If there is no event to explain then there is nothing to explain.
"I once heard about someone saying that they saw something while they couldn't have seen it and what they saw was true!"
In no way is that a reputable or rigorous observation. It is not a verifiable event and, therefore, does not require a verifiable explanation. A simple "It's probably made up" would do. The poster actually went beyond that and said this wouldn't cut it either: "I saw an obvious situation brought on by my death; people were crowding around my hospital bed and crying!". That offers a simple and obvious explanation for that circumstance.
Being as no one has brought up any claim to the contrary I'm going to stay on the side of rational thought and believe the original poster was correct.
If only one person witnessed the eclipse that would probably be the explanation.
Being as such an event is corroborated by thousands and there is a known object that passes between us and the sun the simplest explanation becomes: The moon got in the way.
Natural explanations are always above supernatural explanations. Supernatural explanations should not even be on the considered list for rational people.
If I'm doing simple interaction, like posting to Slashdot, why do I need JS?
Good example- let me tell you why Slashdot uses Javascript. You're reading along through X hundred posts and you see something you want to respond to. Now you try to comment and you have to reload the entire page including X hundred comments. And that's just to display a text box to type your comment into. Let's assume it uses hashlinks to scroll the window to the proper place. That's a tonne of data transfer just to get a text box (unless you think there should be a text box loaded under every single comment on first load. Talk about wasted space/time) Now you have to push a submit button and the entire X hundred comments have to be sent to you another time so you can see the comment preview. And then a third time to actually post the comment. Hope you didn't decide to revise the post at all or that's another 2 times the X hundred comments get sent down the pipe.
Here's what actually happens using Javascript: Click "reply", JS loads textbox in appropriate place, click preview, Javascript creates the preview in appropriate spot, click post, Javascript sends post to server for submission. All that without constantly reloading the other X hundred comments.
Which one do you think will give the better user experience? Your forms based solution will be slow, clunky and put a tonne of unnecessary load on the server. What kind of computer scientist would think that that is the best solution?
No real users want to use software like that. Users want things to looks nice; they want them to be fast, responsive and have animations. No rational computer scientist would think that UI should be calculated at 20 - 200ms latency away- it's absurd.
All this Javascript bashing is popular on slashdot and great for some good old fashioned karma whoring. But it falls flat on its face as soon as someone asks how to make the modern web without it. Javascript is a shit language but to claim that client side scripting should be abolished and is not needed is asinine and moronic.
There will always be some JS 0-day. Maybe I'd like to bank online without an attacker previously having executing arbitrary code on my machine? Is that an oddball requirement?
Then run a separate locked down computer on a separate locked down network. Or do you think JavaScript is the only vulnerable thing on a computer?
but unless my intent is to run an application delivered over the web
Which is pretty much everybody's intent that uses the internet. I bet you this banking you want to do online uses some javascript. Nobody wants a pure forms based internet experience. It's horribly inefficient and awkward.
Except nobody is using NoSQL, HTML5, etc. etc. for the things that were written in C++ 15 years ago. No one had well-funcitoning and maintainable solutions to the these things 15 years ago.
The reason these new languages pop up and become popular is because they fill a niche the old ones don't. C++ is not a good language for modern web application development. Obviously you can do it but there are other languages and frameworks that will do it faster and easier.
You will still see the majority of work where C is best is still done in C. You will still see the majority of work where C++ is best done in C++
If you are making a new project why not use the best and most up-to-date solution for it? Sure there are some blowhards going on about this language or that language but that's not a new problem. Those same blowhards existed on both sides of the C v. C++ camps as well.
That's an entirely useless statement in this context. If the intention is to keep the data out of the hands of the end user then it doesn't matter if they decrypt "as the designer intended" and snoop the data or if they break the encryption algorithm. There is still a failure in the process.
I suppose it depends on your reason for obfuscating. I would imagine a lot of the buzz about this is from people interested in copy-protection but I don't think this would help. Limited input-output there; easy to trace the execution path. Complex mathematical functions maybe? (compression and the like) Again, the CPU has to perform that math- just watch it.
Software cannot be hashed and run. By definition this process is reversible. I wouldn't put too much money on having it be impossible to crack.
With that outlook we'd all still be using something like Fortran. The IT industry is very very different from how it was 5, let alone 10-15 years ago. The industry moves at a lightning pace and it only stands to reason that the technologies involved would also change fairly quickly.
Complaining about and resisting change is what gives "old" developers their not-so-great status in the industry as a whole. No one wants to hire someone who only wants to shoehorn a 15 year old solution into a modern problem / environment.
A) Joke (the quality of which I'm not going to comment on)
B) It does not have to be all 300+ million residents. Only a certain, much smaller, number is required before reaching a critical mass and it is seen as a cultural aspect of a group as a whole.
C) Overly self-defensive and unable to take jokes directed at their country. Reason #8734 not to fly to the US;) [That's a joke too!]
You've missed the point entirely and verbosely. You have decided that it's just entertainment and you don't care about it so to hell with everyone who does- they should die if they want to participate. That's a pretty useless viewpoint in society.
You come off as bitter that a few athletes get paid a lot (many of them do not) and so you think they should suffer. Rambling about a few individual musicians that did recreation drugs is about as off-topic as you can get here. There is no performance enhancing drug you have to take to become a musician that will kill you in a few years. That is the issue here: if enhancing drugs are allowed in something based entirely around competition then essentially they are required.
(and change rules if we did not like it).
That is exactly what we are talking about... Except in this case the rule is already in place and I was giving the reason (one of many) why it is in place.
You don't see any problem with people killing themselves because they were told their entire life by their coach, parents etc. that winning X was the single most important thing?
You don't like professional sports (not that I blame you) but some people do. Should they have to throw their lives away just so they can participate?
To make it a little more personal to you what if the government decided it was okay for corporations to choose their employees based on their willingness to take performance enhancing drugs? And I'm not talking about caffeine here; I mean the real powerful ones that are illegal. A lot of corporations won't care that they turn you into a slobbering vegetable in 5 years- they got what they wanted from you. But in those 5 years many other companies have had to introduce similar rules to stay competitive. Now you can't get into your chosen profession unless you are willing to take the very real risk that you will ruin your life doing it. Is that fair?
I apologise. I didn't know you meant specifically a regime killing their own "subjects". Personally I would consider a regime killing anyone unnecessarily to be bad though.
To destroy it as quickly as you seem to suggest we are doing
I gave no suggestions on time frame. Merely stated that the US makes some pretty questionable choices that may end up resulting in some economic misery in the future.
Not killing millions of their own citizens I'll give you. But not being guilty of crashing and burning isn't really a fair comparison until after all events have transpired. Hence my comment of time will tell.
I agree with you that the US is not the same as those regimes. But I wouldn't kid myself to believe they aren't capable and powerful enough to become every bit as bad given the correct circumstance.
That's not true at all. Historical figures are usually corroborated by other societies they came in contact with. Otherwise anything "known" about them is taken with a grain of salt.
The shoe doesn't create the impact!! How would it make you faster to absorb it in your joints than in shoe padding? Ignoring the fact that track shoes are designed and optimised for this exact purpose how would they possibly slow you down? Gah! mount stupid indeed.
I was talking about millions killed by the regime itself
So was I. Or do all the people killed by the various "conflicts" the US has gotten into in the past few years not count as people? What about all the people killed by dictators propped up by the CIA to give them better business relations (read: exploitation) with a region? Those don't count because they sub-contracted it? I agreed it's not on the same level as genocide (although they have supported that as well) but it is certainly not non-existent.
but our existing wealth is staggering
Again, they weren't doing that badly either. Losing a World War probably isn't cheap though. They over-extended themselves and paid the price.
an occasional mismanagement, however gross
No it won't but you need to keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't move from "occasional" to "common". History would lead me to believe that mismanagement tends toward the "common" level if left to manage itself.
Check, no world war level death toll but it's not exactly non-existent either.
economic misery for the survivors
Time will tell on that one. Checked your deficit lately? Hitler did pretty damn well for the economy for a while there. Then things caught up with them and they lost a war.
Just to clarify, what you're saying is that projects like Noveau, openiboot, XBMC, etc... are all illegal?
The projects themselves? Probably not. But the act of installing them and telling others how to install them most likely is. Breaking a locked bootloader would definitely fall under anti-circumvention laws (yes it is ridiculous). Having XBMC on your original Xbox probably was though because it required breaking copy protection and as far as I know still allowed you to connect to the xbox network? I might be wrong there but that's the kind of thing you get computer / wire fraud thrown into your list of charges for.
Well I'm not in the US, most people are not in the US, the problem is with the US legal system and the unwillingness of its population to do anything about it.
100% agree (I'm not in the US either). But that doesn't mean either of us are completely safe from it. There is a very strong and well-funded push to make these laws more global. And not being in the states won't stop a determined corporation from ruining your life. That they don't does not mean that they can't or won't in the future. That's what people (like myself) take issue with- being at the good-graces of corporations to be able to use what I pay for.
You have three options for learning how hardware works and writing your own software.
1. You can use trial and error and hope you don't break it and hope you figure out enough to do anything with before the universe experiences heat death.
2. You can get an electron microscope and use it to give you a slight leg-up on option 1.
3. You can circumvent digital locks and reverse engineer the currently running software.
Which option do you think every successful attempt uses?
Additionally, because it happened on one device does not automatically mean it is possible for every device. That's like logical fallacy 101.
Yes, people get around locked boot loaders all the time. But do you know what the first step to getting around a locked boot loader is? Getting the encryption keys! So now your first problem is distributing those keys is a DMCA violation (read up on that Sony v George Hotz link I posted). Your second problem is that in order to get those keys you must have broken your license agreement. I mean maybe you brute forced it but in reality that is essentially impossible.
So yes- cracking a locked bootloader is very possible and done all the time. But no it is not legal*. If the manufacturer gets the inkling they can make your life hell for having the gall to try to use the hardware that you bought. Because Apple hasn't done so over OpeniBoot does not mean that they do not have the power to. Which is what the problem is.
* not legal in the United States. Most of these projects get around that by not being based in the United States.
Your inability to understand that hardware (especially a computing device) is useless without software is mind-numbing.
Your arguments are asinine. Your choices to use these computers are "do it like this" or "shut it off". Nobody but an idiot or a corporate shill would claim that those two options are "how ever you want". You cannot use a computer without software because the software is what runs the hardware (do you actually know how a computer works?)
It is not that it is hard; it is in matter of fact impossible. Locked boot-loaders, hypervisors, protected paths. How do you devise getting these to work without the software they have been locked to? Really, please. There's a whole world of people out there that would love to know a legal way to do this.
Let me put it to you using the simplest of concepts. Locked boot-loaders, hypervisors, protected paths. We'll call these "locks" here. They are locks of the digital variety so let's call them "digital locks" lest you confuse them with their real-life namesake. Now what does the DMCA have to say about breaking "digital locks"? The answer is that it says it is a no-no.
So you can please explain to me how you propose to use a computing device how ever you want without using software in an "unlicensed" manner. Or I will continue thinking you made a dumb comment and are incapable of accepting being wrong so will steadfastly deny it. I suppose you could really just not understand what you are talking about also.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is no event to explain then there is nothing to explain.
"I once heard about someone saying that they saw something while they couldn't have seen it and what they saw was true!"
In no way is that a reputable or rigorous observation. It is not a verifiable event and, therefore, does not require a verifiable explanation. A simple "It's probably made up" would do. The poster actually went beyond that and said this wouldn't cut it either: "I saw an obvious situation brought on by my death; people were crowding around my hospital bed and crying!". That offers a simple and obvious explanation for that circumstance.
Being as no one has brought up any claim to the contrary I'm going to stay on the side of rational thought and believe the original poster was correct.
If only one person witnessed the eclipse that would probably be the explanation.
Being as such an event is corroborated by thousands and there is a known object that passes between us and the sun the simplest explanation becomes: The moon got in the way.
Natural explanations are always above supernatural explanations. Supernatural explanations should not even be on the considered list for rational people.
You are either unsure of what "prior art", "windshield" or "heads up display" (HUD) means.
If I'm doing simple interaction, like posting to Slashdot, why do I need JS?
Good example- let me tell you why Slashdot uses Javascript. You're reading along through X hundred posts and you see something you want to respond to. Now you try to comment and you have to reload the entire page including X hundred comments. And that's just to display a text box to type your comment into. Let's assume it uses hashlinks to scroll the window to the proper place. That's a tonne of data transfer just to get a text box (unless you think there should be a text box loaded under every single comment on first load. Talk about wasted space/time) Now you have to push a submit button and the entire X hundred comments have to be sent to you another time so you can see the comment preview. And then a third time to actually post the comment. Hope you didn't decide to revise the post at all or that's another 2 times the X hundred comments get sent down the pipe.
Here's what actually happens using Javascript: Click "reply", JS loads textbox in appropriate place, click preview, Javascript creates the preview in appropriate spot, click post, Javascript sends post to server for submission. All that without constantly reloading the other X hundred comments.
Which one do you think will give the better user experience? Your forms based solution will be slow, clunky and put a tonne of unnecessary load on the server. What kind of computer scientist would think that that is the best solution?
No real users want to use software like that. Users want things to looks nice; they want them to be fast, responsive and have animations. No rational computer scientist would think that UI should be calculated at 20 - 200ms latency away- it's absurd.
All this Javascript bashing is popular on slashdot and great for some good old fashioned karma whoring. But it falls flat on its face as soon as someone asks how to make the modern web without it. Javascript is a shit language but to claim that client side scripting should be abolished and is not needed is asinine and moronic.
There will always be some JS 0-day. Maybe I'd like to bank online without an attacker previously having executing arbitrary code on my machine? Is that an oddball requirement?
Then run a separate locked down computer on a separate locked down network. Or do you think JavaScript is the only vulnerable thing on a computer?
but unless my intent is to run an application delivered over the web
Which is pretty much everybody's intent that uses the internet. I bet you this banking you want to do online uses some javascript. Nobody wants a pure forms based internet experience. It's horribly inefficient and awkward.
Just that the content producers don't want them to be.
I assure you it is the content consumers as well. There is an infinitely small amount of people that do not want website scripting.
Except nobody is using NoSQL, HTML5, etc. etc. for the things that were written in C++ 15 years ago. No one had well-funcitoning and maintainable solutions to the these things 15 years ago.
The reason these new languages pop up and become popular is because they fill a niche the old ones don't. C++ is not a good language for modern web application development. Obviously you can do it but there are other languages and frameworks that will do it faster and easier.
You will still see the majority of work where C is best is still done in C. You will still see the majority of work where C++ is best done in C++
If you are making a new project why not use the best and most up-to-date solution for it? Sure there are some blowhards going on about this language or that language but that's not a new problem. Those same blowhards existed on both sides of the C v. C++ camps as well.
That's an entirely useless statement in this context. If the intention is to keep the data out of the hands of the end user then it doesn't matter if they decrypt "as the designer intended" and snoop the data or if they break the encryption algorithm. There is still a failure in the process.
I suppose it depends on your reason for obfuscating. I would imagine a lot of the buzz about this is from people interested in copy-protection but I don't think this would help. Limited input-output there; easy to trace the execution path. Complex mathematical functions maybe? (compression and the like) Again, the CPU has to perform that math- just watch it.
Software cannot be hashed and run. By definition this process is reversible. I wouldn't put too much money on having it be impossible to crack.
The difference is that I can very easily decrypt PGP myself which is why people are saying these claims aren't true.
With that outlook we'd all still be using something like Fortran. The IT industry is very very different from how it was 5, let alone 10-15 years ago. The industry moves at a lightning pace and it only stands to reason that the technologies involved would also change fairly quickly.
Complaining about and resisting change is what gives "old" developers their not-so-great status in the industry as a whole. No one wants to hire someone who only wants to shoehorn a 15 year old solution into a modern problem / environment.
A) Joke (the quality of which I'm not going to comment on)
B) It does not have to be all 300+ million residents. Only a certain, much smaller, number is required before reaching a critical mass and it is seen as a cultural aspect of a group as a whole.
C) Overly self-defensive and unable to take jokes directed at their country. Reason #8734 not to fly to the US ;) [That's a joke too!]
You've missed the point entirely and verbosely. You have decided that it's just entertainment and you don't care about it so to hell with everyone who does- they should die if they want to participate. That's a pretty useless viewpoint in society.
You come off as bitter that a few athletes get paid a lot (many of them do not) and so you think they should suffer. Rambling about a few individual musicians that did recreation drugs is about as off-topic as you can get here. There is no performance enhancing drug you have to take to become a musician that will kill you in a few years. That is the issue here: if enhancing drugs are allowed in something based entirely around competition then essentially they are required.
(and change rules if we did not like it).
That is exactly what we are talking about... Except in this case the rule is already in place and I was giving the reason (one of many) why it is in place.
You don't see any problem with people killing themselves because they were told their entire life by their coach, parents etc. that winning X was the single most important thing?
You don't like professional sports (not that I blame you) but some people do. Should they have to throw their lives away just so they can participate?
To make it a little more personal to you what if the government decided it was okay for corporations to choose their employees based on their willingness to take performance enhancing drugs? And I'm not talking about caffeine here; I mean the real powerful ones that are illegal. A lot of corporations won't care that they turn you into a slobbering vegetable in 5 years- they got what they wanted from you. But in those 5 years many other companies have had to introduce similar rules to stay competitive. Now you can't get into your chosen profession unless you are willing to take the very real risk that you will ruin your life doing it. Is that fair?
I apologise. I didn't know you meant specifically a regime killing their own "subjects". Personally I would consider a regime killing anyone unnecessarily to be bad though.
To destroy it as quickly as you seem to suggest we are doing
I gave no suggestions on time frame. Merely stated that the US makes some pretty questionable choices that may end up resulting in some economic misery in the future.
Not killing millions of their own citizens I'll give you. But not being guilty of crashing and burning isn't really a fair comparison until after all events have transpired. Hence my comment of time will tell.
I agree with you that the US is not the same as those regimes. But I wouldn't kid myself to believe they aren't capable and powerful enough to become every bit as bad given the correct circumstance.
That's not true at all. Historical figures are usually corroborated by other societies they came in contact with. Otherwise anything "known" about them is taken with a grain of salt.
Worse than that. It will practically be a requirement to overdose and kill yourself to be competitive.
The shoe doesn't create the impact!! How would it make you faster to absorb it in your joints than in shoe padding? Ignoring the fact that track shoes are designed and optimised for this exact purpose how would they possibly slow you down? Gah! mount stupid indeed.
I was talking about millions killed by the regime itself
So was I. Or do all the people killed by the various "conflicts" the US has gotten into in the past few years not count as people? What about all the people killed by dictators propped up by the CIA to give them better business relations (read: exploitation) with a region? Those don't count because they sub-contracted it? I agreed it's not on the same level as genocide (although they have supported that as well) but it is certainly not non-existent.
but our existing wealth is staggering
Again, they weren't doing that badly either. Losing a World War probably isn't cheap though. They over-extended themselves and paid the price.
an occasional mismanagement, however gross
No it won't but you need to keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't move from "occasional" to "common". History would lead me to believe that mismanagement tends toward the "common" level if left to manage itself.
That's quite the restrictive (and incorrect) definition of private you have there.
millions of dead
Check, no world war level death toll but it's not exactly non-existent either.
economic misery for the survivors
Time will tell on that one. Checked your deficit lately? Hitler did pretty damn well for the economy for a while there. Then things caught up with them and they lost a war.
Soooo.... Climate change occurred for the exact same reason and only that reason every time it has happened in the past x billion years on the planet?
Insightful?! Is Slashdot selling modpoints to Halliburton and BP or something?
Just to clarify, what you're saying is that projects like Noveau, openiboot, XBMC, etc... are all illegal?
The projects themselves? Probably not. But the act of installing them and telling others how to install them most likely is. Breaking a locked bootloader would definitely fall under anti-circumvention laws (yes it is ridiculous). Having XBMC on your original Xbox probably was though because it required breaking copy protection and as far as I know still allowed you to connect to the xbox network? I might be wrong there but that's the kind of thing you get computer / wire fraud thrown into your list of charges for.
Well I'm not in the US, most people are not in the US, the problem is with the US legal system and the unwillingness of its population to do anything about it.
100% agree (I'm not in the US either). But that doesn't mean either of us are completely safe from it. There is a very strong and well-funded push to make these laws more global. And not being in the states won't stop a determined corporation from ruining your life. That they don't does not mean that they can't or won't in the future. That's what people (like myself) take issue with- being at the good-graces of corporations to be able to use what I pay for.
You have three options for learning how hardware works and writing your own software.
1. You can use trial and error and hope you don't break it and hope you figure out enough to do anything with before the universe experiences heat death.
2. You can get an electron microscope and use it to give you a slight leg-up on option 1.
3. You can circumvent digital locks and reverse engineer the currently running software.
Which option do you think every successful attempt uses?
Additionally, because it happened on one device does not automatically mean it is possible for every device. That's like logical fallacy 101.
Yes, people get around locked boot loaders all the time. But do you know what the first step to getting around a locked boot loader is? Getting the encryption keys! So now your first problem is distributing those keys is a DMCA violation (read up on that Sony v George Hotz link I posted). Your second problem is that in order to get those keys you must have broken your license agreement. I mean maybe you brute forced it but in reality that is essentially impossible.
So yes- cracking a locked bootloader is very possible and done all the time. But no it is not legal*. If the manufacturer gets the inkling they can make your life hell for having the gall to try to use the hardware that you bought. Because Apple hasn't done so over OpeniBoot does not mean that they do not have the power to. Which is what the problem is.
* not legal in the United States. Most of these projects get around that by not being based in the United States.
Your inability to understand that hardware (especially a computing device) is useless without software is mind-numbing.
Your arguments are asinine. Your choices to use these computers are "do it like this" or "shut it off". Nobody but an idiot or a corporate shill would claim that those two options are "how ever you want". You cannot use a computer without software because the software is what runs the hardware (do you actually know how a computer works?)
It is not that it is hard; it is in matter of fact impossible. Locked boot-loaders, hypervisors, protected paths. How do you devise getting these to work without the software they have been locked to? Really, please. There's a whole world of people out there that would love to know a legal way to do this.
Let me put it to you using the simplest of concepts. Locked boot-loaders, hypervisors, protected paths. We'll call these "locks" here. They are locks of the digital variety so let's call them "digital locks" lest you confuse them with their real-life namesake. Now what does the DMCA have to say about breaking "digital locks"? The answer is that it says it is a no-no.
So you can please explain to me how you propose to use a computing device how ever you want without using software in an "unlicensed" manner. Or I will continue thinking you made a dumb comment and are incapable of accepting being wrong so will steadfastly deny it. I suppose you could really just not understand what you are talking about also.