Well, nobody ever told me explicitly that -5000 + 5000 = 0, but I was able to deduce it.
Exactly my point: It can be deduced from axioms ("specs") about integer numbers, addition, etc that -5000 + 5000 = 0. Therefore, I would not assume that asc(chr(x)) equals x unless it can be deduced from the specs.
[...] asc(chr(x)) turned out not to be equal to x, an assumption we had been making. How many of you ever thought about getting your code to work on Chinese Windows?
I'm not a Windows programmer, but don't you use API specs? It strikes me as a very risky way of programming to assume anything about the API not in the spec.
No matter how well that piece of code was designed, I'm sorry, I've been programming for 20 years and I never realized that asc(chr(x)) was not always equal to x on some platforms.
Sorry, but I disagree. Unless it can be deduced from the API spec that asc(chr(x)) equals x (which would be a bug in either the API or the spec if it doesn't hold unconditionally), I wouldn't call a piece of code which makes this mistake "well designed."
I've always been fascinated by the potential loophole here. You can go slower than light (everything we see) or you can go faster (tachyons?). The only thing actually forbidden is attaining that exact velocity.
No, Special Relativity says that anything moving at a speed less than c (speed of light) can never reach a speed of c or greater. Anything moving at a speed greater than c can never reach c or less. And finally, anything moving at exactly c (eg photons) can never move at any other speed than c.
To be precise, "moving" refers to movements which could be used for information transmission. It is easy to devise experiments in which something "moves" at arbitrary speeds but cannot be used for information transmission: Think of a light spot moving over the surface of the moon produced by a fast rotating laser on earth.
Time is not measured with distance units, so moving through time "at the speed of light" is meaningless.
You can make it have distance units by multiplying it with c (the speed of light). This is possible because c is a fundamental constant, ie it is the same in every reference frame.
(actually, "moving through time" at all is pretty meaningless, unless you have another time axis to measure against)
In non-relativistic mechanics, you describe movements by stating your position in space as a function of time. In relativistic mechanics, you
describe movements by stating your position in space and time as a function of some new parameter, which has to be independent of the movement. It is in fact possible to come up with such a parameter. One popular choice is called the
proper time. So, yes, in a sense you measure movement through time against "another time axis".
Me != lawyer, but wouldn't GPL requirements only apply if I entered into a contract with the owner of their code? I wasn't paying attention, but I don't remember agreeing to an end-user-license-agreement last time I installed linux.
In short, proprietary software vendors usually want to take away rights which copyright law would otherwise grant. This is only possible if both parties enter into a contract. The GPL, on the other hand, adds rights to those provided by copyright law. You are free not to accept the GPL, in which case you are bound by copyright law (ie, no modification or distribution at all).
Linux is not remotely a threat on the desktop - as long as it has multiple different GUI's and window managers and toolkits and all the rest, [...] it always will not be a threat.
Hopefully you're right. As a Linux advocate, I don't want people who despise choice and prefer to have a single GUI forced upon them to use the same OS that I love so much!;-)
The problem is that many people seem to think that code signing does all three for them. They don't realise that trust is not a technical, but a social concept, so no technical solution (like cryptography) can establish trust.
In fact, it has happened to me more than once that someone was claiming "this is signed, so it cannot possibly do anything bad to my computer."
People tend to believe that if they trust Thawte, they can trust code signed with a Thawte-certified key. This is of course not true,
because trust is not transitive.
My guess is that Thawte wants to ensure only
trustworthy people/companies get Thawte certificates, and apparently they think that companies are always trustworthy, while individuals are not.
I my opinion, the concept of code signing is flawed. The user is tempted to think "this piece of code just loaded by my web browser is signed, so I can trust it."
In fact, the signature only proves that the code really comes from a specific developer and has not been tampered with during transmission. It says absolutely nothing about the trustworthiness of the developer. So, as long as I don't know if I can trust the developer, the signature doesn't help.
Re:and people say windows is bloated
on
Debian On DVD
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· Score: 1
I bet you'd need more than 6 CDs for Windows, plus thousands of applications for it, plus source code of all of this.
In a GUI dialog, you don't have to remember and you don't have to type anything. You just look at a list, and check the parameters you want to include in your search. It couldn't be easier.
What's so bad/difficult about remembering things? Not only do I find it easy to remember almost all of the options of the find command, but I actually enjoy it.;-)
I mean, how can anybody argue with the notion that a Cathedral is somehow inferior to a Bazaar? We all know Bazaars where it's at, that's what people look at these days, and travel to Paris and Rome and places to see and marvel at. Hardly anybody stops by the Notre Damme.
The Cathedral and Bazaar metaphors both refer to (different) methods of Open Source development, so I don't quite get your point here.
Re:Why prefer GNU Emacs over XEmacs?
on
GNU Emacs 21
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· Score: 1
I find the visual discontinuity between the Emacs look-and-feel and native GUI widgets disturbing.
I never understand why people want all programs to have the same UI. After all, on my real desk, various items with nothing in common lie around, and I can cope with it.;-)
Why must everything be similar on a computer desktop?
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I'm from Germany and I try to follow news on our IP law.
From the article:
"It seems that in Germany law firms can write cease and desist letters to businesses they think are infringing another company's trademarks, without being employed by the latter, and demand payment from the company on the receiving end of the letter. Apparently some law firms make a good living at this."
The idea behind this, crazy as it sounds, seems
to be that the law firm acts in the interest
of the recipient of the letter, by letting
him know that violates someone's IP and might face
damages if he continues to do so. For this
"service", the law firm can indeed charge
money.
Not paying up is the only way to
stop this business.
Right. If the recipient declares that he will desist from whatever he is asked to, but does not
pay, the law firm can only sue him and prove that
sending the letter was in fact in his
interest.
What I really meant to say (but admittedly didn't)
was that I guess the key is found within
the next 669 days. Under the assumption of constant search speed, the chance that this happens is 50%.
If it takes 7 years to search the whole keyspace, that means an adversary with the same computation power has a one in a thousand chance to find the correct key in less than 3 days, or a one in a hundred chance to find it in less than a month.
Each of the remaining keys is equally likely to be the right one, so I would assume the best guess is that the correct key is found after searching half of the remaining keyspace. That would be 669 days (if I have calculated correctly).
Slashdot Mirror
No, unless the specs explicitly say that asc is the inverse of chr.
Exactly my point: It can be deduced from axioms ("specs") about integer numbers, addition, etc that -5000 + 5000 = 0. Therefore, I would not assume that asc(chr(x)) equals x unless it can be deduced from the specs.
I'm not a Windows programmer, but don't you use API specs? It strikes me as a very risky way of programming to assume anything about the API not in the spec.
Sorry, but I disagree. Unless it can be deduced from the API spec that asc(chr(x)) equals x (which would be a bug in either the API or the spec if it doesn't hold unconditionally), I wouldn't call a piece of code which makes this mistake "well designed."
No, Special Relativity says that anything moving at a speed less than c (speed of light) can never reach a speed of c or greater. Anything moving at a speed greater than c can never reach c or less. And finally, anything moving at exactly c (eg photons) can never move at any other speed than c.
To be precise, "moving" refers to movements which could be used for information transmission. It is easy to devise experiments in which something "moves" at arbitrary speeds but cannot be used for information transmission: Think of a light spot moving over the surface of the moon produced by a fast rotating laser on earth.
You can make it have distance units by multiplying it with c (the speed of light). This is possible because c is a fundamental constant, ie it is the same in every reference frame.
In non-relativistic mechanics, you describe movements by stating your position in space as a function of time. In relativistic mechanics, you describe movements by stating your position in space and time as a function of some new parameter, which has to be independent of the movement. It is in fact possible to come up with such a parameter. One popular choice is called the proper time. So, yes, in a sense you measure movement through time against "another time axis".
IANAL, but Eben Moglen is. Read what he has to say about enforcing the GPL.
In short, proprietary software vendors usually want to take away rights which copyright law would otherwise grant. This is only possible if both parties enter into a contract. The GPL, on the other hand, adds rights to those provided by copyright law. You are free not to accept the GPL, in which case you are bound by copyright law (ie, no modification or distribution at all).
Hopefully you're right. As a Linux advocate, I don't want people who despise choice and prefer to have a single GUI forced upon them to use the same OS that I love so much! ;-)
The problem is that many people seem to think that code signing does all three for them. They don't realise that trust is not a technical, but a social concept, so no technical solution (like cryptography) can establish trust.
In fact, it has happened to me more than once that someone was claiming "this is signed, so it cannot possibly do anything bad to my computer."
People tend to believe that if they trust Thawte, they can trust code signed with a Thawte-certified key. This is of course not true, because trust is not transitive.
My guess is that Thawte wants to ensure only trustworthy people/companies get Thawte certificates, and apparently they think that companies are always trustworthy, while individuals are not.
I my opinion, the concept of code signing is flawed. The user is tempted to think "this piece of code just loaded by my web browser is signed, so I can trust it."
In fact, the signature only proves that the code really comes from a specific developer and has not been tampered with during transmission. It says absolutely nothing about the trustworthiness of the developer. So, as long as I don't know if I can trust the developer, the signature doesn't help.
I bet you'd need more than 6 CDs for Windows, plus thousands of applications for it, plus source code of all of this.
What's so bad/difficult about remembering things? Not only do I find it easy to remember almost all of the options of the find command, but I actually enjoy it. ;-)
The Cathedral and Bazaar metaphors both refer to (different) methods of Open Source development, so I don't quite get your point here.
I never understand why people want all programs to have the same UI. After all, on my real desk, various items with nothing in common lie around, and I can cope with it. ;-)
Why must everything be similar on a computer desktop?
The next logical step after requiring a back door for the government is to make the transmission of random bits illegal.
There's no clause "this software is always covered by the latest version of the GPL".
If you don't like the later version, you can still use the earlier one, so I don't see a problem here.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I'm from Germany and I try to follow news on our IP law.
The idea behind this, crazy as it sounds, seems to be that the law firm acts in the interest of the recipient of the letter, by letting him know that violates someone's IP and might face damages if he continues to do so. For this "service", the law firm can indeed charge money.
Right. If the recipient declares that he will desist from whatever he is asked to, but does not pay, the law firm can only sue him and prove that sending the letter was in fact in his interest.
The apt_preferences(5) man page has details on how to achieve this.
This is not the first song about the internet. There has been a song about the web for years.
What I really meant to say (but admittedly didn't) was that I guess the key is found within the next 669 days. Under the assumption of constant search speed, the chance that this happens is 50%.
If it takes 7 years to search the whole keyspace, that means an adversary with the same computation power has a one in a thousand chance to find the correct key in less than 3 days, or a one in a hundred chance to find it in less than a month.
Each of the remaining keys is equally likely to be the right one, so I would assume the best guess is that the correct key is found after searching half of the remaining keyspace. That would be 669 days (if I have calculated correctly).