Yikes! I'd change ISP's, immediately. I'd rather be on a cable modem or getting my access from AOL than have to deal with that kind of snooping. And yeah, I know how much I can be snooped by the world at large without knowing about it - but most of the time I -won't- be, at least not by the same person. If changing providers isn't possible, I'd secure my box up tight, and do everything - or as much as possible - by PGP and SSH. Actually, I'd probably just do without the net, horrible as the thought is. I'm really against giving money to people that I have a strong moral stance against. Gets expensive sometimes to be that way, but I sleep better at night.:)
Why run off a CD-R? You'll stop -almost- as many exploits just by mounting your partitions read-only, and get to keep your speed as well. Sure, if someone achieves a root-shell they can remount, but how easy is it to achieve a root shell if you can't write the drives? I'm assuming, of course, that the other advice in this column has been followed, and the only port offering services is the http port, and (although this hasn't been mentioned) that the web-server and cgi-bins are -not- running as root.
At that point, a crack is going to take something like an exploitable memory overrun and a kernel (or driver) bug.
In other words, you're eliminating cracking techniques that involve any sort of file overrun to directly write to the web pages (like the one that hit id software) as well as preventing people from achieving root by putting scripts in places where cron or init or some other helpful daemon is going to come along and execute them as root. (Of course, you'd hope the web-server couldn't write to init.d or root's crontab anyway, but, for the sake of arguing with myself and because there's probably a hundred similar exploits that I haven't thought of, being that I'm not a cracker myself.)
My point generally being that running a website from CD is going to be very expensive timewise.
Anyway, even if you don't make everything read-only, think twice before making a partition writeable. Everything's writeable on my home box, but - that's my home box. I'm not a target. (And even so I'm probably going to redo that configuration one day, when I have the time to shuffle partitions).
Nobody's answered the coward's question yet? The answer is, basically, that the output is patch-style diff output. It says that comparing ip_options.c in the linux.vanilla hierarchy to the ip_options.c in the current hierarchy, you can make vanilla like current by removing the line that says 'kfree_skb(skb);' ; in other words, that's the technical version of what was mentioned on the main article. I have a memory like a sieve, so I won't attempt to tell you how, but you can take those lines and pipe them through diff and patch your kernel that way. I think it may be as simple as being root and doing 'patch filename', but if I were you I'd check the manpages (for diff, and patch) before trying anything. For a one-liner it's probably just as easy to cut it by hand.
Let's be serious. Security in most movie theaters is a joke. What there is of it is mostly concerned with keeping people from getting into the -seating area- without paying. Projection booths are left unlocked, even with the doors open, all the time. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to steal a theater film, because the equipment is ridiculously bulky... people don't use -those- projectors for home theater. (Well, obviously, someone stole -this- film, but, in general it's a pretty useless thing to steal films).
Widen your list of suspects to anyone who's ever been a projectionist... which includes many, many people who worked movie theaters as their summer/after school job through college. If it were me with this scheme, I certainly wouldn't steal it from the same theater I worked at - it's -easier- to get caught that way (because any witnesses/will/ recognize you). 'course walking into another theater's projection booth and taking the film requires a lot chutzpah, but I think they had that anyway.
That would be cute, and not a bad thing to put in your keywords, but a proof of concept program isn't prior art yet, and it -does- have a purpose other than to break patents - namely, so that J. Random Hacker, who actually wants a practical version of a concept, can look at Q. Random Hacker's code before he starts coding.
Doesn't really matter though, what people call it, as long as we all call it the same thing (or at least, by not too many different names) so that it can be found.
It seems to me that this kind of thing can be easily prevented for future patents. People in the open source movement code because they -enjoy- coding, they like experimenting with ideas. How many of us have written throwaway programs just to 'see if I can do it'? How many of those ideas are now patented by somebody?
Don't throw away those 'see if I can' programs. Publish them on the 'net - preferably digitally signed to a newsgroup archived by DejaNews et. al. Just be sure to clearly label your program 'proof of concept' so that nobody thinks it's supposed to be more than that. And if everyone puts the phrase 'proof of concept' in the keywords of their postings, a search of deja-news will quickly spit out prior-arts to challenge future patents with - assuming, of course, that some enterprising soul doesn't start a prior-art archive somewhere with thousands of these little programs.
Remember that most of these patents are founded on sloppy little programs just like that, that prove the concept but are utterly useless in the real world. And remember that it isn't prior art unless it's published.
I don't think so. As I understand it, this patent covers using web-redirection in order to load-balance. So, if Rob coded up a system where the perl-script requested a page construction from another machine in a load-balanced way, it wouldn't be covered by the patent. There's no redirection, the load-balancing is on the other side of the perl script. Of course, now the distribution script is a bottleneck that can't be escaped without violating the patent. Bookmark this comment. Code up this idea in an experimental example. It may be prior art someday. (Actually, I think these comments get deleted after a timeout, but you get my point.)
It probably wasn't. If you look close you'll find most of Ellis-D's posts are 0 or -1. He's just been moderated down often enough to have been bitten by the auto-moderation scoring that has some people starting with scores of 2 and 3 every time they post, just the other way around.
Given the score this has risen to, maybe he'll be able to post at 1 again now. I dunno how the formula works.
There's advantages and drawbacks to everything. My answer to that criticism is that it's better to have packages for the base system than.tgz's, because you may have dependencies on elements in the base. The 'cleaner' install will cost later in managing your upgrades.
Which isn't to say NetBSD is 'wrong,' somehow, just to say that there are advantages to the Debian way that I, personally, appreciate over a simplification in the install process.
Note that they are a 'legitimate' marketer. They want to prosecute fraudulent spammers who are breaking all sorts of laws to begin with. Sounds good to me. Lock the spammers up. Now I'm not so happy that they're a marketing service themselves, and you can bet that they don't want to end -all- spam, just spam for illegal schemes.
A sensible transition plan, and one I would be very surprised if it hadn't already been written up, would be for the 240-247 space to be used in the transition to IPv6; during the interim-period, IPv6 addresses would -only- exist in the class E range. Once everything is stable, then everything goes IPv6. (Or maybe we do it in reverse... 240-247 are used as a prefix by 'smart' gateways to allow new-IP to talk to old-IP. Or whatever.) The point is, if we throw away those addresses for the minimal (percentage-wise) increase in total address space, we won't have them for transition schemes of this nature.
The 10% means 10% means 10%. Not more than 10% of the -product- can be American. It isn't a software law, it's a general law (or if it is a software law, it's a template law where they substituted in 'computer program' for 'automobile' or whatever.)
It's just a whole lot less clear what '10%' means in this context than for say, coffee, or a sweater, or other things that are actually made up of physical -stuff-. If you care enough, check the history of embargoes and rulings made on motorcars, stereos, and so on - 10% of the mass, or 10% of the components, or 10% by component-wise-value. Then try to extrapolate for software, as best you can.
The real answer won't exist until there have been enough court precedents to establish a consistent interpretation, so don't bother looking for it.
The gay/lesbian/bisexual community says 'silence=death.' The Jews say, 'Never forget' and 'Never again.' I've lost my copy of my favorite quote about the holocaust, but I'm sure most of you have seen it. 'They came for the communists, but I wasn't a communist so I didn't speak out. They came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak out... ' on through several more groups, 'And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.' It isn't bad yet - though certainly it is bad for the individuals being persecuted - but society is just knee-jerk reacting. It can go one of two ways - these new persecutions can be reviled as wrong action, or they can be supported as the way society should go. It is our voices that can make a difference, that will make a difference, that, by the update about the mass media taking an interest in this very discussion, is making a difference. I don't advocate publishing your name when you don't have to - but I do think that standing up in the PTA, the classroom, the town hall, and saying 'This is wrong,' is something that must be done. If we let our fear of reprisal silence us, they will win. If it is a risk to do so, so be it. I'm an adult now, and not a parent yet, but if I read that my town is instituting any of these persecutions, I will speak out, directly, locally, and publically.
I don't know; Lucas certainly has some of that spirit, trying to revive spirtuality and myth, but spirituality and myth are just as important to the monotheistic religions, even if not all of their practioners admit to it. To me, while the Star Wars saga is a grand myth/story, it is heavily laced with monotheistic conceptions. It's easily multireligious... the Force could be god, allah, the holy spirit, the universal soul, the buddha nature. It doesn't very well make a pantheon though. You could look at the heroes of the stories -as- the gods, that would be very in keeping with the Celtic blurring of where 'hero' ends and 'god' begins, but I think that Star Wars has much more in common with the hero-myths than the god-myths. So, in context, Luke & company are mere mortals who's great courage/goodness/striving allows them to succeed at more-than-mortal tasks, with the aid of 'the Force' (which I read much as Faith in God). Anyway. As far as modern story/myths go, I think Charles deLint has more to offer the pagan community than George Lucas.
In your haste to criticize, don't forget that the original Star Wars had only a very mild advertising campaign behind it, and almost universally got bad reviews from the critics.
Star Wars is a success because the people -like- Star Wars ; the advertising campaigns of the sequels are de rigeur for any 'Hollywood Blockbuster Movie.'
Besides that, a good trailer is almost a work of art in itself. A bad one is as painful as any hardsell salesman in your face. Lucasfilms (I don't know how much Lucas himself has to do with it) makes good trailers, IMO.
Wasn't AD&D banned in California? Or is that just a nasty rumor? I've heard of stranger things coming from that state...(no offense to those in California intended)
I don't know -where- you heard that, but I assure you it's not true. I don't live in California at the moment, but AD&D hasn't been banned any of the time I've lived or visited, and if it had, I'm sure I would've heard. In fact, everyone would have heard, because it would bring about a first-amendment crisis, since AD&D is, essentially, a set of books. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm just saying either the Supreme Court would overturn it or it'd be time to leave the country.
> The parents also filed a state lawsuit last > December charging Carneal, his parents and > several administrators, teachers and > students at the school with being > partly responsible for the shootings.
Carneal being the name of the kid that did the shooting, who's going to be in prison until he's in his forties at least. (25 yrs before he's up for parole.) Anyway, the parents of the kid -were- named, in another lawsuit, along with a pile of administrators and teachers. It sounds to me like these parents are just lawsuit-crazy. Not that I can blame them, I mean, they just lost their children, so of course they're going to go a bit crazy. I just hope the legal system doesn't support their craziness!
(So, why did an comment based on a sloppy reading of the article get moderated up to a 5? Isn't this what moderation is supposed to prevent? Well, at least I don't have to see the first-posts and 'sux' comments... )
Well, aside from the fact that quoting someone is generally considered fair use and not a violation of copyright... is there some reason that you specifically name ZDnet? Do they make a habit of stealing commentary from slashdot, or from you in particular? (For the oversensitive - this:is: genuine curiousity at work and not an attempt at irony.)
Those are 'remove from shelf' dates, not begin dates. When I learned that, the whole magazine thing made a lot more sense.
The reason, btw, that they put remove dates instead of issuance dates is because with quarterlies/bimonthlies/semimonthlies/weeklies all on the shelf, you need something consistent so the magazine seller can just go down the row and pull the 'old' issues without figuring out what kind of issue it is.
At the time that I switched to dvorak, there had been no studies done to prove that RSI and/or carpal tunnel were reduced by dvorak. However, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. I know that a major reason that I switched is because every now and then I'd get nasty pains in my wrist and arm. I switched to dvorak, and haven't had that problem since. So, no studies, but, I believe that switching to dvorak averted an RSI for me. It -is- proveable that your fingers will travel less distance typing on dvorak. (Take a dvorak layout, a qwerty layout, and a letter frequency analysis chart,... anyone can do it.)
There's to many threads saying the same sorts of things, so I'll just make one comment on my observations seperate from any of them.
Yes, StarWars really is that popular. It is not arrogance on Lucas's part, nor is it going to cost him one red (or copper-colored) cent to disallow advance ticket sales. Every single showing will sell out, for at least the first few days, perhaps the first few weeks, depending on just -how- popular it is. Many of us remember standing in line for Empire and Jedi... if you don't remember it, try asking your parents. It was on the evening news, after all, including interviews with people who had been in line since the night before. There's every reason to expect a repeat of this situation for the newest movie, especially given how long we've waited.
That being said - if the popularity of StarWars annoys, exasperates, or bores you, well - this is under the StarWars discussion topic. You don't need to read it. Your preferences settings may come in useful here.
I have to disagree with you, to a certain extent. You say, rightly, that coming up with a new -idea- is not the problem. There are billions of people in the world, and the tiny fraction of them that are geniuses can come up with more than enough ideas. However, you say that you support the 'patent and copyright systems.' In my view, there are two sorts of 'mental labor.' There is the actual process of discovering a new mathematical or scientific principle, and then there is the rigorous appliciation of various principles that have been discovered to a real world problem.
Patents supposedly do not, and certainly should not, protect the first kind of 'idea' - that of a discovery of a fundamental principle. As for the second kind of idea, that can be protected by copyright. One can copyright a program, a blueprint, a notebook full of calculations, a design schematic. The labours put into the detail work can be protected and compensated.
The very sort of thing that patents best protect is exactly what you mention in your example - it's not that hard to -think- of a steam engine, only a little harder to cobble together a barely functional prototype as 'proof of concept.' Similarly, I'm sure millions of children around the world have 'invented' the maglev train in their heads long before it was a reality. The basic principles of magnetism invite such speculation.
In a world as large and as well educated as ours, all of the 'clever ideas' will be thought of, more than once. It's just a matter of seeing the application of the principle; and -that- is precisely what the patent system is designed to protect. This allows the first person to cobble together a prototype (which in the case of software patents is pathetically easy) to patent the 'machine.' It costs a little more, since you have to engineer with real parts, to do the same sort of thing with physical inventions.
It seems to me to be reasonable to protect the fruits of intellectual labor with copyright, (look, even GNU does it!), but I don't think that patents are anywhere close to the same thing.
You can always do what I'm going to do... close up all the net stuff and just work for the next couple hours. 'course, since I have to actually dial in, it's easier to just 'be offline.' I figure it'll be less stressful and more likely that I'll actually get the trailer if I wait. Um. maybe just one more try before I log off...
Both acronyms are correct, supposedly, though presumably one is more correct than the other. Wine does, after all, serve the function of an emulator - to let programs from one kind of system run on another. But then, it -isn't- an emulator in the sense of how it actually works internally. Anyway, apparently the Wine developers allow both interpretations of their acronym. I prefer Wine Is Not an Emulator, but, WINdows Emulator is more descriptive if less strictly accurate.
We all know about the rampant bugs in the M$ world already. Personally, I think the FIPS article is more interesting (even if they do make you tell them stuff before letting you see it... grr... ) In any case, if nobody is supposed to be using uncertified software, maybe someone (RedHat? Caldera? Or even Debian!) should submit Linux for testing. If Linux or one of the other OSS OSes were certified and WinNT wasn't... well, that might prove interesting, don't you think?
Slashdot Mirror
Yikes! I'd change ISP's, immediately. I'd rather be on a cable modem or getting my access from AOL than have to deal with that kind of snooping. And yeah, I know how much I can be snooped by the world at large without knowing about it - but most of the time I -won't- be, at least not by the same person. :)
If changing providers isn't possible, I'd secure my box up tight, and do everything - or as much as possible - by PGP and SSH. Actually, I'd probably just do without the net, horrible as the thought is. I'm really against giving money to people that I have a strong moral stance against. Gets expensive sometimes to be that way, but I sleep better at night.
--Parity
Why run off a CD-R? You'll stop -almost- as many exploits just by mounting your partitions read-only, and get to keep your speed as well. Sure, if someone achieves a root-shell they can remount, but how easy is it to achieve a root shell if you can't write the drives? I'm assuming, of course, that the other advice in this column has been followed, and the only port offering services is the http port, and (although this hasn't been mentioned) that the web-server and cgi-bins are -not- running as root.
At that point, a crack is going to take something like an exploitable memory overrun and a kernel (or driver) bug.
In other words, you're eliminating cracking techniques that involve any sort of file overrun to directly write to the web pages (like the one that hit id software) as well as preventing people from achieving root by putting scripts in places where cron or init or some other helpful daemon is going to come along and execute them as root. (Of course, you'd hope the web-server couldn't write to init.d or root's crontab anyway, but, for the sake of arguing with myself and because there's probably a hundred similar exploits that I haven't thought of, being that I'm not a cracker myself.)
My point generally being that running a website from CD is going to be very expensive timewise.
Anyway, even if you don't make everything read-only, think twice before making a partition writeable. Everything's writeable on my home box, but - that's my home box. I'm not a target. (And even so I'm probably going to redo that configuration one day, when I have the time to shuffle partitions).
Nobody's answered the coward's question yet?
The answer is, basically, that the output is patch-style diff output. It says that comparing ip_options.c in the linux.vanilla hierarchy to the ip_options.c in the current hierarchy, you can make vanilla like current by removing the line that says 'kfree_skb(skb);' ; in other words, that's the technical version of what was mentioned on the main article.
I have a memory like a sieve, so I won't attempt to tell you how, but you can take those lines and pipe them through diff and patch your kernel that way. I think it may be as simple as being root and doing 'patch filename', but if I were you I'd check the manpages (for diff, and patch) before trying anything. For a one-liner it's probably just as easy to cut it by hand.
Let's be serious. Security in most movie theaters is a joke. What there is of it is mostly concerned with keeping people from getting into the -seating area- without paying. Projection booths are left unlocked, even with the doors open, all the time. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to steal a theater film, because the equipment is ridiculously bulky... people don't use -those- projectors for home theater. (Well, obviously, someone stole -this- film, but, in general it's a pretty useless thing to steal films).
/will/ recognize you). 'course walking into another theater's projection booth and taking the film requires a lot chutzpah, but I think they had that anyway.
Widen your list of suspects to anyone who's ever been a projectionist... which includes many, many people who worked movie theaters as their summer/after school job through college. If it were me with this scheme, I certainly wouldn't steal it from the same theater I worked at - it's -easier- to get caught that way (because any witnesses
--Parity
That would be cute, and not a bad thing to put in your keywords, but a proof of concept program isn't prior art yet, and it -does- have a purpose other than to break patents - namely, so that J. Random Hacker, who actually wants a practical version of a concept, can look at Q. Random Hacker's code before he starts coding.
Doesn't really matter though, what people call it, as long as we all call it the same thing (or at least, by not too many different names) so that it can be found.
--Parity
It seems to me that this kind of thing can be easily prevented for future patents. People in the open source movement code because they -enjoy- coding, they like experimenting with ideas. How many of us have written throwaway programs just to 'see if I can do it'? How many of those ideas are now patented by somebody?
Don't throw away those 'see if I can' programs. Publish them on the 'net - preferably digitally signed to a newsgroup archived by DejaNews et. al. Just be sure to clearly label your program 'proof of concept' so that nobody thinks it's supposed to be more than that. And if everyone puts the phrase 'proof of concept' in the keywords of their postings, a search of deja-news will quickly spit out prior-arts to challenge future patents with - assuming, of course, that some enterprising soul doesn't start a prior-art archive somewhere with thousands of these little programs.
Remember that most of these patents are founded on sloppy little programs just like that, that prove the concept but are utterly useless in the real world. And remember that it isn't prior art unless it's published.
--Parity
I don't think so. As I understand it, this patent covers using web-redirection in order to load-balance. So, if Rob coded up a system where the perl-script requested a page construction from another machine in a load-balanced way, it wouldn't be covered by the patent. There's no redirection, the load-balancing is on the other side of the perl script. Of course, now the distribution script is a bottleneck that can't be escaped without violating the patent.
Bookmark this comment. Code up this idea in an experimental example. It may be prior art someday.
(Actually, I think these comments get deleted after a timeout, but you get my point.)
--Parity
It probably wasn't. If you look close you'll
find most of Ellis-D's posts are 0 or -1. He's
just been moderated down often enough to have
been bitten by the auto-moderation scoring that
has some people starting with scores of 2 and 3
every time they post, just the other way around.
Given the score this has risen to, maybe he'll be
able to post at 1 again now. I dunno how the formula works.
--Parity
There's advantages and drawbacks to everything. My answer to that criticism is that it's better to have packages for the base system than .tgz's, because you may have dependencies on elements in the base. The 'cleaner' install will cost later in managing your upgrades.
Which isn't to say NetBSD is 'wrong,' somehow, just to say that there are advantages to the Debian way that I, personally, appreciate over a simplification in the install process.
--Parity
Note that they are a 'legitimate' marketer.
They want to prosecute fraudulent spammers who are breaking all sorts of laws to begin with. Sounds good to me. Lock the spammers up. Now I'm not so happy that they're a marketing service themselves, and you can bet that they don't want to end -all- spam, just spam for illegal schemes.
--Parity
A sensible transition plan, and one I would be very surprised if it hadn't already been written up, would be for the 240-247 space to be used in the transition to IPv6; during the interim-period,
IPv6 addresses would -only- exist in the class E range. Once everything is stable, then everything goes IPv6.
(Or maybe we do it in reverse... 240-247 are used as a prefix by 'smart' gateways to allow new-IP to talk to old-IP. Or whatever.)
The point is, if we throw away those addresses for the minimal (percentage-wise) increase in total address space, we won't have them for transition schemes of this nature.
--Parity
The 10% means 10% means 10%. Not more than 10% of the -product- can be American. It isn't a software law, it's a general law (or if it is a software law, it's a template law where they substituted in 'computer program' for 'automobile' or whatever.)
It's just a whole lot less clear what '10%' means in this context than for say, coffee, or a sweater, or other things that are actually made up of physical -stuff-. If you care enough, check the history of embargoes and rulings made on motorcars, stereos, and so on - 10% of the mass, or 10% of the components, or 10% by component-wise-value. Then try to extrapolate for software, as best you can.
The real answer won't exist until there have been enough court precedents to establish a consistent interpretation, so don't bother looking for it.
--Parity
The gay/lesbian/bisexual community says 'silence=death.' The Jews say, 'Never forget' and 'Never again.' I've lost my copy of my favorite quote about the holocaust, but I'm sure most of you have seen it. 'They came for the communists, but I wasn't a communist so I didn't speak out. They came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak out... ' on through several more groups, 'And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.'
It isn't bad yet - though certainly it is bad for the individuals being persecuted - but society is just knee-jerk reacting. It can go one of two ways - these new persecutions can be reviled as wrong action, or they can be supported as the way society should go. It is our voices that can make a difference, that will make a difference, that, by the update about the mass media taking an interest in this very discussion, is making a difference.
I don't advocate publishing your name when you don't have to - but I do think that standing up in the PTA, the classroom, the town hall, and saying 'This is wrong,' is something that must be done. If we let our fear of reprisal silence us, they will win. If it is a risk to do so, so be it. I'm an adult now, and not a parent yet, but if I read that my town is instituting any of these persecutions, I will speak out, directly, locally, and publically.
Silence is not the solution.
Silence is cooperation.
Silence is death.
--Parity
I don't know; Lucas certainly has some of that spirit, trying to revive spirtuality and myth, but spirituality and myth are just as important to the monotheistic religions, even if not all of their practioners admit to it. To me, while the Star Wars saga is a grand myth/story, it is heavily laced with monotheistic conceptions. It's easily multireligious... the Force could be god, allah, the holy spirit, the universal soul, the buddha nature. It doesn't very well make a pantheon though.
You could look at the heroes of the stories -as- the gods, that would be very in keeping with the Celtic blurring of where 'hero' ends and 'god' begins, but I think that Star Wars has much more in common with the hero-myths than the god-myths. So, in context, Luke & company are mere mortals who's great courage/goodness/striving allows them to succeed at more-than-mortal tasks, with the aid of 'the Force' (which I read much as Faith in God).
Anyway. As far as modern story/myths go, I think Charles deLint has more to offer the pagan community than George Lucas.
--Parity
In your haste to criticize, don't forget that the original Star Wars had only a very mild advertising campaign behind it, and almost universally got bad reviews from the critics.
Star Wars is a success because the people -like- Star Wars ; the advertising campaigns of the sequels are de rigeur for any 'Hollywood Blockbuster Movie.'
Besides that, a good trailer is almost a work of art in itself. A bad one is as painful as any hardsell salesman in your face. Lucasfilms (I don't know how much Lucas himself has to do with it) makes good trailers, IMO.
--Parity
I don't know -where- you heard that, but I assure you it's not true. I don't live in California at the moment, but AD&D hasn't been banned any of the time I've lived or visited, and if it had, I'm sure I would've heard. In fact, everyone would have heard, because it would bring about a first-amendment crisis, since AD&D is, essentially, a set of books. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm just saying either the Supreme Court would overturn it or it'd be time to leave the country.
--Parity
> The parents also filed a state lawsuit last
> December charging Carneal, his parents and
> several administrators, teachers and
> students at the school with being
> partly responsible for the shootings.
Carneal being the name of the kid that did the shooting, who's going to be in prison until he's in his forties at least. (25 yrs before he's up for parole.) Anyway, the parents of the kid -were- named, in another lawsuit, along with a pile of administrators and teachers. It sounds to me like these parents are just lawsuit-crazy. Not that I can blame them, I mean, they just lost their children, so of course they're going to go a bit crazy. I just hope the legal system doesn't support their craziness!
(So, why did an comment based on a sloppy reading of the article get moderated up to a 5? Isn't this what moderation is supposed to prevent? Well, at least I don't have to see the first-posts and 'sux' comments... )
--Parity
Well, aside from the fact that quoting someone is generally considered fair use and not a violation of copyright... is there some reason that you specifically name ZDnet? Do they make a habit of stealing commentary from slashdot, or from you in particular? :is: genuine curiousity at work and not an attempt at irony.)
(For the oversensitive - this
--Parity
Those are 'remove from shelf' dates, not begin dates. When I learned that, the whole magazine thing made a lot more sense.
The reason, btw, that they put remove dates instead of issuance dates is because with quarterlies/bimonthlies/semimonthlies/weeklies all on the shelf, you need something consistent so the magazine seller can just go down the row and pull the 'old' issues without figuring out what kind of issue it is.
Or so I've been told, by people in the industry.
--Parity
At the time that I switched to dvorak, there had been no studies done to prove that RSI and/or carpal tunnel were reduced by dvorak. However, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. I know that a major reason that I switched is because every now and then I'd get nasty pains in my wrist and arm. I switched to dvorak, and haven't had that problem since. So, no studies, but, I believe that switching to dvorak averted an RSI for me. ... anyone can do it.)
It -is- proveable that your fingers will travel less distance typing on dvorak. (Take a dvorak layout, a qwerty layout, and a letter frequency analysis chart,
--Parity
--Parity
There's to many threads saying the same sorts of things, so I'll just make one comment on my observations seperate from any of them.
Yes, StarWars really is that popular. It is not arrogance on Lucas's part, nor is it going to cost him one red (or copper-colored) cent to disallow advance ticket sales. Every single showing will sell out, for at least the first few days, perhaps the first few weeks, depending on just -how- popular it is. Many of us remember standing in line for Empire and Jedi... if you don't remember it, try asking your parents. It was on the evening news, after all, including interviews with people who had been in line since the night before. There's every reason to expect a repeat of this situation for the newest movie, especially given how long we've waited.
That being said - if the popularity of StarWars annoys, exasperates, or bores you, well - this is under the StarWars discussion topic. You don't need to read it. Your preferences settings may come in useful here.
Parity
I have to disagree with you, to a certain extent. You say, rightly, that coming up with
a new -idea- is not the problem. There are billions of people in the world, and the tiny
fraction of them that are geniuses can come up with more than enough ideas.
However, you say that you support the 'patent and copyright systems.' In my view, there are
two sorts of 'mental labor.' There is the actual process of discovering a new mathematical or
scientific principle, and then there is the rigorous appliciation of various principles that
have been discovered to a real world problem.
Patents supposedly do not, and certainly should not, protect the first kind of 'idea' - that of
a discovery of a fundamental principle. As for the second kind of idea, that can be protected
by copyright. One can copyright a program, a blueprint, a notebook full of calculations, a
design schematic. The labours put into the detail work can be protected and compensated.
The very sort of thing that patents best protect is exactly what you mention in your example -
it's not that hard to -think- of a steam engine, only a little harder to cobble together a
barely functional prototype as 'proof of concept.' Similarly, I'm sure millions of children
around the world have 'invented' the maglev train in their heads long before it was a reality.
The basic principles of magnetism invite such speculation.
In a world as large and as well educated as ours, all of the 'clever ideas' will be thought of,
more than once. It's just a matter of seeing the application of the principle; and -that- is
precisely what the patent system is designed to protect. This allows the first person to cobble
together a prototype (which in the case of software patents is pathetically easy) to patent the
'machine.' It costs a little more, since you have to engineer with real parts, to do the same
sort of thing with physical inventions.
It seems to me to be reasonable to protect the fruits of intellectual labor with copyright, (look,
even GNU does it!), but I don't think that patents are anywhere close to the same thing.
--Parity Bit
You can always do what I'm going to do... close up all the net stuff and just work for the next couple hours. 'course, since I have to actually dial in, it's easier to just 'be offline.' I figure it'll be less stressful and more likely that I'll actually get the trailer if I wait. Um. maybe just one more try before I log off...
Parity Odd
Both acronyms are correct, supposedly, though presumably one is more correct than the other. Wine does, after all, serve the function of an emulator - to let programs from one kind of system run on another. But then, it -isn't- an emulator in the sense of how it actually works internally.
Anyway, apparently the Wine developers allow both interpretations of their acronym. I prefer Wine Is Not an Emulator, but, WINdows Emulator is more descriptive if less strictly accurate.
Parity Bit
We all know about the rampant bugs in the M$ world already. Personally, I think the FIPS article is more interesting (even if they do make you tell them stuff before letting you see it... grr... ) In any case, if nobody is supposed to be using uncertified software, maybe someone (RedHat? Caldera? Or even Debian!) should submit Linux for testing. If Linux or one of the other OSS OSes were certified and WinNT wasn't... well, that might prove interesting, don't you think?