"Without the least doubt, I say the machine is fully tamper-proof," the judge declared.
I'm impressed by the fact that they clearly have technically literate judges in India. As a mere engineer, I would be very hesitant to proclaim an electronic system tamper-proof. Clearly Indian judges are experts in electronics, cryptography and the law. Very impressive.
Re:So they stick to the new license...
on
XFree86 4.4 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Here's the deal.. if the new license isn't such a big deal, why doesn't the XFree group revert ot the old one?
Perhaps it is a big deal after all. Pure speculation, but it is possible that incompatability with the GPL is a deliberate attempt to prevent future changes to Xlib from being used by the freedesktop.org project now that they have packaged the library separately. I don't really see what useful purpose that would serve, but maybe things just got very, very bitter between the various personalities involved.
Re:mainly because people are ignorant
on
Mars Rovers Update
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Because the feel-good environmentalists have heart attacks when you mention the word nuclear.
Windows... Which apparently is now a security center.
Not just a security centre. A security centre with a pop-up ad blocker. Innovative stuff! Maybe Windows machines will stop e-mailing worms to me as soon as all users have the ability to block pop-up ads. Or something like that...
Would that apply to the leaked MS code as well? It's been on P2P networks for a while now, or so I've read.
I don't know how widespread the courts would consider the distribution of the MS source code to be at the moment. However, the greater danger there is probably from copyright infringement rather than trade secrets. If the kernel maintainers allow portions of the MS source code to leak into Linux there could be problems. Unfortunately, they will have no way of knowing that code has been copied unless they also have some familiarity with the source. Of course, if they are familiar with the MS source code, there is the danger that MS will allege that independently created work is somehow derived from the stolen code...
Try calling up Debian and getting them to answer some questions.
I don't have a phone number for Debian. I do, however, have e-mail access to the package maintainers, as well as the ability to e-mail the coders direct if I have great difficulty with something. I have direct access to the Debian bug tracking system, so I can see for myself if the problem has been encountered before. I can also see exactly what is being done to solve my problem.
I have had detailed technical conversations (via e-mail) with Debian packagers that I could never hope to have with the support staff on the other end of Microsoft's phones. Nor do they try and convince me that I just need to buy solution X to solve all my problems.
Support is one are where free software/open source far exceeds the standard proprietary equivalents.
It becomes a political struggle when "national security" becomes a convenient
smokescreen for trampling on human rights. It becomes a political struggle when people are locked up in Guantanamo Bay without a chance to stand trial and have their guilt (or otherwise) determined by a court with appropriate jurisdiction, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when people are tortured - and they are certainly being mentally tortured.
It becomes a political struggle when politicians use terrorism to justify their expeditions to get cheap oil. It becomes a political struggle when they then use "national security" to prevent anyone from holding them to account for their failed expeditions.
It was you that first mentioned terrorism in relation to this incident. Remarkably good at getting us to acccept their points of view, our politicians, aren't they?
It would be paranoid to believe that the confiscation of these servers is a political act designed to obtain information about political opponents. I don't believe that is the truth, but if "anti-terrorist" activities become immune from scrutiny, how will you ever know what those in power are really up to?
In the face of an immediate threat, you don't have liberties.
Of course, and we all know how many real and imminent terrorist threats our glorious leaders are combatting everyday. It is unfortunate that national security interests prevent them from proving to us how well they are doing, but we should all be truly thankful that such great people choose to serve us.
Without such glorious leaders, able to interpret the fine intelligence produced by our valiant security services, we may never have known just how grave a threat was posed by Iraq's weapons of mass distraction.
All hail our glorious heros. Down with civil libertarians and other friends of terrorists, paedophiles and drug pushers!
I thought it was a great idea when British supermarkets started offering "cashback". I'm still not entirely sure it was a good idea when the pubs followed their lead! It's just a bit too easy to spend money when you are already drunk, can pay for more drinks, and can get cash from your card without even being able to remember your PIN! (generally, only signatures are required in the UK).
The technical reasons of why overwriting a buffer is bad, are beyond the scope of this post. Just know that it is one of the worst things that can happen;)
The technical reasons of why overwriting a buffer is bad are described here
I'm just curious--does your ideology extend to other types of information, such as books, newspapers, recipes, the PIN number on your ATM card?
I don't know about the original poster's ideology, but I certainly expect to get the "source code" to a book when I buy one, or even when I browse in the bookshop or library. I expect to get the "source code" to a newspaper when I buy one, or when I flick through it in the newsagents deciding whether it looks interesting enough to buy. I generally expect to be able to read recipes when people give them to me, and I *definitely* expect pre-processed foods to contain a list of ingredients when I buy them.
As for PIN numbers, I have never tried to sell my PIN to anyone, so I don't see what right anyone has to know what it is - but then you were just being flippant with that comment, weren't you?
in the world outside of England,... we all use 24 hour days!
I can assure you, my foreign friend, that we also have 24 hour days in England. In fact, I believe you will find that the *whole world* has 24 hour days!
Moreover, 24 hr time is *much* more common in the UK than in the US, where it seems to be called military time or some such thing.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
And what is wrong with that exactly?
If the rights could not be exercised contrary to UN policies, there would be something sinister about article 29, however
it clearly states purposes and principles, not policies.
The principles of the UN are clearly laid out in the UN charter.
Well to start with, I don't wear leather. Thanks for your reply, I do respect your views and if I was convinced that being vegan was the only way to be compassionate towards animals, I would be vegan. However, do not think that being (ovo-)lacto-vegetarian is necessarily incompatible with caring for animals. The problems that you cite with milk, and that the milksucks.com site in your sig mention, are related primarily to the means of production. I don't know where you come from, but in the UK it is very easy to get organic foods which do not treat food production as just another industrial process. For milk. there is some information about this at the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative.
You come from one of the biggest fishing countries in the world
I do. Along with the rest of Europe, we are driving many fish to extinction out of sheer greed. To quote from a recent report by the EU on the new fisheries policy (which is a half-baked measure and will do little to solve the problem):
The reason [for the introduction of a new fisheries policy was] that far too many fish had been taken from the sea by fishing, leaving too few adult fish to reproduce and rebuild the stocks. Today, several important fish stocks, such as cod, are on the verge of collapse
It's not like they are anywhere close to exstinction
On the contrary, whale populations have been decimated in the last 150 years. That's why the IWC moratorium on whaling came into force in the 1980s.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm impressed by the fact that they clearly have technically literate judges in India. As a mere engineer, I would be very hesitant to proclaim an electronic system tamper-proof. Clearly Indian judges are experts in electronics, cryptography and the law. Very impressive.
Perhaps it is a big deal after all. Pure speculation, but it is possible that incompatability with the GPL is a deliberate attempt to prevent future changes to Xlib from being used by the freedesktop.org project now that they have packaged the library separately. I don't really see what useful purpose that would serve, but maybe things just got very, very bitter between the various personalities involved.
Challenger. Columbia. Nuclear?
Not just a security centre. A security centre with a pop-up ad blocker. Innovative stuff! Maybe Windows machines will stop e-mailing worms to me as soon as all users have the ability to block pop-up ads. Or something like that ...
I don't know how widespread the courts would consider the distribution of the MS source code to be at the moment. However, the greater danger there is probably from copyright infringement rather than trade secrets. If the kernel maintainers allow portions of the MS source code to leak into Linux there could be problems. Unfortunately, they will have no way of knowing that code has been copied unless they also have some familiarity with the source. Of course, if they are familiar with the MS source code, there is the danger that MS will allege that independently created work is somehow derived from the stolen code ...
Lesson: next time this happens, *everyone* post the code on their website
I don't have a phone number for Debian. I do, however, have e-mail access to the package maintainers, as well as the ability to e-mail the coders direct if I have great difficulty with something. I have direct access to the Debian bug tracking system, so I can see for myself if the problem has been encountered before. I can also see exactly what is being done to solve my problem.
I have had detailed technical conversations (via e-mail) with Debian packagers that I could never hope to have with the support staff on the other end of Microsoft's phones. Nor do they try and convince me that I just need to buy solution X to solve all my problems.
Support is one are where free software/open source far exceeds the standard proprietary equivalents.
It becomes a political struggle when politicians use terrorism to justify their expeditions to get cheap oil. It becomes a political struggle when they then use "national security" to prevent anyone from holding them to account for their failed expeditions.
It was you that first mentioned terrorism in relation to this incident. Remarkably good at getting us to acccept their points of view, our politicians, aren't they?
It would be paranoid to believe that the confiscation of these servers is a political act designed to obtain information about political opponents. I don't believe that is the truth, but if "anti-terrorist" activities become immune from scrutiny, how will you ever know what those in power are really up to?
Of course, and we all know how many real and imminent terrorist threats our glorious leaders are combatting everyday. It is unfortunate that national security interests prevent them from proving to us how well they are doing, but we should all be truly thankful that such great people choose to serve us.
Without such glorious leaders, able to interpret the fine intelligence produced by our valiant security services, we may never have known just how grave a threat was posed by Iraq's weapons of mass distraction.
All hail our glorious heros. Down with civil libertarians and other friends of terrorists, paedophiles and drug pushers!
Ah! It's the terrorist threat again. Well, that's alright then. Civil liberties don't count if it's the "war on terror".
I thought it was a great idea when British supermarkets started offering "cashback". I'm still not entirely sure it was a good idea when the pubs followed their lead! It's just a bit too easy to spend money when you are already drunk, can pay for more drinks, and can get cash from your card without even being able to remember your PIN! (generally, only signatures are required in the UK).
Would that be British pints (20 oz.) or US pints (16 oz.)?
Mars Polar Lander, anyone?
SenorMooCow said:
01100111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01100111 00111111
SirTalon42 said:
01101110 01101111 00101100 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110011 01101001 01100111
I say:
encode.m:
function encode (s)
t = str2mat(s);
for i = 1:length(t)
printf("%s ", dec2bin (0+t(i)));
endfor
printf("\n");
endfunction
octave:1> encode("Some moderators just don't have a sense of humour!")
1010011 1101111 1101101 1100101 100000 1101101 1101111 1100100 1100101 1110010 1100001 1110100 1101111 1110010 1110011 100000 1101010 1110101 1110011 1110100 100000 1100100 1101111 1101110 100111 1110100 100000 1101000 1100001 1110110 1100101 100000 1100001 100000 1110011 1100101 1101110 1110011 1100101 100000 1101111 1100110 100000 1101000 1110101 1101101 1101111 1110101 1110010 100001
octave:2> encode(";-)")
111011 101101 101001
Using GNU Octave http://www.octave.org,
decode.m:
function decode (b)
for i = 1:length(b)
printf("%s",char(bin2dec(num2str(b(i)))));
endfor
printf("\n");
endfunction
octave:1> decode ([01100111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01100111 00111111])
got sig?
octave:2> decode ([01101110 01101111 00101100 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110011 01101001 01100111])
no, i don't have a sig
Wouldn't dream of it. Octave all the way.
Are you sure about that?
The technical reasons of why overwriting a buffer is bad are described here
I don't know about the original poster's ideology, but I certainly expect to get the "source code" to a book when I buy one, or even when I browse in the bookshop or library. I expect to get the "source code" to a newspaper when I buy one, or when I flick through it in the newsagents deciding whether it looks interesting enough to buy. I generally expect to be able to read recipes when people give them to me, and I *definitely* expect pre-processed foods to contain a list of ingredients when I buy them.
As for PIN numbers, I have never tried to sell my PIN to anyone, so I don't see what right anyone has to know what it is - but then you were just being flippant with that comment, weren't you?
I can assure you, my foreign friend, that we also have 24 hour days in England. In fact, I believe you will find that the *whole world* has 24 hour days!
Moreover, 24 hr time is *much* more common in the UK than in the US, where it seems to be called military time or some such thing.
Yeah, good point. You are right, there is no excuse for exceptions.
And what is wrong with that exactly?
If the rights could not be exercised contrary to UN policies, there would be something sinister about article 29, however it clearly states purposes and principles, not policies.
The principles of the UN are clearly laid out in the UN charter.
Well to start with, I don't wear leather. Thanks for your reply, I do respect your views and if I was convinced that being vegan was the only way to be compassionate towards animals, I would be vegan. However, do not think that being (ovo-)lacto-vegetarian is necessarily incompatible with caring for animals. The problems that you cite with milk, and that the milksucks.com site in your sig mention, are related primarily to the means of production. I don't know where you come from, but in the UK it is very easy to get organic foods which do not treat food production as just another industrial process. For milk. there is some information about this at the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative.
I do. Along with the rest of Europe, we are driving many fish to extinction out of sheer greed. To quote from a recent report by the EU on the new fisheries policy (which is a half-baked measure and will do little to solve the problem):
It's not like they are anywhere close to exstinctionOn the contrary, whale populations have been decimated in the last 150 years. That's why the IWC moratorium on whaling came into force in the 1980s.
No, I don't. I am vegetarian.