Not knowing all the particulars of the supposed threat he was posing to the religion,
The threat he posed was to expose their idiotic (and expensive) teachings, their lies and to illustrate what a malignant mind control cult they really are. This made him their enemy and they have been hounding him with nuisance lawsuits ever since. Unfortunately for him he made some throwaway remark on a usenet forum about aiming a missile at their HQ and they somehow managed to get him prosecuted for making terrorist threats as well as interfering with a religion.
His unrelating persecution by scientologists to silence and even jail the guy show who the terrorists really are.
The security model should be, quite simply: the program has a manifest that declares what permissions it needs with a fine granularity.
That would be called SELinux and is turned on in Fedora Core.
Writing policy files either as a user, admin or even developer is hellishly difficult. FC has been messing with SELinux policies for years before getting it right. It almost requires an interactive mode where the policy can be "trained" by running the app a multiple times to see what registry / folder / files it needs access to and then ensuring that the policy enforces it.
You can have all that now - whoever writes a driver releases the source under the GPL, and it can be integrated into the kernel, or maintained by OEMs/distros/whatever.
Except you can't have it now. If some new device appears on the market, and even if they open sourced the driver, the chances are that the dist I am running now may never support that device. And even if it did, I'd have to fetch a new kernel to get support or patch a kernel myself. Patching and rebuilding a kernel is non-trivial even for experts and absolutely not possible for anyone else.
The only time this breaks down is for proprietary drivers. And the linux devs simply aren't interested in supporting those. They aren't making a profit from linux - they get paid the same whether there are 10 linux users or 10 billion. Think about it - Linux took the time to write linux when there wasn't a framebuffer driver for a simple VGA card, so do you think it is a big deal to him that there isn't GPL-code available to program the vertex shaders on a GForce?..
And here lies the problem. Lots of hardware, particularly graphics drivers contains proprietary information, trade secrets, and other things they absolutely do not want their competitors to know about. Maybe NVidia would love to open source their code but they just can't - they have too much riding in their battle with ATI. Other times the hardware vendor *can't* open source the code because it isn't theirs to open source, e.g. because they use someone else's chipset or design. As I said, an ABI isn't necessarily optimal so there is still incentive for vendors to release source. Another reason is that they can save money if someone else maintains the code for them. But they should have the choice.
It would be nice if all drivers were open sourced, but reality says it will never ever happen. So Linux is either faced with being continually several years behind the curve, or getting pragmatic. It's hard to see how it will ever conquer the desktop or even become mainstream when it passes up one easy way to win a lot of converts.
stable device driver interface (one of the biggest point driver developers complain about in Linux)
And the reasons for not having a stable interface are pretty odd indeed. I can understand why Linus might hate having to support backwards compatibility, after all it is a hateful chore at his level.
However dists and OEMS should care a great deal. A binary interface means a vendor can distribute a single driver and it works on all dists supporting some particular kernel version, e.g. 2.6.x. The ABI could even specify the package format, e.g. RPM, and how drivers are installed, started, stopped, & removed. Just like a sane OS should work. Drivers through the ABI might not be optimal but at least they work and continue to regardless of whether the kernel is upgraded or what dist is being used. Better yet if the ABI supports mini drivers so that the vendor only has to implement a small amount of code. An ABI would be good for everyone. The OSDL could even run certification & signing of good drivers to ensure good quality.
DVD cases already contain magnetic strips that go off when you go through the store barrier. If strips don't deter thieves I fail to see how a chip would.
All a thief has to do is buy another copy of the DVD legitimately and then return the inactive one complaining it doesn't work. The teller will swipe it to activate it. The thief comes back later and complains it still doesn't work and demand a refund. So for their efforts the store hasn't stopped theft, has increased their number of returns (since many of the returns will be genuine) and invested in an expensive and ineffective technology.
Nearly every story I see on this subject restates this 'fact'. One should keep in mind that many dictators have had this sort of law in place, and it does seem to work.
More to the point, if the king is so beloved by all his people, then who is looking at these clips?
Personally I think these actions by reactionary idiots in Thailand will make the situation worse. Instead of one mildly offensive clip it will be multiple clips that really push the boat out in ways to offend the kind.
Ignore the clips and they become background noise. Kick up a stink and it can only be a matter of time before tubgirl gets involved.
The problem has always been that OO.o makes assumptions about GUI development that are well-suited to X11 and Windows, and not well-suited to Aqua. The question is, can someone who's learning Mac development as he goes push changes back to OO.o to make it more suitable for Aqua and other GUI toolkits? Can he do it before Sun changes their mind and de-funds the Mac port? Sun has a habit of funding things for about six months and then getting cold feet.
Or rather OS X tosses away all conventional assumptions about GUI development and expects developers to write their front-end UI handling in Objective C and define the GUI in.nib files. I expect trying to reconcile that world with the conventional world enjoyed by Windows, Unix, or even Carbon on OS X might be a bit tough. Carbon might be the easiest route they can go in, and that in itself might cause other issues.
I wonder if truth is a defense against slander/libel/defamation in Australia. It isn't in England, which is where the Aussies borrow much of their law from.
It is a defence. It's hard to see how there could be any other kind of defence. David Irving sued a historian who labelled him a holocaust denier, racist and liar because herself and her publisher were able to demonstrate that he was a holocaust denier, racist and liar. Hence he lost since the allegation was substantially true.
The patent is for a heirarchical security model where there are multiple levels of access not the all or nothing of sudo.
Which makes it sound comparable to SELinux. SELinux might be a bitch to configure (and thus most people only use it when the system has well done policy files), but it is extremely granular.
Gmail has other things to work with such as IP addresses and message content. It doesn't have to look at a single word to flag it spam. Iran would not have that luxury. It would have to filter based on 256 characters out of which there are literally millions of ways of spelling immoral words. It's a fools errand to even try, and quite ridiculous too really. Even if filtering were successful, teens will simply invent stand-in words or abbreviations which mean the same thing as far as they are concerned. I understand it is already commonplace for teens in repressive countries to speak in code.
I think you need to count your blessings. It has worked for many emails, and I'm sure Iran will have similarly significant success in their censorship efforts.
I doubt it. Viagra and Cialis are two words of which spammers have invented a million permutations and going strong. I really doubt Iran could ever filter every single "immoral" words no matter how many permutations they dreamt up.
Jack Valenti reminds me of J Edgar Hoover. I'm sure he did do good in the early days, but power is a corrupting influence and the MPAA became nothing but a clique under his control. While he has retired I bet he still had a great deal of influence over its current shape, even if by appointing the people who still work there. Hopefully his demise will bring sweeping changes, just like in the FBI. Sweep away years of secrecy (and corruption?) and start afresh.
The British film board (the BBFC) might demonstrate a good model of how to reform the MPAA.
Bittorrent lets you choose any port you like to use. It might default to certain ports, but it's easy to choose another one. Some implementations of the protocol go one step further and implement crypto to avoid packet sniffing. There is absolutely no way a campus could prove you were using BT if you switched ports and used crypto. They might suspect it, but they'd have to seize your machine or observe you doing it to be sure.
Yeah. I don't see the situation changing for the forseeable future either
Activision are producing the game for every console. It doesn't mean all consoles are equal though, or as IGN puts it - "Although we didn't see the PS2, PSP, or Wii versions running, Activision has told us that they will still have a large, streaming world only with weaker graphics. To you and me, that means a lower resolution and less draw distance. All of the versions will have 10 storylines, though the PS2, PSP, and Wii iterations will have two different ones when compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions and will feature some different characters never before seen in a Spider-Man movie game. The last difference is that the low resolution versions of Spider-Man 3 will allow the player to switch more easily between the black and red suits."
It seems pretty clear what tier the Wii is on for this game. Which demonstrates my point.
Porting most titles from the 360 to the PC or the PS3 is probably a straightforward exercise. There are issues of course, but all three platforms can obviously share the majority of their code and other assets like graphics.
The same is not true of the Wii. The reason there are so many crappy PS2 ports going to the Wii is because it has no peer. It is underpowered in memory, CPU and graphics compared to the 360 or PS3, making it difficult or downright impossible to downport things to it. Thus it gets a lot of sloppy seconds from the PS2. I don't really see the situation changing for the forseeable future. Once the PS2 starts to wane, the Wii is going to have to overly rely on exclusives which many 3rd parties may consider to be suicidally risky when Nintendo has dominated sales for exclusives.
The original Tux sucks because it looks fat, bored, lazy and apathetic and / or immensely stupid. It isn't even very eye catching. It really is not a good mascot. There are better drawings of Tux such as the Tux crystal version. The original should be dumped for one which is more attractive, mischievous and interesting.
I think it would be virtually impossible to come into contact with any computer in the last 15 years and not see tabs. MS Windows 3.1 had tabs on apps like MS Office and thereafter. Windows 95 onwards extensively used tabs. Lotus Notes had tabs. Mac OS had tabs in MacOS 7 onwards. OS/2 2.0 onwards had tabs. GNOME & KDE had tabs. Every other web site has tabs or a tab-like organisational metaphor.
Everything had tabs. I don't think there is any way whatsoever that they can feign ignorance that tabs have been literally ubiquitous in the last 15-20 years. I have no idea what this means to their lawsuit, but I expect most judges would raise their eyebrows that some submarine patent could appear now and challenge a universally adopted and rather obvious convention.
I see. So because you can take OD on one kind of vitamin pill with no ill effect, it somehow validates that natural is better that prescription medicine? In which case homeopathy must be the safest medicine of all since I could easily down an entire bottle of pills every day of my life with no fear of any effects whatsoever.
"Mother Nature" has produced some of the most lethal poisons and toxins known to man. By all means drink a tea infused from a cocktail of god-knows ingredients grown, harvested and stored in god-knows conditions for god-knows how many years with god-knows what effects on the body or a small percentage of users. But you can't for a second claim that it is somehow safer and as efficacious as a properly controlled, scientifically tested drug.
So... Why did they suddenly decide to go after Apple now when Mozilla has been in, urm, flagrant violation of this supposed patent for much longer than Apple?
Mozilla? Think farther back than that. OS/2 had tabs close to 15 years ago and I'm sure it wasn't the first either.
With Vista, there is no compelling useful feature for users, and much of the content added is particularly ANTI-user. So why upgrade?
I find the improved desktop to be a pretty attractive feature. IMHO the desktop is extremely usable especially with the Aero Glass scheme and I much prefer it to XP or OS X for that matter. Having every window as a surface makes the whole experience incredibly slick. Other things such as integrated Windows Defender software (yes I know you can download it for XP) and other improvements over the last 5 years are also welcome. I don't know if it would qualify as "compelling", but I think I would find moving from Vista back to XP to be a bit of a wrench. I certainly wouldn't choose XP over Vista in any circumstance if I were buying a new PC.
Outside of the improved desktop there are good things and bad things. Tools like Calendar & Contacts are long overdue and welcome. As is integrated SyncCentre. UAC is a pain in the butt and I've long disabled it, and it disgusts me no end that every MS Windows seems to have the exact same crappy notepad.exe and paint.exe included. The biggest disappointment for me is that there is a 32-bit and 64-bit version of Vista. I don't understand why there even needs to be a distinction - if OS X can support both invisibly then Windows should too. A wasted opportunity. I haven't hit any DRM issues with Vista and quite happily use VLC, DVD Decrypter and other tools without issue.
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The threat he posed was to expose their idiotic (and expensive) teachings, their lies and to illustrate what a malignant mind control cult they really are. This made him their enemy and they have been hounding him with nuisance lawsuits ever since. Unfortunately for him he made some throwaway remark on a usenet forum about aiming a missile at their HQ and they somehow managed to get him prosecuted for making terrorist threats as well as interfering with a religion.
His unrelating persecution by scientologists to silence and even jail the guy show who the terrorists really are.
That would be called SELinux and is turned on in Fedora Core.
Writing policy files either as a user, admin or even developer is hellishly difficult. FC has been messing with SELinux policies for years before getting it right. It almost requires an interactive mode where the policy can be "trained" by running the app a multiple times to see what registry / folder / files it needs access to and then ensuring that the policy enforces it.
Yes. As a Vista user I recommend just disabling the stupid thing.
Except you can't have it now. If some new device appears on the market, and even if they open sourced the driver, the chances are that the dist I am running now may never support that device. And even if it did, I'd have to fetch a new kernel to get support or patch a kernel myself. Patching and rebuilding a kernel is non-trivial even for experts and absolutely not possible for anyone else.
The only time this breaks down is for proprietary drivers. And the linux devs simply aren't interested in supporting those. They aren't making a profit from linux - they get paid the same whether there are 10 linux users or 10 billion. Think about it - Linux took the time to write linux when there wasn't a framebuffer driver for a simple VGA card, so do you think it is a big deal to him that there isn't GPL-code available to program the vertex shaders on a GForce?..
And here lies the problem. Lots of hardware, particularly graphics drivers contains proprietary information, trade secrets, and other things they absolutely do not want their competitors to know about. Maybe NVidia would love to open source their code but they just can't - they have too much riding in their battle with ATI. Other times the hardware vendor *can't* open source the code because it isn't theirs to open source, e.g. because they use someone else's chipset or design. As I said, an ABI isn't necessarily optimal so there is still incentive for vendors to release source. Another reason is that they can save money if someone else maintains the code for them. But they should have the choice.
It would be nice if all drivers were open sourced, but reality says it will never ever happen. So Linux is either faced with being continually several years behind the curve, or getting pragmatic. It's hard to see how it will ever conquer the desktop or even become mainstream when it passes up one easy way to win a lot of converts.
And the reasons for not having a stable interface are pretty odd indeed. I can understand why Linus might hate having to support backwards compatibility, after all it is a hateful chore at his level.
However dists and OEMS should care a great deal. A binary interface means a vendor can distribute a single driver and it works on all dists supporting some particular kernel version, e.g. 2.6.x. The ABI could even specify the package format, e.g. RPM, and how drivers are installed, started, stopped, & removed. Just like a sane OS should work. Drivers through the ABI might not be optimal but at least they work and continue to regardless of whether the kernel is upgraded or what dist is being used. Better yet if the ABI supports mini drivers so that the vendor only has to implement a small amount of code. An ABI would be good for everyone. The OSDL could even run certification & signing of good drivers to ensure good quality.
All a thief has to do is buy another copy of the DVD legitimately and then return the inactive one complaining it doesn't work. The teller will swipe it to activate it. The thief comes back later and complains it still doesn't work and demand a refund. So for their efforts the store hasn't stopped theft, has increased their number of returns (since many of the returns will be genuine) and invested in an expensive and ineffective technology.
I really don't see this one flying.
More to the point, if the king is so beloved by all his people, then who is looking at these clips?
Personally I think these actions by reactionary idiots in Thailand will make the situation worse. Instead of one mildly offensive clip it will be multiple clips that really push the boat out in ways to offend the kind.
Ignore the clips and they become background noise. Kick up a stink and it can only be a matter of time before tubgirl gets involved.
I shall throw away VNC and wait for this new solution.
Or rather OS X tosses away all conventional assumptions about GUI development and expects developers to write their front-end UI handling in Objective C and define the GUI in .nib files. I expect trying to reconcile that world with the conventional world enjoyed by Windows, Unix, or even Carbon on OS X might be a bit tough. Carbon might be the easiest route they can go in, and that in itself might cause other issues.
It is a defence. It's hard to see how there could be any other kind of defence. David Irving sued a historian who labelled him a holocaust denier, racist and liar because herself and her publisher were able to demonstrate that he was a holocaust denier, racist and liar. Hence he lost since the allegation was substantially true.
Which makes it sound comparable to SELinux. SELinux might be a bitch to configure (and thus most people only use it when the system has well done policy files), but it is extremely granular.
Gmail has other things to work with such as IP addresses and message content. It doesn't have to look at a single word to flag it spam. Iran would not have that luxury. It would have to filter based on 256 characters out of which there are literally millions of ways of spelling immoral words. It's a fools errand to even try, and quite ridiculous too really. Even if filtering were successful, teens will simply invent stand-in words or abbreviations which mean the same thing as far as they are concerned. I understand it is already commonplace for teens in repressive countries to speak in code.
I doubt it. Viagra and Cialis are two words of which spammers have invented a million permutations and going strong. I really doubt Iran could ever filter every single "immoral" words no matter how many permutations they dreamt up.
After all, look at the success we have filtering spam adverts for viagra, cialis etc. from our mailboxes.
Would MySQL ever seriously be considered for managing a payroll?
The British film board (the BBFC) might demonstrate a good model of how to reform the MPAA.
Bittorrent lets you choose any port you like to use. It might default to certain ports, but it's easy to choose another one. Some implementations of the protocol go one step further and implement crypto to avoid packet sniffing. There is absolutely no way a campus could prove you were using BT if you switched ports and used crypto. They might suspect it, but they'd have to seize your machine or observe you doing it to be sure.
Activision are producing the game for every console. It doesn't mean all consoles are equal though, or as IGN puts it - "Although we didn't see the PS2, PSP, or Wii versions running, Activision has told us that they will still have a large, streaming world only with weaker graphics. To you and me, that means a lower resolution and less draw distance. All of the versions will have 10 storylines, though the PS2, PSP, and Wii iterations will have two different ones when compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions and will feature some different characters never before seen in a Spider-Man movie game. The last difference is that the low resolution versions of Spider-Man 3 will allow the player to switch more easily between the black and red suits."
It seems pretty clear what tier the Wii is on for this game. Which demonstrates my point.
Porting most titles from the 360 to the PC or the PS3 is probably a straightforward exercise. There are issues of course, but all three platforms can obviously share the majority of their code and other assets like graphics.
The same is not true of the Wii. The reason there are so many crappy PS2 ports going to the Wii is because it has no peer. It is underpowered in memory, CPU and graphics compared to the 360 or PS3, making it difficult or downright impossible to downport things to it. Thus it gets a lot of sloppy seconds from the PS2. I don't really see the situation changing for the forseeable future. Once the PS2 starts to wane, the Wii is going to have to overly rely on exclusives which many 3rd parties may consider to be suicidally risky when Nintendo has dominated sales for exclusives.
The original Tux sucks because it looks fat, bored, lazy and apathetic and / or immensely stupid. It isn't even very eye catching. It really is not a good mascot. There are better drawings of Tux such as the Tux crystal version. The original should be dumped for one which is more attractive, mischievous and interesting.
Everything had tabs. I don't think there is any way whatsoever that they can feign ignorance that tabs have been literally ubiquitous in the last 15-20 years. I have no idea what this means to their lawsuit, but I expect most judges would raise their eyebrows that some submarine patent could appear now and challenge a universally adopted and rather obvious convention.
I see. So because you can take OD on one kind of vitamin pill with no ill effect, it somehow validates that natural is better that prescription medicine? In which case homeopathy must be the safest medicine of all since I could easily down an entire bottle of pills every day of my life with no fear of any effects whatsoever.
"Mother Nature" has produced some of the most lethal poisons and toxins known to man. By all means drink a tea infused from a cocktail of god-knows ingredients grown, harvested and stored in god-knows conditions for god-knows how many years with god-knows what effects on the body or a small percentage of users. But you can't for a second claim that it is somehow safer and as efficacious as a properly controlled, scientifically tested drug.
Mozilla? Think farther back than that. OS/2 had tabs close to 15 years ago and I'm sure it wasn't the first either.
I find the improved desktop to be a pretty attractive feature. IMHO the desktop is extremely usable especially with the Aero Glass scheme and I much prefer it to XP or OS X for that matter. Having every window as a surface makes the whole experience incredibly slick. Other things such as integrated Windows Defender software (yes I know you can download it for XP) and other improvements over the last 5 years are also welcome. I don't know if it would qualify as "compelling", but I think I would find moving from Vista back to XP to be a bit of a wrench. I certainly wouldn't choose XP over Vista in any circumstance if I were buying a new PC.
Outside of the improved desktop there are good things and bad things. Tools like Calendar & Contacts are long overdue and welcome. As is integrated SyncCentre. UAC is a pain in the butt and I've long disabled it, and it disgusts me no end that every MS Windows seems to have the exact same crappy notepad.exe and paint.exe included. The biggest disappointment for me is that there is a 32-bit and 64-bit version of Vista. I don't understand why there even needs to be a distinction - if OS X can support both invisibly then Windows should too. A wasted opportunity. I haven't hit any DRM issues with Vista and quite happily use VLC, DVD Decrypter and other tools without issue.