"But the memory isn't freed after I call Dispose()!"...who cares? Just let go of your reference and let the GC handle it. You've executed your cleanup code, so why do you care that there is a block of memory out there that you can't even see that's still allocated? It's not going to leak, so just let the GC do it's job.
I hope developers with attitudes like the one expressed above are never allowed to work on hard realtime systems.
"Why is the airplane plummeting towards the ground?"
"Oh, the flight control subsystem is busy GC'ing all the freed objects... flight control will resume in a few seconds..."
I couldn't eyeball any references, so I'll take the low hanging fruit. Fill a briefcase or two full of these things and you could have your own portable Beowulf cluster!
Sharing for free is the biggest enemy of the recording industry. At least if people were sharing for profit, the recording industry could try and find a way to (a) control and (b) "tax" the profiteers so they could get a piece of the action. (Think of it as a wholesaler and retailer relationship.)
When you share for free, it's just money flying out the recording industry's window. They're just trying to shut the window...
Selling or otherwise sharing pirated copies of vinyl records or casette tapes, while it's music piracy, because of its analog nature, meant that there was always incentive for the buyer or acquirer of the pirated music to one day purchase an original if they desired better quality.
I think what really irks the music industry is that they believe CD piracy lacks that side-effect. Analog music piracy was free marketing and promotion for the music labels -- people got their hands on lower quality samples, some of whom would become motivated to purchase originals for the sake of better quality.
What I don't think the music industry is tracking is how many CD sales are happening BECAUSE of CD music pirating. How many people wouldn't have dared shell out $15.99 to buy album XYZ of an artist they'd never heard of if they HADN'T just come across it via a P2P filesharing network, listened to it and said, "Hey, I want to help support this small-time artist and/or band, let me buy a copy and hope they get more than $0.03 in royalties..."
I take advantage of this so that I only keep copies of all my CD's in my car, in case my flip-file of CD's gets stolen or my entire car. It also makes CD scratches less annoying, since for $0.35 I just toss the scratched copy and make a new one to keep in the car.
However, is it legal to make a digital copy for non-commercial personal use of someone else's CD for your own use, even though you may legally own a copy of the music in another medium (record, cassette, etc.)? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm guessing it's not legal. IMHO, I think it should be.
Until the RIAA offers a free media replacement policy (you know, replacing your outdated casette tapes and vinyl records with brand-spanking-new CD's with of the same album), I think music "piracy" should be legalized. It's not piracy if you've already paid for a right-to-use license to the music by already having bought a record or casette tape and are now just getting a copy of the CD without buying it retail.
So, in order to do away with all the problems and really innovate, the filesystem must be turned into a database. But a simple RDBMS system may be not enough. Why not turn it into an object-oriented database ? [...] Finally, the Linux community should hurry up. Microsoft has realized this and they are working full time for the next versions of Windows with full support for RDBMS on the filesystem level.
Uhh, BeOS did this 5-6 years ago, and look where they are now.
Higher-level abstractions that simply change the shape of the traditional filesystem, as you are suggesting, is not the innovative solution.
Semantic organization and association of information is the way to go. Organization by content, not by utility. Wrap your mind around that for a while...
Take a look at some of the projects that scare the hell out of professional spammers:
I honestly don't think the projects you mention scare spammers. There's plenty of ways of getting around SPEWS and spamhaus and other "realtime" (ha, yeah right) blackhole lists.
I think the only thing that would REALLY put a damper on a professional spammer's day is if a majority (or at least, all of the major mail sites such as AOL and Hotmail and Yahoo!, etc.) started using TMDA.
If it becomes impossible to send unsolicited mail from a forged return address that hasn't at one point been authenticated as a valid return address, because everyone is using TMDA-like mail exchangers, then spammers will get shut down pretty quickly.
Since we all know that all significant technological advances since 1993 revolve around the porn business (i.e., the web, audio streaming, video streaming, broadband, etc.)... it would only make sense that the next tech. innovation surrounding input devices would be driven by the porn biz as well.
So, okay then. When are we going to see the first 'sheathmouse' -- you know, the kind you can slip over a finger (or, another digit-like member)? Wave it in a direction and the mouse cursor will follow. Pinch it and your mouse clicks (and so much more...)? Now that we're no longer waiting in between clicks for Usenet a.b.p.e to decode over our dialup connections since we're on broadband, why should we stop to grab the mouse to click the next link? We should use what we're already holding!
Of course, no computer with a sheathmouse would be complete without a breastboard -- similar to the split-keyboard ergo nonsense we see today, except the two banks of keys are laid out with keys of graduated height, yielding breast-shaped mounds with the guidance "nipples" (you know, the little bumps commonly found on the 'f' and 'j' or 'd' and 'k' keys on most keyboards) would be at the center of the mound and just large enough to tweak. Possibly double in function as a pointing stick seen on laptops today...
If this ever makes it to market, I claim prior art! You heard it here first.
They shouldn't name it Firebird. They should name it "The Web"... so people can be told to start "The Web Browser"... and cluebies won't sound nearly so dumb when they say "yeah, I'm running The Web on my computer."
If you think you can write a better, more accurate summary... then do it, and submit it to/. -- God only knows it'll end up as yet another dupe on the homepage.
You mean the iTablet -- I wouldn't be surprised if Apple takes a second shot at the Newton, putting a 12" screen along with a stylus on the iPod, branding it the iTablet to compete with Microsoft's Tablet PC platform...
So long as the iTablet runs OS X... I think Apple might stand a chance.
The earth naturally vibrates, right? Why can't we create something that harnesses the power of the earth's natural vibration to power small devices with low-energy consumption requirements?
As devices require less and less energy, this concept becomes more and more useful...
Since when did this website turn into RIAAdot? Outside of duplicate submissions getting accepted, the only other stories these days seem to be RIAA-related.
Like the latest boy-band, can we get over this fad and back to Stuff that matters?
What graphics engine today even remotely approximates underwater vision? I'm talking the fuzzy, blurry kind that you experience when you're open-eyed under water without goggles?
What about more accurate 3D where you get a real sense of depth perception? Current graphics engines tend to make close objects appear REALLY close and distant objects seem either closer than they ought to be, or really, REALLY far away.
Maps should follow the curvature of the world they're mapped onto. Not be flat planes with up-and-down terrain. At some point, your view should end as things dip below the horizon...
Get a hold of Ralsky's home telephone number. Then, grab as many spam email lists as you can. Send a few hundred million spam emails out with a body that reads something like:
"If you'd like to be taken out of our bulk-mailing database, please call <insert Ralsky's phone number here>."
It's a nice DDoS and if you can keep getting his number every time he gets it changed (heh) this could be quite useful. He might even start taking people who call out of his databases.
It's the/good/ hackers you want to hire. The ones that are good enough not to get caught.
(I'm not saying Kevin wasn't good, but there are obviously people who are better. We just don't know about them, for exactly this reason -- they haven't gotten caught.)
It's an interesting thought. I don't think Painter was saying "don't hire hackers to do security audits" -- he's saying "don't hire convicted criminals." Really good hackers don't get caught. If you're going to pay top dollar, you might as well get the best.
My name is Andrew Carlssin. In September 2256 my car was reposessed and the bill collectors were hounding me like you wouldn't believe. I was laid off and my unemployment checks had run out. The only escape I had from the pressure of failure was my time machine and some stock ymbols. I longed to turn my advocation into my vocation. This December 2002 I went on a four month time-jump. I bought and sold a couple of stocks for BIG MONEY in April 2003.
I'm currently under investigation by the SEC for insider trading, but all I need to do is get back to my time machine and return to 2256. I will never have to work again.
Today I am rich! I have earned over $350,000,000.00 (Three Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars)) to date and will become a billionaire within 4 or 5 months. Anyone can do the same. This money making program works perfectly every time, 100% of the time. I have NEVER failed to earn $50,000.00 or more whenever I wanted. Best of all you never have to leave home except to go to your mailbox or post office.
In October 2255, I received a letter in the mail telling me how I could earn $50,000 dollars or more whenever I wanted. I was naturally very skeptical and threw the letter on the console of my time machine. It's funny though, when you are desperate, backed into a corner, your mind does crazy things. I spent a frustating day looking through the want ads for a job with a future. The pickings were sparse at best. That night I tried to unwind by getting into my time machine and going back to hang out with Jesus. I proofread a rough draft of what would become the Bible and than glanced at the letter on the console. All at once it came to me, I now had the key to my dreams. I realized that with the power of the time machine I could expand and enhance this money making formula into the most unbelievable cash flow generator that has ever been created. Most of the hard work is speedily done via self-serve online brokerage houses throughout the world. If you believe that someday you deserve that lucky break that you have waited for all your life, simply follow the easy instructions below. Your dreams will come true.
Sincerely yours,
Andrew Carlssin
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Buy a time machine.
2) Capture all of the open and close prices with the largest up or down changes for the past couple of months. Double-check all the numbers; you wouldn't want to lose all your money on a typo.
3) Go back in time to the start of the prices that you've recorded.
4) Start trading like nobody's business. Try to make some intentional mistakes to try and cover up your tracks -- don't be like me and lead the SEC auditors straight to your portfolio!
Anonymous and open disclosure to widespread sources is the only way to Do The Right Thing.
Screw "giving companies the time to do the right thing and fix flaws". They don't know how to be grateful for the opportunity.
The hacker community must just release details and full exploit instructions into the wild, to every possible place they can, as anonymously as possible.
Once companies realize that getting ass-mangled by hackers doing this is is FAR worse than controlled, open disclosure, and that all a hacker wants is props and credit for the finding a vulnerability... then we can go back to the way things are.
While many things that use IP are designed or built in a "client-server" fashion, most ISP Terms of Service don't refer to the "-server" portion when they say "no servers".
What they're referring to are the servers, or more specifically, the services that the ISP offers to their customers as value-added services, such as DNS, mail, web and USENET, among others. The ISP is selling these things as their value-add above and beyond merely being a Network Connectivity Provider. They're ISPs -- Internet Service Providers -- and thus ought to, well, provide Internet Services such as DNS, mail, web and USENET. Allowing their customers to run the same services and offer them would be plain foolish.
It's like walking into a WalMart and buying all the Cheesy Poofs on the shelf for $0.99 then putting up a sign saying "Cheesy Poofs, $1.50 a bag" and trying to sell them, right in the WalMart. Yes, if you've bought them all, you do own them and ought to be able to resell them, but why should WalMart allow you to use their space to compete directly with them?
This isn't to say that some folks feel compelled to run their own DNS/mail/web/news services because their ISP's provided services suck -- customers should learn to demand quality from their ISPs and speak with their dollars by going elsewhere. For those who are monopoly-locked, speak to your legislator -- just because there are work-arounds for you, that doesn't make the situation acceptable. The fact that enough folks have "worked around" the "problem" is exactly why AOL (and others) are and SHOULD BE refusing things like mail from consumer bandwidth customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you mean Minesweeper Consultant, Solitaire Expert?
...
That's about all they're good for
(Please mod this down as Flamebait or up as Funny -- I just couldn't resist.)
-- Dossy
I hope developers with attitudes like the one expressed above are never allowed to work on hard realtime systems.
God help us all.
-- Dossy
I couldn't eyeball any references, so I'll take the low hanging fruit. Fill a briefcase or two full of these things and you could have your own portable Beowulf cluster!
Portable grid computing. Yow.
-- Dossy
Sharing for free is the biggest enemy of the recording industry. At least if people were sharing for profit, the recording industry could try and find a way to (a) control and (b) "tax" the profiteers so they could get a piece of the action. (Think of it as a wholesaler and retailer relationship.)
...
When you share for free, it's just money flying out the recording industry's window. They're just trying to shut the window
-- Dossy
Selling or otherwise sharing pirated copies of vinyl records or casette tapes, while it's music piracy, because of its analog nature, meant that there was always incentive for the buyer or acquirer of the pirated music to one day purchase an original if they desired better quality.
..."
I think what really irks the music industry is that they believe CD piracy lacks that side-effect. Analog music piracy was free marketing and promotion for the music labels -- people got their hands on lower quality samples, some of whom would become motivated to purchase originals for the sake of better quality.
What I don't think the music industry is tracking is how many CD sales are happening BECAUSE of CD music pirating. How many people wouldn't have dared shell out $15.99 to buy album XYZ of an artist they'd never heard of if they HADN'T just come across it via a P2P filesharing network, listened to it and said, "Hey, I want to help support this small-time artist and/or band, let me buy a copy and hope they get more than $0.03 in royalties
To answer your question, I think the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA), 17 U.S.C. 1001-1010 would seem to indicate that if you owned the CD and made a digital copy of it, you're allowed to do so. (Link taken from another excellent page: The DAT Controversy by Jocelyn Dabeau and William Fisher.)
I take advantage of this so that I only keep copies of all my CD's in my car, in case my flip-file of CD's gets stolen or my entire car. It also makes CD scratches less annoying, since for $0.35 I just toss the scratched copy and make a new one to keep in the car.
However, is it legal to make a digital copy for non-commercial personal use of someone else's CD for your own use, even though you may legally own a copy of the music in another medium (record, cassette, etc.)? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm guessing it's not legal. IMHO, I think it should be.
-- Dossy
Are airlines really saying out loud, in public, that the cockpit isn't shielded from high-frequency interference from the airplane cabin?
Is that really a message they want to be sending out to terrori---err, I mean---passengers?
Dumb.
Hijacker: "Hand over control of the plane or else I'll turn these 8 cellphones all on at the same time and interfere with your controls!"
-- Dossy
Until the RIAA offers a free media replacement policy (you know, replacing your outdated casette tapes and vinyl records with brand-spanking-new CD's with of the same album), I think music "piracy" should be legalized. It's not piracy if you've already paid for a right-to-use license to the music by already having bought a record or casette tape and are now just getting a copy of the CD without buying it retail.
Robbery. Sheer robbery.
-- Dossy
Uhh, BeOS did this 5-6 years ago, and look where they are now.
Higher-level abstractions that simply change the shape of the traditional filesystem, as you are suggesting, is not the innovative solution.
Semantic organization and association of information is the way to go. Organization by content, not by utility. Wrap your mind around that for a while ...
-- Dossy
I honestly don't think the projects you mention scare spammers. There's plenty of ways of getting around SPEWS and spamhaus and other "realtime" (ha, yeah right) blackhole lists.
I think the only thing that would REALLY put a damper on a professional spammer's day is if a majority (or at least, all of the major mail sites such as AOL and Hotmail and Yahoo!, etc.) started using TMDA.
If it becomes impossible to send unsolicited mail from a forged return address that hasn't at one point been authenticated as a valid return address, because everyone is using TMDA-like mail exchangers, then spammers will get shut down pretty quickly.
-- Dossy
I always knew Chewbacca was modeled after RMS.
-- Dossy
Since we all know that all significant technological advances since 1993 revolve around the porn business (i.e., the web, audio streaming, video streaming, broadband, etc.) ... it would only make sense that the next tech. innovation surrounding input devices would be driven by the porn biz as well.
...)? Now that we're no longer waiting in between clicks for Usenet a.b.p.e to decode over our dialup connections since we're on broadband, why should we stop to grab the mouse to click the next link? We should use what we're already holding!
...
So, okay then. When are we going to see the first 'sheathmouse' -- you know, the kind you can slip over a finger (or, another digit-like member)? Wave it in a direction and the mouse cursor will follow. Pinch it and your mouse clicks (and so much more
Of course, no computer with a sheathmouse would be complete without a breastboard -- similar to the split-keyboard ergo nonsense we see today, except the two banks of keys are laid out with keys of graduated height, yielding breast-shaped mounds with the guidance "nipples" (you know, the little bumps commonly found on the 'f' and 'j' or 'd' and 'k' keys on most keyboards) would be at the center of the mound and just large enough to tweak. Possibly double in function as a pointing stick seen on laptops today
If this ever makes it to market, I claim prior art! You heard it here first.
-- Dossy
They shouldn't name it Firebird. They should name it "The Web" ... so people can be told to start "The Web Browser" ... and cluebies won't sound nearly so dumb when they say "yeah, I'm running The Web on my computer."
Branding foolishness never ends.
-- Dossy
Hey,
If you think you can write a better, more accurate summary
Go for it.
So long as the iTablet runs OS X
-- Dossy
The earth naturally vibrates, right? Why can't we create something that harnesses the power of the earth's natural vibration to power small devices with low-energy consumption requirements?
As devices require less and less energy, this concept becomes more and more useful
-- Dossy
Since when did this website turn into RIAAdot? Outside of duplicate submissions getting accepted, the only other stories these days seem to be RIAA-related.
Like the latest boy-band, can we get over this fad and back to Stuff that matters?
... BlackBoard IDs on these things!
-- Dossy
(Still waiting on the saliva analyzing biometric device. Nothing like spitting to authenticate yourself.)
What graphics engine today even remotely approximates underwater vision? I'm talking the fuzzy, blurry kind that you experience when you're open-eyed under water without goggles?
...
What about more accurate 3D where you get a real sense of depth perception? Current graphics engines tend to make close objects appear REALLY close and distant objects seem either closer than they ought to be, or really, REALLY far away.
Maps should follow the curvature of the world they're mapped onto. Not be flat planes with up-and-down terrain. At some point, your view should end as things dip below the horizon
-- Dossy
Want to talk about just desserts?
Get a hold of Ralsky's home telephone number. Then, grab as many spam email lists as you can. Send a few hundred million spam emails out with a body that reads something like:
"If you'd like to be taken out of our bulk-mailing database, please call <insert Ralsky's phone number here>."
It's a nice DDoS and if you can keep getting his number every time he gets it changed (heh) this could be quite useful. He might even start taking people who call out of his databases.
-- Dossy
Why hire a convicted criminal? They got caught.
/good/ hackers you want to hire. The ones that are good enough not to get caught.
It's the
(I'm not saying Kevin wasn't good, but there are obviously people who are better. We just don't know about them, for exactly this reason -- they haven't gotten caught.)
It's an interesting thought. I don't think Painter was saying "don't hire hackers to do security audits" -- he's saying "don't hire convicted criminals." Really good hackers don't get caught. If you're going to pay top dollar, you might as well get the best.
-- Dossy
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist posting an MMF. Please be kind to my karma. :-)
-- Dossy
Dear Friends,
My name is Andrew Carlssin. In September 2256 my car was reposessed and the bill collectors were hounding me like you wouldn't believe. I was
laid off and my unemployment checks had run out. The only escape I had from the pressure of failure was my time machine and some stock ymbols. I longed to turn my advocation into my vocation. This December 2002 I went on a four month time-jump. I bought and sold a couple of stocks for BIG MONEY in April 2003.
I'm currently under investigation by the SEC for insider trading, but all I need to do is get back to my time machine and return to 2256. I will never have to work again.
Today I am rich! I have earned over $350,000,000.00 (Three Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars)) to date and will become a billionaire within 4 or 5 months. Anyone can do the same. This money making program works perfectly every time, 100% of the time. I have NEVER failed to earn $50,000.00 or more whenever I wanted. Best of all you never have to leave home except to go to your mailbox or post office.
In October 2255, I received a letter in the mail telling me how I could earn $50,000 dollars or more whenever I wanted. I was naturally very skeptical and threw the letter on the console of my time machine. It's funny though, when you are desperate, backed into a corner, your mind does crazy things. I spent a frustating day looking through the want ads for a job with a future. The pickings were sparse at best. That night I tried to unwind by getting into my time machine and going back to hang out with Jesus. I proofread a rough draft of what would become the Bible and than glanced at the letter on the console. All at once it came to me, I now had the key to my dreams. I realized that with the power of the time machine I could expand and enhance this money making formula into the most unbelievable cash flow generator that has ever been created. Most of the hard work is speedily done via self-serve online brokerage houses throughout the world. If you believe that someday you deserve that lucky break that you have waited for all your life, simply follow the easy instructions below. Your dreams will come true.
Sincerely yours,
Andrew Carlssin
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Buy a time machine.
2) Capture all of the open and close prices with the largest up or down changes for the past couple of months. Double-check all the numbers; you wouldn't want to lose all your money on a typo.
3) Go back in time to the start of the prices that you've recorded.
4) Start trading like nobody's business. Try to make some intentional mistakes to try and cover up your tracks -- don't be like me and lead the SEC auditors straight to your portfolio!
I think the moral of this story is:
Anonymous and open disclosure to widespread sources is the only way to Do The Right Thing.
Screw "giving companies the time to do the right thing and fix flaws". They don't know how to be grateful for the opportunity.
The hacker community must just release details and full exploit instructions into the wild, to every possible place they can, as anonymously as possible.
Once companies realize that getting ass-mangled by hackers doing this is is FAR worse than controlled, open disclosure, and that all a hacker wants is props and credit for the finding a vulnerability
-- Dossy
While many things that use IP are designed or built in a "client-server" fashion, most ISP Terms of Service don't refer to the "-server" portion when they say "no servers".
What they're referring to are the servers, or more specifically, the services that the ISP offers to their customers as value-added services, such as DNS, mail, web and USENET, among others. The ISP is selling these things as their value-add above and beyond merely being a Network Connectivity Provider. They're ISPs -- Internet Service Providers -- and thus ought to, well, provide Internet Services such as DNS, mail, web and USENET. Allowing their customers to run the same services and offer them would be plain foolish.
It's like walking into a WalMart and buying all the Cheesy Poofs on the shelf for $0.99 then putting up a sign saying "Cheesy Poofs, $1.50 a bag" and trying to sell them, right in the WalMart. Yes, if you've bought them all, you do own them and ought to be able to resell them, but why should WalMart allow you to use their space to compete directly with them?
This isn't to say that some folks feel compelled to run their own DNS/mail/web/news services because their ISP's provided services suck -- customers should learn to demand quality from their ISPs and speak with their dollars by going elsewhere. For those who are monopoly-locked, speak to your legislator -- just because there are work-arounds for you, that doesn't make the situation acceptable. The fact that enough folks have "worked around" the "problem" is exactly why AOL (and others) are and SHOULD BE refusing things like mail from consumer bandwidth customers.
-- Dossy
Are you sure about this? Where exactly does this new money come from?
Remember, I'm talking globally, here.