Sorry, already been done. The story is in Isaac Asimov's final collection, entitled Gold. It's a good read, actually, you ought to try it out.
The point was also referenced multiple times in The Caves of Steel, and The Robots of Dawn, also, of course, by Asimov.
Since Microsoft has imposed an artificial limitation that was not previously present, which will undoubtedly inconvenience a number of users, it is hardly a stretch to define the limitation as "crippling". It is, however, a stretch to claim that such a limitation is not a limitation if previously disclosed.
I know all analogies are flawed, but let me try one: You buy a car that will not drive faster than 35 MPH (or KPH, depending on where you live. I digress.), and the dealer offers you the "opportunity" to "upgrade" your vehicle to the "better" model, which has no such governor. Are you upgrading? Or uncrippling?
The three NEW laws of robotics:
1. A robot will not harm authorized Government personnel but will terminate intruders with extreme prejudice.
2. A robot will obey the orders of authorized personnel except where such orders conflict with the Third Law.
3. A robot will guard its own existence with lethal antipersonnel weaponry, because a robot is bloody expensive.
--David Langford
Here's the thing. You see the header on your comment? Flamebait? So you offended someone, and they thought you did it intentionally. Under THIS law, that makes you screwed. Maybe, just maybe, points a-e given in the bill are valid. But this particular bill is NOT the right way to deal with the issue of cyberbullying. ANY bill that I would even come close to supporting would have to be infinitely less inclusive and define specific offenses ("intended to... cause emotional distress"?!?) and very specific punishments ("Up to two years imprisonment"?).
Do you realize that there are half a dozen people here who don't see sarcasm? You can almost hear them running to linux from scratch to see how small an OS they can make for you. This is inevitably followed by several dozen other people leaving them comments on the LFS forums about how they would have done it differently.
Ahh,/. Where every minor detail becomes a war for geek cred.
For my play-around-with machine, I run a desktop I built myself with scavenged parts. I'd consider it approximately equal to an average Windows 2000 machine, or a low, low, low end XP machine. I, too, am (or was) a gentoo user.
Do you KNOW how long emerge kde takes for my machine?
3 days. 72 hours. For the love of God, why is that OK?
There are an infinite number of solutions to this problem. Everything from Gentoo to Knoppix to Puppy Linux (for the love of God, avoid the last).
Do you:
( ) Intend to use it as a liveCD? ( ) Want disk tools in the installer to allow you to keep a windows partition? ( ) Want to avoid significant configuration?
( ) Have no Linux experience whatsoever? ( ) Want it to exist in a partition WITH Windows?
( ) Have better things to do than sift through the inevitable 2541 comments?
There are a dozen different distributions that would fulfill any of the possible permutations of the above requirements. Coupling that with giving you the smallest possible distro that's as full featured as you need, we could narrow it down to one (or two, or three, depending on the cooperation of the Linux geeks in question) solution(s).
I mean, really. They cracked the iPhone in what, a week? Three weeks later we had a software hack for even the tech-stupid or non-owners-of-soldering-irons.
The article mentioned a "Private Key". Does that mean they're basically implementing RSA? As in, you can't play our game unless you decrypt it first? If that's the case, whoever designed it wasn't thinking. Sure, we have no way to figure out the PUBLIC key that it was encrypted with, but since whoever's been putting their chips in my motherboard has kindly GIVEN me the key I need...
Why, precisely does it matter as whom he posts? Even if all these accounts are, as is apparently the consensus, belonging to twitter, shouldn't you be rebutting his POINTS instead of his name? You spend two and a half paragraphs attacking his accounts, and half of one line giving a statement that says, in essense "oh, yeah, and your argument doesn't make sense either." Sounds like an ad hominem to me.
If I were someone coming in without an opinion, I would see someone making a statement backed up by data, as much as you may contest its validity, followed immediately by an unprovoked attack on the person who made the statement.
Like I said, I'm new here. Care to tell me why, exactly, you choose to respond against the man instead of against his data?
They have the money, but do they have the dispersion? The US Govt only has about 50 subnets. It would be fairly easy for any individual or country to block these IPs. The value of a botnet lies not in the number of computers, but in their dispersion. The greater the dispersion, the more valuable the botnet.
To steal an analogy from (yesterday's?) post on the subject, imagine a bucket. You are attempting to pour water into this bucket, using a bucket full of water which you hold. There is a funnel between your bucket and the empty one. It doesn't matter how big your bucket is, the funnel is the bottleneck. Dispersing the network is like increasing the number of buckets and funnels. Aside from the obvious benefits to a dispersed botnet, it becomes a lot harder to block thirty funnels and buckets than one, i.e. a more effective botnet.
Slashdot Mirror
A persistent problem that plagues Web programmers is the proper formatting of data into text fields. Fixed that for you, IBM.
Clearly, I don't understand this article, because there is no way in HELL they just said that. That would be retarded, to say the least.
Sorry, already been done. The story is in Isaac Asimov's final collection, entitled Gold. It's a good read, actually, you ought to try it out. The point was also referenced multiple times in The Caves of Steel, and The Robots of Dawn, also, of course, by Asimov.
Since Microsoft has imposed an artificial limitation that was not previously present, which will undoubtedly inconvenience a number of users, it is hardly a stretch to define the limitation as "crippling". It is, however, a stretch to claim that such a limitation is not a limitation if previously disclosed. I know all analogies are flawed, but let me try one: You buy a car that will not drive faster than 35 MPH (or KPH, depending on where you live. I digress.), and the dealer offers you the "opportunity" to "upgrade" your vehicle to the "better" model, which has no such governor. Are you upgrading? Or uncrippling?
The three NEW laws of robotics: 1. A robot will not harm authorized Government personnel but will terminate intruders with extreme prejudice. 2. A robot will obey the orders of authorized personnel except where such orders conflict with the Third Law. 3. A robot will guard its own existence with lethal antipersonnel weaponry, because a robot is bloody expensive. --David Langford
Here's the thing. You see the header on your comment? Flamebait? So you offended someone, and they thought you did it intentionally. Under THIS law, that makes you screwed. Maybe, just maybe, points a-e given in the bill are valid. But this particular bill is NOT the right way to deal with the issue of cyberbullying. ANY bill that I would even come close to supporting would have to be infinitely less inclusive and define specific offenses ("intended to ... cause emotional distress"?!?) and very specific punishments ("Up to two years imprisonment"?).
It's been a while since I moved away from gentoo, I'm sad to see I did so through my own ignorance. Thanks, I'll be moving back for 2008.0.
Assuming it's not out yet. Haven't been up on my distrowatch.com readings lately.
Isn't twitter the center of slashdot? ~
Do you realize that there are half a dozen people here who don't see sarcasm? You can almost hear them running to linux from scratch to see how small an OS they can make for you. This is inevitably followed by several dozen other people leaving them comments on the LFS forums about how they would have done it differently. Ahh, /. Where every minor detail becomes a war for geek cred.
For my play-around-with machine, I run a desktop I built myself with scavenged parts. I'd consider it approximately equal to an average Windows 2000 machine, or a low, low, low end XP machine. I, too, am (or was) a gentoo user.
Do you KNOW how long emerge kde takes for my machine?
3 days. 72 hours. For the love of God, why is that OK?
There are an infinite number of solutions to this problem. Everything from Gentoo to Knoppix to Puppy Linux (for the love of God, avoid the last).
Do you:
( ) Intend to use it as a liveCD?
( ) Want disk tools in the installer to allow you to keep a windows partition?
( ) Want to avoid significant configuration?
( ) Have no Linux experience whatsoever?
( ) Want it to exist in a partition WITH Windows?
( ) Have better things to do than sift through the inevitable 2541 comments?
There are a dozen different distributions that would fulfill any of the possible permutations of the above requirements. Coupling that with giving you the smallest possible distro that's as full featured as you need, we could narrow it down to one (or two, or three, depending on the cooperation of the Linux geeks in question) solution(s).
I mean, really. They cracked the iPhone in what, a week? Three weeks later we had a software hack for even the tech-stupid or non-owners-of-soldering-irons.
The article mentioned a "Private Key". Does that mean they're basically implementing RSA? As in, you can't play our game unless you decrypt it first? If that's the case, whoever designed it wasn't thinking. Sure, we have no way to figure out the PUBLIC key that it was encrypted with, but since whoever's been putting their chips in my motherboard has kindly GIVEN me the key I need...
Disclaimer: I'm new here!
Why, precisely does it matter as whom he posts? Even if all these accounts are, as is apparently the consensus, belonging to twitter, shouldn't you be rebutting his POINTS instead of his name? You spend two and a half paragraphs attacking his accounts, and half of one line giving a statement that says, in essense "oh, yeah, and your argument doesn't make sense either." Sounds like an ad hominem to me.
If I were someone coming in without an opinion, I would see someone making a statement backed up by data, as much as you may contest its validity, followed immediately by an unprovoked attack on the person who made the statement.
Like I said, I'm new here. Care to tell me why, exactly, you choose to respond against the man instead of against his data?
They have the money, but do they have the dispersion? The US Govt only has about 50 subnets. It would be fairly easy for any individual or country to block these IPs. The value of a botnet lies not in the number of computers, but in their dispersion. The greater the dispersion, the more valuable the botnet.
To steal an analogy from (yesterday's?) post on the subject, imagine a bucket. You are attempting to pour water into this bucket, using a bucket full of water which you hold. There is a funnel between your bucket and the empty one. It doesn't matter how big your bucket is, the funnel is the bottleneck. Dispersing the network is like increasing the number of buckets and funnels. Aside from the obvious benefits to a dispersed botnet, it becomes a lot harder to block thirty funnels and buckets than one, i.e. a more effective botnet.