some extremely scary scenarios, like messing with people's heads by putting things in there that aren't supposed to be. I hope the scientists are being really, really careful on this one!
A middle ground?
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I am a bit surprised that Google, a company full of smart people who can do a lot with a little, would out-bloat even IE. Perhaps because this is the original version, resource usage hasn't been brought into check yet. I remember it being somewhat this way with the original Mozilla (before Firefox existed) and, as some might recall, Firefox, too, has reduced its resource usage.
There is a middle ground where the web can be a very rich platform without requiring a supercomputer the size of Deep Thought to run it.
Yeah, that would be great, in terms of technical coolness, in terms of customer satisfaction, in terms of business sense altogether. But I strongly believe that they won't do it. They'll stick with Losedoze Shitsta, and when the next version, Losedoze Excalibur, which will be 10 times bigger, 50,000 times slower, with one tenth the features, twice the price, and infinite more times the annoyances and bugs, they'll go with that, too. And so it will be for the version after Excalibur, dubbed Losedoze Titanic. And the one after that, Losedoze Supernova, Business Professional Workstation Edition, which will be one of nearly a thousand different editions, including Home Basic Desktop Edition, Home Professional Laptop Edition, School Student Desktop Edition, School Teacher Workstation Edition, Construction Site Professional Desktop Edition, Legal Professional Weekend Hot Rod Racer Novice Edition, and many others. Which one is right for you? Entire encyclopedias will be committed to answering that question. And that great company that was started by two dudes in a garage will continue delivering that garbage on otherwise perfectly good equipment. Because PHBs never learn.
A better idea. Instead of police using donated cameras to watch stuff, citizens should be buying guns to defend themselves. It has been observed time and time again that in places where more citizens own guns, there tends to be less crime. Because if you're a crook, where will you commit your crimes? In a place where your victims will blow your head off? Or in a place where the victims are helpless and the police are too busy watching surveillance cameras to do anything about it? But then again, this is/. so God forbid if I should say that guns are not the problem, crooks are the problem, and when would-be victims have guns, the crooks' guns are less useful, and conversely when guns are illegal for everyone, victims have no way to defend themselves and crooks will have guns anyway. (Illegal? What do the crooks care? By definition, they don't obey the law.)
I use the automated payment system of handwriting checks that have carbonless copies for my records, stuffing them into envelopes along with the stub from the bill, sticking a postage stamp and a return address stamp on the envelope, and popping that whole darn thing into a mailbox. Automated payments are so "convenient" but handwritten cheques are the only way to go.
Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.
Or maybe it's just that more trunk lines and switching equipment are being installed throughout the rest of the world.
Is this a problem? NO! Let me explain: A bunch of F/OSS-style security-conscious researchers should get together with some donated funds to make a documentary about how hackable this stuff is. It should be based only on factual information and the testimony of experts in the field, with evidence to back it up according to the highest practices of science and law. As an extra bonus, they should gather up as much evidence and documentation about this episode of lawyering up, and actually include that in the program! That should also be backed up by tons of evidence. The program should be widely disseminated. The program should be very carefully made so that when the wolves come to sue its makers, all evidence will show that this is free speech, common knowledge, important information for people to know, etc., and when the wolves come, there should be widespread dissemination that companies that know about these flaws are trying to use legal bullying to bury the story in order to prevent the public from finding out about them. I'm talking full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other major newspapers, ads on the Internet and on television, reporters contacted to write stories about it, etc. There should be such a commotion that these companies and their stupid lawyers will back down and the companies start working on a fix for the flaws.
The government requires the testing of a certain percentage, so they provide the test packs for this percentage. Now, if the ruling prevents the government from paying for more packs than required under its own regulations, it's not a problem. The company feels like it wants to test more than the amount the government requires? Fine, it should get or make its own test packs, test 100%, pass that cost on to customers, and be sure to market and advertise their products as the safest since they are the only ones that test 100%.
BUT, if the ruling prevents TESTING (not the government providing test kits), it is a fscked up ruling and someone is a total numbskull for making such a ruling.
For some reason, there is this attitude that pervades everywhere that "the government" is supposed to pay for everything. No it's not. The government is supposed to fill a minimal function and beyond that, it should stay out of the way. It's not some kind of ethereal force. It's a group of dudes and dudettes who are supposed to protect life and property within the borders of the country, and to administer a minimal amount of stuff to make sure that everyone else can live their lives and pursue happiness. They're not supposed to fund everything under the sun because ultimately those funds come out of YOUR pocket. Their doing that actually means that your money is used to pay for lots of things you personally would probably not support voluntarily.
... synchronized with each other and with Earth's distance from the sun...
Wait a minute. Did someone just say that the distance between the Earth and the sun changes over time? I know this story is about nuclear decay, but perhaps this has a bit more to do with "climate change" than whatever conditions people blame for the same effect. If the Earth gets, say, a million miles closer to the sun, it will obviously heat things up, and plenty more than all the SUVs and carbon in the world.
But of course this is/., so watch this get modded -99 Lunatic for daring to insinuate something like that.
Here's a possible solution to the license proliferation / cross pollination problem of F/OSS software projects: Each open source compliant license could include within its terms specific permission to use portions of its project's code in software licensed under another open source compliant license. It could be called an Open Source Cross-Pollination Clause or something like that, and the wording would be identical across licenses. It would be a sort of "UCC of software licenses." As an example of what might happen if this clause were included in, say, the Apache license, the Mozilla license, and the Eclipse license: Suppose there are a group of functions in Apache that produce some result that might be useful in a web browser. The Mozilla project could copy that code verbatim, insert it into Mozilla, and perhaps make modifications to it later on. The copy of that portion of code would essentially become licensed under the Mozilla license. The Eclipse project could then find that code useful and copy it into Eclipse, perhaps modifying it further. Now there are three copies of that code, each licensed under the same license as the broader code that contains it. If, say, all OSI approved licenses decided to insert this Cross-Pollination Clause, it would completely solve the problems of license compatibility.
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By optimizing software to complete a process with less instructions to execute, energy is actually saved. Many of the high-level frameworks that provide hundreds of layers of abstraction, and many programs that are implemented as scripts which must be parsed during execution, really serve to expend energy unnecessarily when the same result can be achieved through less steps. Thus, it should be "back to basics" and the techniques described in Knuth's works should be employed to compute the number of operations and reduce them whenever possible. Yes, because computer time is cheap compared with human time, you should slop together code and get it going, but now that energy costs are going up, it may actually become more economical to spend more time optimizing code.
The best way to increase the available bandwidth is to run more trunk lines and increase the number of connections between individual switching stations. The goal should be that every U.S. city with a population of 100,000 or more should eventually have a direct trunk to every other such U.S. city. Such a direct connection will reduce the number of hops, but more importantly, there will be that many additional "lanes" of traffic to get the data where it needs to go.
The studios and copyright holders have it all wrong, in my opinion. Instead of charging $20 for a movie with all kinds of copy protection that doesn't prevent piracy (the pirates will ALWAYS find a way around copy protection), they should take Steve Jobs' approach (where do you put the apostrophe on a name that ends with "s"?). Charge $5 for a movie on a media that contains all the copy protection in the world. Charge $20 for the same movie on a media that has NO copy protection. The average viewer doesn't have the technical prowess to copy either type of movie so it doesn't matter anyway. The low price for a movie will mean that it won't make sense to pirate some crappy quality movie and waste the time downloading and burning it onto a disc, so most viewers won't bother; they'll just pay the $5 and purchase it legitimately. For those who feel that non-DRM is somehow better, they'll pay $20. And for those who are going to pirate the movies anyway just because they feel they need a library of 10,000 movies they'll never get around to watching, well, what difference does it make? Suppose they copy the movie. Even if it were NOT available for easy copying, chances are they would NOT shell out any money, even if it were a penny, to buy the movie legitimately. So the studios don't really lose money in this case. Yes, an additional copy of the movie was made and they weren't paid for it, but they wouldn't have been paid for it even if the copy were not made. In other words, make the movies cheap to buy legitimately and the majority of the population won't bother to pirate them because there won't be any incentive to do so. Chances are the studios will make more profit even though the price per unit is lower because more movies will be sold. Would you pay $3 to rent a movie when you can buy your own copy for $5? Would you bother to burn a copy from a friend that costs $1 for the disc, more if the burn fails a bunch of times and you have to re-do it, and waste the time bothering with it and jumping through all the hoops to make a watchable disc? No way! You'd just drop five bucks and get the damn movie!! I think it's a win-win. Any economist will tell you that when prices are higher, demand is lower and vice versa.
The laws on all this cyber stuff are totally wrong. It should be stated quite simply in the law that:
If you provide a service, such as a communication service, a file transfer service, a web-based service, or any kind of Internet-based service, and someone else who is using that service is doing something illegal or something they shouldn't be doing, then that someone else should be liable and you should NOT.
Think of it this way. You are a state. You build roads and freeways. Someone speeding along those roads gets in an accident and kills someone. Is it your fault or theirs? Theirs!
Another example: You are a state. You build roads and freeways. Someone is transporting illegal drugs around in a vehicle, using your roads and freeways to do so. Is it your fault or theirs? Theirs!
So why should a service that is based on the Internet be any different? Why should those providing the infrastructure be liable for bad things people do with that infrastructure? If infrastructure-providers were supposed to be liable because they somehow facilitate something bad, then why don't we go back to being cave-men, because anything and everything that we have in the world can be used for some bad purpose.
I think what the world really needs is a super duper depressed humanoid robot. And I think his name should be Marvin.
I really think that something needs to be done about this sort of thing. I've heard many stories of people unknowingly racking up bills anywhere from a thousand dollars to many thousands of dollars. If it happened only once to one person, you could argue that they should have understood how the billing works. But it's happened many, many times. One possibility is that the phone companies should implement a system similar to the one that credit card companies have. If your bill suddenly reaches, say, $350 more than your average monthly total bill, they should put a hold on your service and you should hear a recorded message or something to the effect that there are unusual charges. You can then either call the customer service center, where they can verify your personal information and verify that you indeed wish to make additional charges at these rates, or you can report to them that someone is using your account without your knowledge, in which case something can be done. This way, if your bill is $350 higher one month, the worst that happens is that you need to come up with that extra dough, which could be difficult for some people. But at least it wouldn't be in the thousands of dollars. A $20,000 bill might take years to pay off! It would help immensely against people inadvertently racking up such high bills.
Smothering your personal info all over the place might be a bad idea, but doing so in a bar is infinitely less dangerous than doing it on the www where every future employer/mother in law can find you back years later.
Which is why I'm gonna write a book, for which I haven't made up the title yet, about an underground gang of 1337z h4x0rz who, for a high fee, of course, hack into all kinds of social networking sites and whatnot and fix peoples' information. So that girl who had some revealing pictures taken can have them mysteriously disappear. That dude who wrote a bunch of anti-country stuff and later grew up and decided to run for office can have that text changed to something a bit more appropriate, etc.
I'd appreciate it very much if someone could please explain to me, how is it possible that one company sells something at a loss and it's called "dumping" (which you can get in trouble for, IIUC), and another company sells something at a loss and it's called a "loss leader?" Wtf? It's especially clear in this case, when you have orange rings of death and whatnot, that the purpose is to bankrupt the competition by selling yours for less. By the time someone spent their Christmas money on one product, they won't buy the other. Hence, dumping.
First of all, let's get something straight. Social networking is a BAD idea. Especially the sort of social networking that takes place at bars, clubs, parties, etc. The only safe place in the world is safe and sound all by your lonesome in your parents' basement.
You didn't expect something innovative, did you? I mean, the Apple ads, not to be one of those pestering fanboys like the poll showed, but the Apple ads speak to you in a manner that is humorous and informative, and you get the message. And you don't have to be some computer genius to get it. In fact, it targets people who are not some assembly-coding black magic gurus who grok the difference between a SLUB allocator and a SLAB allocator. They get across the message that using a "PC" (which has come to mean a computer running Windblows -- Linux/*BSD users call their computers a "box," not a PC) is the suxx0rz, while using a Mac is easy, fun, and gets what you want done plainly, simply, without any hassle. Everyone out there who isn't the aforementioned guru knows that using a PC means you sit around all day waiting for the hard drive to grind its platters into dust while looking at spam and popups, giving your personal information to thieves via spyware, getting your files deleted via viruses, and just plain having problems all the time. Those who use Macs know that despite the cute animations and graphical shit, they're still quick and mostly reliable, and being that they're based on the UNIX philosophy and run on billions of lines of F/OSS code (which many Mac users either don't know or don't care), the risk of the aforementioned malware is much reduced (which all Mac users know AND care about). For mortal lusers, it's a great thing; for *NIX lovers, it's *NIX, and for those that buy VMware or Parallels (or use Sun's virtual box although I'm not familiar with it except in knowing that it exists), a Mac can run any program for any OS, and it looks damn stylish doing it. On the other hand, a PC is the suxx0rz for mortal lusers. Yeah, using nLite, you can make Brick Walls XP SP2 install in such a manner that it is ALMOST a joy to use it (by changing ALL options to the opposite of their default), but most lusers buy a box with that thing preinstalled in such a manner that it's a burden rather than a tool. In many ways, you can compare Microsoft and Apple and come to a simple conclusion. That's left as an exercise for the reader.
Instead of writing bugmenot.com, just say, "d00dz, ignore the word 'fuck' in the following and go to www dot bug fuck me fuck not fuck dot com d00dz!!"
Why, I think it was only five years or so into the useful life of DVD that development was already taking place on Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and the first battle cry of the latest format war was heard. I am not surprised to hear this prediction because no matter how much data capacities grow, it never seems to be enough nowadays. I think what will really supersede all of these formats will be when the available Internet bandwidth skyrockets to make possible video on demand in HDTV resolutions. Television will then come in two varieties: Live broadcasts and pre-recorded content of all types that can be watched at any time. When that happens, it's unlikely that anyone will want these plastic discs anymore.
Knowing how a memory is stored and how the brain can recreate it might lead to some crazy new technologies in the future, such as being able to load gigabytes of data into your brain by using energy to manipulate the brain into "remembering" things that were never there. Of course, it could lead to some extremely scary scenarios, like messing with people's heads by putting things in there that aren't supposed to be. I hope the scientists are being really, really careful on this one!
I am a bit surprised that Google, a company full of smart people who can do a lot with a little, would out-bloat even IE. Perhaps because this is the original version, resource usage hasn't been brought into check yet. I remember it being somewhat this way with the original Mozilla (before Firefox existed) and, as some might recall, Firefox, too, has reduced its resource usage.
There is a middle ground where the web can be a very rich platform without requiring a supercomputer the size of Deep Thought to run it.
Yeah, that would be great, in terms of technical coolness, in terms of customer satisfaction, in terms of business sense altogether. But I strongly believe that they won't do it. They'll stick with Losedoze Shitsta, and when the next version, Losedoze Excalibur, which will be 10 times bigger, 50,000 times slower, with one tenth the features, twice the price, and infinite more times the annoyances and bugs, they'll go with that, too. And so it will be for the version after Excalibur, dubbed Losedoze Titanic. And the one after that, Losedoze Supernova, Business Professional Workstation Edition, which will be one of nearly a thousand different editions, including Home Basic Desktop Edition, Home Professional Laptop Edition, School Student Desktop Edition, School Teacher Workstation Edition, Construction Site Professional Desktop Edition, Legal Professional Weekend Hot Rod Racer Novice Edition, and many others. Which one is right for you? Entire encyclopedias will be committed to answering that question. And that great company that was started by two dudes in a garage will continue delivering that garbage on otherwise perfectly good equipment. Because PHBs never learn.
Actually I think his tight... oh, never mind.
A better idea. Instead of police using donated cameras to watch stuff, citizens should be buying guns to defend themselves. It has been observed time and time again that in places where more citizens own guns, there tends to be less crime. Because if you're a crook, where will you commit your crimes? In a place where your victims will blow your head off? Or in a place where the victims are helpless and the police are too busy watching surveillance cameras to do anything about it? But then again, this is /. so God forbid if I should say that guns are not the problem, crooks are the problem, and when would-be victims have guns, the crooks' guns are less useful, and conversely when guns are illegal for everyone, victims have no way to defend themselves and crooks will have guns anyway. (Illegal? What do the crooks care? By definition, they don't obey the law.)
I use the automated payment system of handwriting checks that have carbonless copies for my records, stuffing them into envelopes along with the stub from the bill, sticking a postage stamp and a return address stamp on the envelope, and popping that whole darn thing into a mailbox. Automated payments are so "convenient" but handwritten cheques are the only way to go.
If you're American, better stay out of Europe, or any country for that matter... That is, unless you people elect that Greek god dude in November.
IE8? You mean to tell me there are people out there who still haven't switched to Firefox?!?!?! Those savages!
Or maybe it's just that more trunk lines and switching equipment are being installed throughout the rest of the world.
Is this a problem? NO! Let me explain: A bunch of F/OSS-style security-conscious researchers should get together with some donated funds to make a documentary about how hackable this stuff is. It should be based only on factual information and the testimony of experts in the field, with evidence to back it up according to the highest practices of science and law. As an extra bonus, they should gather up as much evidence and documentation about this episode of lawyering up, and actually include that in the program! That should also be backed up by tons of evidence. The program should be widely disseminated. The program should be very carefully made so that when the wolves come to sue its makers, all evidence will show that this is free speech, common knowledge, important information for people to know, etc., and when the wolves come, there should be widespread dissemination that companies that know about these flaws are trying to use legal bullying to bury the story in order to prevent the public from finding out about them. I'm talking full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other major newspapers, ads on the Internet and on television, reporters contacted to write stories about it, etc. There should be such a commotion that these companies and their stupid lawyers will back down and the companies start working on a fix for the flaws.
The important question is this:
The government requires the testing of a certain percentage, so they provide the test packs for this percentage. Now, if the ruling prevents the government from paying for more packs than required under its own regulations, it's not a problem. The company feels like it wants to test more than the amount the government requires? Fine, it should get or make its own test packs, test 100%, pass that cost on to customers, and be sure to market and advertise their products as the safest since they are the only ones that test 100%.
BUT, if the ruling prevents TESTING (not the government providing test kits), it is a fscked up ruling and someone is a total numbskull for making such a ruling.
For some reason, there is this attitude that pervades everywhere that "the government" is supposed to pay for everything. No it's not. The government is supposed to fill a minimal function and beyond that, it should stay out of the way. It's not some kind of ethereal force. It's a group of dudes and dudettes who are supposed to protect life and property within the borders of the country, and to administer a minimal amount of stuff to make sure that everyone else can live their lives and pursue happiness. They're not supposed to fund everything under the sun because ultimately those funds come out of YOUR pocket. Their doing that actually means that your money is used to pay for lots of things you personally would probably not support voluntarily.
Wait a minute. Did someone just say that the distance between the Earth and the sun changes over time? I know this story is about nuclear decay, but perhaps this has a bit more to do with "climate change" than whatever conditions people blame for the same effect. If the Earth gets, say, a million miles closer to the sun, it will obviously heat things up, and plenty more than all the SUVs and carbon in the world.
But of course this is /., so watch this get modded -99 Lunatic for daring to insinuate something like that.
Here's a possible solution to the license proliferation / cross pollination problem of F/OSS software projects: Each open source compliant license could include within its terms specific permission to use portions of its project's code in software licensed under another open source compliant license. It could be called an Open Source Cross-Pollination Clause or something like that, and the wording would be identical across licenses. It would be a sort of "UCC of software licenses." As an example of what might happen if this clause were included in, say, the Apache license, the Mozilla license, and the Eclipse license: Suppose there are a group of functions in Apache that produce some result that might be useful in a web browser. The Mozilla project could copy that code verbatim, insert it into Mozilla, and perhaps make modifications to it later on. The copy of that portion of code would essentially become licensed under the Mozilla license. The Eclipse project could then find that code useful and copy it into Eclipse, perhaps modifying it further. Now there are three copies of that code, each licensed under the same license as the broader code that contains it. If, say, all OSI approved licenses decided to insert this Cross-Pollination Clause, it would completely solve the problems of license compatibility.