Except it's PDF that actually has the encryption support built-in.
The PDF spec includes RC4 encryption, yes. So do a lot of other things. It's not exactly the world's most secure encyption, but it's good enough for casual use. And, by the way, it's programs that have encryption built in. Specs merely have encryption formats specified. PDF does not have ANYTHING built in, because it's just a spec. Acrobat and other PDF viewers have encryption built in.
Breaking that encryption is a violation of the DMCA.
First of all, RC4 has already been broken, so that's silly.
Second of all, if you mean "providing the ability to decrypt encypted PDF documents," then no, that's not a violation of the DMCA. This is not some "secret encryption scheme" like that found in CSS and some ebooks -- this is standard, publicly available RC4 encryption. And it's part of the public spec, not just part of their special proprietary app. Both xpdf and gv include the ability to decrypt encrypted PDF files. Neither one even blinked at this particular document.
Once again, PDF is just a spec! It was created by Adobe, yes, but they have made the spec public, and have given the world permission to implement both PDF creators and PDF viewers. Using the whole spec, not just the parts that don't involve encryption.
Yes, I was clearly trying to imply that mandatory forehead tatoos are a good thing as long as MS isn't involved. Thank you for providing such an "insightful" clarification for those who may have overlooked that point.
To all the people who are freaking out about this "evil" technology, please keep in mind, the Liberty Alliance is developing an OPEN alternative to Microsoft's own "Passport" system. So, the gummit getting behind Liberty Alliance is a Good Thing(tm), relatively speaking. They could be getting behind Passport instead. And then, instead of just needing to have your Liberty Alliance ID tatooed on your forehead, you would have to have your MS-Passport ID tatooed on your forehead, and you would be legally forbidden to run anything but MS-Winders, since only MS-Winders would come with the proper drivers to scan and process the information tatooed on your forehead.
PDF is a open format; it may have been invented by Adobe, but I assure you that I have no Adobe software on my system, and I can freely create and view PDF files.
The government needs to at least provide the option of PostScript
Um, PostScript is also a creation of Adobe. So why would that be better? If PDF is evil because it comes from Adobe, wouldn't PostScript also be evil? And, conversely, if PostScript isn't evil (which is my opinion), then why on earth would PDF be evil?
The only differences I see between PostScript and PDF are that a) PDF is somewhat more powerful, and also somewhat safer, and b) Ghostview has been around longer than xpdf.
I don't think these analogies are really accurate.
No, his analogies were not accurate, but on the other hand, neither were yours. Copyright infringement is different from rolling-your-own, but it's also different from stealing. When you steal a bicycle or a pair of Levis, the owner no longer has that property. When make an illegal copy, it's a copy, and the original remains unaffected. That's why copyright infringement is a completely separate section of the law from theft.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to make a good analogy to copyright infringement, because not much else is like copyright infringement.
According to the FSF, the Debian project, and the OSI, both Gnome and KDE are 100% free/OSS. Many people would argue that the LGPL is more free than the GPL (and that the BSD/Mit licenses are, in turn, even more free than that). The FSF argues that the GPL does more to promote freedom (by locking out those who want to build non-free systems, thus "protecting" us from the evil proprietary vendors), but even they stop short of claiming that the GPL is more free. And many BSD advocates even claim that the GPL is NOT a free license (since it locks people out) and that the LGPL is closer to being a free license, but still falls short. Thus, to a BSDer, Gnome is closer to being free than KDE, but neither one is actually free, and to everyone else (except, apparently, you) they're equally free.
What is the expected gain for a group of 1000 non-players as compared to a group of 1000 players?
The non-players should do better by approximately $1000.:)
Personally, I prefer three-card monty. My chances of winning are effectively the same as if I played the lottery, and at least I get to be entertained by some high-quality sleight-of-hand and (usually) a good line of patter as well.:)
Unix has been dead or in imminent danger of death according to pundits since very nearly the day it first appeared. Much like Apple. What I wonder is: which has been accused of being dead or about to die more often? Unix has been around longer, so it's had more years to be about-to-die, but Apple probably gets more coverage in the mainstream press.
Googlefight suggests that "apple is dead" is the more popular sentiment. (Of course, this hardly constitutes a scientific survey.:)
If you haven't got a rocket launcher, it's because you're not looking hard enough!
Re:Colour of Magic is a Definite Homage
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 1
Colour of Magic is a homage/tribute/pastiche of/to a number of authors, not just Larry. Part one is clearly based on Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series (and I suspect that "Ankh-Morpork" is derived from Leiber's "Lankhmar"); part two seems like a Robert Howard pastiche (though one might argue for Lovecraft), and part three is again clearly based on Anne McAffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. I'm not so sure about part four, though. It might be where Pratchett began to find his own voice, or it might be a pastiche of someone I'm not familiar enough with to comment on.
Campbell and some of his authors often played a game of "get something past the censor". One item I recall was a reference to a "ball bearing rat trap" (which, it develops a couple pages later, is a tomcat). She completely missed it.
Another example is Larry's own "Tnuctip".:)
Partial answer (but still mod parent up)
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 1
I can supply a partial answer, but I still hope the parent makes the final cut, as I think it's an interesting question with a potentially very interesting answer.
Anyway, in either N-Space or Playgrounds of the Mind, Niven describes Gene Wolfe as an "author's author," one who lacks mass appeal, but who he personally finds very inspiring. And in Rainbow Mars, he describes how he wanted to meet Pratchett because he'd already decided to buy anything the man wrote.
I agree about both: Gene can be a little too obscure for the mainstream at times, but I nearly fell off my chair when he coined the term "logophage" in Shadow of the Torturer. His writing is full of wonderful subtleties and understated humor -- unfortunately, too subtle for many (and he does border on the opaque at times). And as for Pratchett, what can be said that hasn't been said dozens of times in hundreds of venues? The man is in a class of his own.
Assuming mozilla really does add a kitchen sink (which is probably unlikely) it would still only be a silly repeat of a joke already told to perfection by the Nethack dev team.:)
And I admit, it's nice that the ascii version still works, but the graphic tiles (added in, what, 1992?) make it even nicer, IMO. (Although not quite as safe to play at work, I admit.)
But be careful -- the PHB may not have a clue what all that odd text on your screen really means, but the technical manager probably played it in college himself, and will know at a glance what you're doing. The game has been around for nearly two decades, and in that time, a lot of people you might not expect have probably run across it here or there.
Also, if you're running it on a shared machine, you might want to rename the binary. Any sysadmin who sees "nethack" in a process list will either a) know you're playing games on company time, or b) assume the machine is under attack and panic. Either option may result in effects you may not enjoy....:)
Doesn't have to? Sure? But that fact is that it does. If I told you to go google for "google for", where would you go? So, go google for "google for", and see how many counter-examples you can come up with. If you'd like, you can even search for "google for" on other search engines, and see if you do any better.:)
This might make the folks at Google a little happier, but it's still wrong! "To google" means to use the Internet search engine at google.com, not "an Internet search engine such as...". Plus, it's commonly used to mean search for X, not merely for info on people. Maybe a few thousand letters of correction from people who actually speak the language will help these guys get their entry straight!:)
Actually, if you want a good rational approximation, try the one discovered by the Ancient Chinese: 355/113. Accurate to seven digits, which is more than most people bother with when using decimal approximations!
Actually, phones and banks are both examples of cases where government regulation worked. Maybe you don't remember the days when you had to pay a license fee for each phone extension in your house, and when long-distance calls cost an arm and a leg, but I sure do. The government came in and broke up AT&T, and, after some initial confusion (partly caused because they nearly waited too long), prices went down. Then, after competition was established in the phone market, the gummit pulled back some of the regulations, exactly as they should have done, and prices went down again. Astonishingly (at least to anti-gummit conspiracy theorists), the gummit did the right thing in both cases, and the whole thing worked pretty damn well.
As for banks, I'm too young to remember 1929, but I know the lessons of 1929, and the only reason I'm willing to keep any of my money in banks these days is that the banks are still heavily regulated!
What about the medical profession? Do you think it's a bad thing that anyone who wants can no longer hang up a shingle, claim to be a doctor, and dispense alcohol- and cocaine-laced syrups as all-purpose nostrums? Oh, sure, you could probably save money, but at what cost? What about the automobile industry? Do you think it's bad that we no longer have cars that explode at a tap? I could go on and on.
The fact is that the so-called "free market" of classical economics works by positive feedback. Anyone who's studied any basic engineering should be able to point out the flaw in such a scheme, but somehow, the lassez-faire crowd are able to ignore a few divide-by-zero cases (monopolies and cartels, where the competition is zero) in their calculations.
Do I think overregulation is bad? Yes, it's like an overengineered solution, it's too expensive. Do I think underregulation is bad? Yes, it's like an underengineered solution, fragile, and likely to break apart in a heavy wind. Do I think the proper balance is difficult to find? Yes. Do I think that means we should give up and dump all government regulations? What kind of idiot are you?
The game Nethack has included kitchen sinks in its dungeons for years. I'm pretty sure that Nethack had kitchen sinks before Emacs did, and in any case, it actually has the kitchen sinks in the main code, not just in an optional icon that nobody uses any more.
it's written by people without experience architecting large projects, so the result is verbose, brittle, and messy. Period.
Well, I agree with you, the quality of code in an average OS project is pretty low. But with two decades in the biz, I can assure you the same is true of most proprietary commercial code too. The bottom line is that most code sucks.
The worst problem is even when you do have people who have experience in "architecting" large projects, they frequently lack experience in long-term maintenance, and their elegant architecture turns out to be much more fragile than they realize.
uh-huh, and windows is based on dos, which is based on CP/M, which dates from the late seventies, so that's not much better. Unless you count the newer flavors of windows, which are based on VMS, which is also from the same time frame. Yup, the entire industry has been completely stagnant since the late seventies or early eighties. Unless you take off the blinders and realize that all these systems have been evolving and improving since they were originally invented, and bear little actual resemblance to their primitive forebears at this point. No, no one has invented a new OS in years (obscure, unsuccessful side-projects like plan9 notwithstanding). That's because by the early eighties, OS technology was mature enough that we no longer needed to reinvent the wheel!
For a long time, Gnome was frequently criticised for having too many confusing options, and cluttered interfaces, and KDE was the one that was admired for its simplicity (and criticised for its lack of options). Now the situation is reversed....
Anyway, I don't really care, I've toyed with Gnome and KDE, and I keep going back to my old, solid, reliable, well-configured fvwm desktop. It works the way I want, has all the quirky features I've grown addicted to, and best of all, it has the configuration options where they belong: in the configuration files, not cluttering up the user interface!:)
What it really does is it undercuts the value of commercial software, which destroys jobs in the software industry.
Yeah, 'cause Ghod only knows it was OpenOffice.org that destroyed the market for jobs writing word processors and spreadsheets, and not anyone else.
Speaking as a programmer myself, all I can say is that if your job skills are so limited that the best you can hope for is a job reinventing the wheels now so often provided by free software (and other commodity software, see link above), then you probably don't deserve a job in the industry.
Like the GPL, which forces you to distribute source only if you distribute binaries, the FSF requires you to say GNU only when you say Linux.
Actually, even that's not quite true. If you're referring to the Linux kernel (and only to the kernel), or if you're referring to a hypothetical system using the Linux kernel but not using any GNU code (which we might see on some embedded systems), then the FSF won't object to you just saying Linux.
Or as I like to say, if you really hate using the word "GNU" that much, just write your own damn libc and shellutils and fileutils and textutils and all the other basic stuff without which all of those optional add-on applications (like X11 and apache and sendmail) won't work.
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Except it's PDF that actually has the encryption support built-in.
The PDF spec includes RC4 encryption, yes. So do a lot of other things. It's not exactly the world's most secure encyption, but it's good enough for casual use. And, by the way, it's programs that have encryption built in. Specs merely have encryption formats specified. PDF does not have ANYTHING built in, because it's just a spec. Acrobat and other PDF viewers have encryption built in.
Breaking that encryption is a violation of the DMCA.
First of all, RC4 has already been broken, so that's silly.
Second of all, if you mean "providing the ability to decrypt encypted PDF documents," then no, that's not a violation of the DMCA. This is not some "secret encryption scheme" like that found in CSS and some ebooks -- this is standard, publicly available RC4 encryption. And it's part of the public spec, not just part of their special proprietary app. Both xpdf and gv include the ability to decrypt encrypted PDF files. Neither one even blinked at this particular document.
Once again, PDF is just a spec! It was created by Adobe, yes, but they have made the spec public, and have given the world permission to implement both PDF creators and PDF viewers. Using the whole spec, not just the parts that don't involve encryption.
Yes, I was clearly trying to imply that mandatory forehead tatoos are a good thing as long as MS isn't involved. Thank you for providing such an "insightful" clarification for those who may have overlooked that point.
To all the people who are freaking out about this "evil" technology, please keep in mind, the Liberty Alliance is developing an OPEN alternative to Microsoft's own "Passport" system. So, the gummit getting behind Liberty Alliance is a Good Thing(tm), relatively speaking. They could be getting behind Passport instead. And then, instead of just needing to have your Liberty Alliance ID tatooed on your forehead, you would have to have your MS-Passport ID tatooed on your forehead, and you would be legally forbidden to run anything but MS-Winders, since only MS-Winders would come with the proper drivers to scan and process the information tatooed on your forehead.
PDF is a open format; it may have been invented by Adobe, but I assure you that I have no Adobe software on my system, and I can freely create and view PDF files.
The government needs to at least provide the option of PostScript
Um, PostScript is also a creation of Adobe. So why would that be better? If PDF is evil because it comes from Adobe, wouldn't PostScript also be evil? And, conversely, if PostScript isn't evil (which is my opinion), then why on earth would PDF be evil?
The only differences I see between PostScript and PDF are that a) PDF is somewhat more powerful, and also somewhat safer, and b) Ghostview has been around longer than xpdf.
I don't think these analogies are really accurate.
No, his analogies were not accurate, but on the other hand, neither were yours. Copyright infringement is different from rolling-your-own, but it's also different from stealing. When you steal a bicycle or a pair of Levis, the owner no longer has that property. When make an illegal copy, it's a copy, and the original remains unaffected. That's why copyright infringement is a completely separate section of the law from theft.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to make a good analogy to copyright infringement, because not much else is like copyright infringement.
According to the FSF, the Debian project, and the OSI, both Gnome and KDE are 100% free/OSS. Many people would argue that the LGPL is more free than the GPL (and that the BSD/Mit licenses are, in turn, even more free than that). The FSF argues that the GPL does more to promote freedom (by locking out those who want to build non-free systems, thus "protecting" us from the evil proprietary vendors), but even they stop short of claiming that the GPL is more free. And many BSD advocates even claim that the GPL is NOT a free license (since it locks people out) and that the LGPL is closer to being a free license, but still falls short. Thus, to a BSDer, Gnome is closer to being free than KDE, but neither one is actually free, and to everyone else (except, apparently, you) they're equally free.
What is the expected gain for a group of 1000 non-players as compared to a group of 1000 players?
:)
:)
The non-players should do better by approximately $1000.
Personally, I prefer three-card monty. My chances of winning are effectively the same as if I played the lottery, and at least I get to be entertained by some high-quality sleight-of-hand and (usually) a good line of patter as well.
Unix has been dead or in imminent danger of death according to pundits since very nearly the day it first appeared. Much like Apple. What I wonder is: which has been accused of being dead or about to die more often? Unix has been around longer, so it's had more years to be about-to-die, but Apple probably gets more coverage in the mainstream press.
Googlefight suggests that "apple is dead" is the more popular sentiment. (Of course, this hardly constitutes a scientific survey.:)
If you haven't got a rocket launcher, it's because you're not looking hard enough!
Colour of Magic is a homage/tribute/pastiche of/to a number of authors, not just Larry. Part one is clearly based on Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series (and I suspect that "Ankh-Morpork" is derived from Leiber's "Lankhmar"); part two seems like a Robert Howard pastiche (though one might argue for Lovecraft), and part three is again clearly based on Anne McAffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. I'm not so sure about part four, though. It might be where Pratchett began to find his own voice, or it might be a pastiche of someone I'm not familiar enough with to comment on.
Campbell and some of his authors often played a game of "get something past the censor". One item I recall was a reference to a "ball bearing rat trap" (which, it develops a couple pages later, is a tomcat). She completely missed it.
:)
Another example is Larry's own "Tnuctip".
I can supply a partial answer, but I still hope the parent makes the final cut, as I think it's an interesting question with a potentially very interesting answer.
Anyway, in either N-Space or Playgrounds of the Mind, Niven describes Gene Wolfe as an "author's author," one who lacks mass appeal, but who he personally finds very inspiring. And in Rainbow Mars, he describes how he wanted to meet Pratchett because he'd already decided to buy anything the man wrote.
I agree about both: Gene can be a little too obscure for the mainstream at times, but I nearly fell off my chair when he coined the term "logophage" in Shadow of the Torturer. His writing is full of wonderful subtleties and understated humor -- unfortunately, too subtle for many (and he does border on the opaque at times). And as for Pratchett, what can be said that hasn't been said dozens of times in hundreds of venues? The man is in a class of his own.
Just kidding, maydja look. ha-ha
(On the other hand, if anyone actually wants to run this test, I'd be fascinated to see the result.)
Assuming mozilla really does add a kitchen sink (which is probably unlikely) it would still only be a silly repeat of a joke already told to perfection by the Nethack dev team. :)
And I admit, it's nice that the ascii version still works, but the graphic tiles (added in, what, 1992?) make it even nicer, IMO. (Although not quite as safe to play at work, I admit.)
:)
But be careful -- the PHB may not have a clue what all that odd text on your screen really means, but the technical manager probably played it in college himself, and will know at a glance what you're doing. The game has been around for nearly two decades, and in that time, a lot of people you might not expect have probably run across it here or there.
Also, if you're running it on a shared machine, you might want to rename the binary. Any sysadmin who sees "nethack" in a process list will either a) know you're playing games on company time, or b) assume the machine is under attack and panic. Either option may result in effects you may not enjoy....
To google doesn't have to mean to use google.com
:)
Doesn't have to? Sure? But that fact is that it does. If I told you to go google for "google for", where would you go? So, go google for "google for", and see how many counter-examples you can come up with. If you'd like, you can even search for "google for" on other search engines, and see if you do any better.
This might make the folks at Google a little happier, but it's still wrong! "To google" means to use the Internet search engine at google.com, not "an Internet search engine such as...". Plus, it's commonly used to mean search for X, not merely for info on people. Maybe a few thousand letters of correction from people who actually speak the language will help these guys get their entry straight! :)
Actually, if you want a good rational approximation, try the one discovered by the Ancient Chinese: 355/113. Accurate to seven digits, which is more than most people bother with when using decimal approximations!
Actually, phones and banks are both examples of cases where government regulation worked. Maybe you don't remember the days when you had to pay a license fee for each phone extension in your house, and when long-distance calls cost an arm and a leg, but I sure do. The government came in and broke up AT&T, and, after some initial confusion (partly caused because they nearly waited too long), prices went down. Then, after competition was established in the phone market, the gummit pulled back some of the regulations, exactly as they should have done, and prices went down again. Astonishingly (at least to anti-gummit conspiracy theorists), the gummit did the right thing in both cases, and the whole thing worked pretty damn well.
As for banks, I'm too young to remember 1929, but I know the lessons of 1929, and the only reason I'm willing to keep any of my money in banks these days is that the banks are still heavily regulated!
What about the medical profession? Do you think it's a bad thing that anyone who wants can no longer hang up a shingle, claim to be a doctor, and dispense alcohol- and cocaine-laced syrups as all-purpose nostrums? Oh, sure, you could probably save money, but at what cost? What about the automobile industry? Do you think it's bad that we no longer have cars that explode at a tap? I could go on and on.
The fact is that the so-called "free market" of classical economics works by positive feedback. Anyone who's studied any basic engineering should be able to point out the flaw in such a scheme, but somehow, the lassez-faire crowd are able to ignore a few divide-by-zero cases (monopolies and cartels, where the competition is zero) in their calculations.
Do I think overregulation is bad? Yes, it's like an overengineered solution, it's too expensive. Do I think underregulation is bad? Yes, it's like an underengineered solution, fragile, and likely to break apart in a heavy wind. Do I think the proper balance is difficult to find? Yes. Do I think that means we should give up and dump all government regulations? What kind of idiot are you?
The game Nethack has included kitchen sinks in its dungeons for years. I'm pretty sure that Nethack had kitchen sinks before Emacs did, and in any case, it actually has the kitchen sinks in the main code, not just in an optional icon that nobody uses any more.
it's written by people without experience architecting large projects, so the result is verbose, brittle, and messy. Period.
Well, I agree with you, the quality of code in an average OS project is pretty low. But with two decades in the biz, I can assure you the same is true of most proprietary commercial code too. The bottom line is that most code sucks.
The worst problem is even when you do have people who have experience in "architecting" large projects, they frequently lack experience in long-term maintenance, and their elegant architecture turns out to be much more fragile than they realize.
uh-huh, and windows is based on dos, which is based on CP/M, which dates from the late seventies, so that's not much better. Unless you count the newer flavors of windows, which are based on VMS, which is also from the same time frame. Yup, the entire industry has been completely stagnant since the late seventies or early eighties. Unless you take off the blinders and realize that all these systems have been evolving and improving since they were originally invented, and bear little actual resemblance to their primitive forebears at this point. No, no one has invented a new OS in years (obscure, unsuccessful side-projects like plan9 notwithstanding). That's because by the early eighties, OS technology was mature enough that we no longer needed to reinvent the wheel!
For a long time, Gnome was frequently criticised for having too many confusing options, and cluttered interfaces, and KDE was the one that was admired for its simplicity (and criticised for its lack of options). Now the situation is reversed....
:)
Anyway, I don't really care, I've toyed with Gnome and KDE, and I keep going back to my old, solid, reliable, well-configured fvwm desktop. It works the way I want, has all the quirky features I've grown addicted to, and best of all, it has the configuration options where they belong: in the configuration files, not cluttering up the user interface!
What it really does is it undercuts the value of commercial software, which destroys jobs in the software industry.
Yeah, 'cause Ghod only knows it was OpenOffice.org that destroyed the market for jobs writing word processors and spreadsheets, and not anyone else.
Speaking as a programmer myself, all I can say is that if your job skills are so limited that the best you can hope for is a job reinventing the wheels now so often provided by free software (and other commodity software, see link above), then you probably don't deserve a job in the industry.
Like the GPL, which forces you to distribute source only if you distribute binaries, the FSF requires you to say GNU only when you say Linux.
Actually, even that's not quite true. If you're referring to the Linux kernel (and only to the kernel), or if you're referring to a hypothetical system using the Linux kernel but not using any GNU code (which we might see on some embedded systems), then the FSF won't object to you just saying Linux.
Or as I like to say, if you really hate using the word "GNU" that much, just write your own damn libc and shellutils and fileutils and textutils and all the other basic stuff without which all of those optional add-on applications (like X11 and apache and sendmail) won't work.