The rule is "Be liberal in what you accept, and strict in what you emit". I don't think it's a bad thing that IE or Mozilla would do that. Strictness should be enforced by web validators; it shouldn't be used to cripple what the user sees.
Unfortunately, this means that the overall quality of HTML isn't as good, but that shouldn't be the most important factor here.
You know the secret plans will be emailed to Agent X sometime today. You break into Agent X's apartment, and look at his monitor. He has a new message! You resolve to wait in the darkened apartment, and kill Agent X when he enters.
The worst part is that it was probably a spam anyway, so we end up with not only a security leak, but also one of the world's first spam-induced fatalities. When will we ever learn?
obEmbeddedSig, in honor of "Agent X": "I was all of History's great acting robots - Acting unit 07, Thesbomat, David Duchovny..." - Calculon (from Futurama)
Re:Surprised? No. Opportunity? Yes.
on
XP, Phone Home
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· Score: 1
Do like the advice always is in the "restrictive employment contract"/. articles - print out the EULA, cross out bits, add your own bits, initial, sign, and date, and mail off to Microsoft (maybe also get it notarized, and use registered mail with a return receipt). Their original EULA (contract) didn't leave you room to negotiate, so I don't think it's unreasonable for you to send them something similar in return.
This would be a fun experiment for someone with some time on their hands and some sheer bloody-mindedness to try:)
You're missing the point - it's not that they keep logs of searches (pretty much any web server anywhere is keeping similar logs) and use those searches to sort their database, it's that your searches are specifically traceable to you via your license key if you search through this API. So don't be searching for anything particularly private, unless of course you trust Google more than the average corporation.
I don't see why the ancestor got modded down as "flamebait" - this is a good point. Apparently it's "flamebait" to say anything good about Microsoft (not that I've tried that one) or bad about Google around here:)
It prevents "page-widening" attacks, by breaking up any string that would display in such a way as to force the browser window to be too wide. You'll notice that the extra space is only inserted in the displayed text; the actual link itself is OK.
If they can get the government to mandate DRM, they can easily get it to outlaw HTTPS, or mandate a replacement for HTTPS (call it MS-HTTPS) which includes hooks that allow the user's session to be monitored. No man's life or property are safe while the legislature's in session, and no man's freedom is safe while private industry is writing the legislation.
Re:Ultimate Assasination Weapon
on
Space Wars
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· Score: 1
What if you're parked vertically?
Re:Space Defense Initiative (SDI)
on
Space Wars
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· Score: 1
It's funny that you point out the cost/benefit ratio of using anti-satellite missiles fired from F-15s, but don't think about the same ratio for a ballistic missile defense program. Don't you think it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper to invest in nuclear nonproliferation efforts and better international controls on missile technology, so that we wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing? The U.S. is at a lot more risk from a commercial air liner than it is from an ICBM at present; our risk from a biological attack is probably greater than either of those. We should be spending the money where the greatest risks are, IMHO.
And we can start (he said, launching into pet peeve #138) by stringing up all those scientists who nodded along last century when they were told that smallpox was "eradicated". They've done more of a disservice to the people of the world than any Neville Chamberlain. If it's so eradicated, how come we're desperately stockpiling vaccines right now, hmmm? What a bunch of idiots.
Re:I thought the title was intended ironically...
on
Space Wars
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· Score: 1
You're not alone; I'm acutely embarrassed on behalf of the U.S. for the actions of our government almost every day. Some amount of this is just that natural Yankee arrogance that we seem to have cultivated since WWII; it's hard to be taught in school that your grandparents basically saved the world, and still look on the other nations of the world as equal partners. But a large part of our current foreign policy failures in this regard does seem to have been instituted by a certain fan of "cowboy diplomacy" that we've recently, erm, "elected". He's moved on from giving Texans a bad name, to giving U.S. citizens as a whole a bad name:) In some cases I agree with his foreign policy goals, but I don't think I've ever agreed with his approach to them yet.
A news discussion that I heard recently summed this up rather nicely: the U.S. foreign policy has almost entirely shifted from a (guarded, and sometimes not entirely supported) multilateralism, to a straight-ahead unilateralist approach to international affairs. You can say what you like about our last President, but he was an expert politician, and he could actually negotiate with foreign leaders rather than just dictating. I fear that our current leadership is not nearly as able in this way, and the rest of the world is catching on to this pretty quickly. I just hope that Saddam doesn't manage to goad the guy into starting a regional war in the Middle East before the four years are up.
obModerationPrediction: a foreign national criticizing the U.S. is modded up, and no one disagrees. A U.S. national agreeing with that criticism is modded down, with a lot of flameage.
Re:Unattainable utopian goals
on
Space Wars
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· Score: 1
Sad but true - if we weren't dying of cancer, we'd be dying of something else. Eventually we'll be left with "natural causes", which basically means that your organs gave up on you. Then we can start curing that with artificial organs, and get people up to 150 or 200 year life spans. At which point the carrying capacity of the planet is gone.
I'm not crazy about dying either, but face it: something will always be the "leading cause of death". The only question before society is whether we'd rather that thing be
heart disease
cancer
heart attack after gettin' it on with a partner 80 years your junior
I vote for #3, but that's just me.
Re:Military threats promote innovation
on
Space Wars
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· Score: 1
The Celera case was a little different, though, in that there was a large public interest in keeping the results of this research available for use by the public and unencumbered by Celera's patents. So really, the public money was being used to battle against the publicly-supported but improperly operated USPTO.
I agree that a better use of money would have been to fix the USPTO so that there was no fear of Celera patenting the human genome. On the other hand, then there might not have been any incentive for Celera to do the work in the first place, so we still would have needed the government to do the research. I think this may just be a case where the importance of the research requires that it cannot be allowed to become a prize for private industry, because the results of the research will affect all people.
I think a better question to demonstrate this would be: will space technologies be developed more quickly and efficiently by private industry, or by the government?
Under the scenario that I'm describing, the computer practically doesn't say "Microsoft" anywhere, except if you run Microsoft apps like Word as well. It says "DellOS" or something like that.
People on/. bitching about Windows isn't really the issue, anyway. The average consumer does call Dell, not Microsoft; the average consumer thinks that they have a Dell computer, not a "commodity x86-compatible PC with Microsoft software and OS installed". Anybody who knows enough to install their own video card and experience compatibility problems as a result is likely to be in the know-it-all/. bitching-about-Microsoft-whether-it-makes-sense-or -not crowd anyway.
I agree with you that Microsoft likes to be front-and-center on the boxes sold by their customers; they've effectively co-opted a huge chunk of the advertizing share that normally the OEMs would be expected to have. Which just goes back to the monopoly thing - when was the last time that you bought a car that said "AC-Delco" on it in more places and in larger type than it said "Ford" or "GM" ?
Actually, it's the OEM that would decide to bundle Netscape rather than IE, and it's the OEM that actually handles tech support in those cases. Regular consumers don't call Microsoft for software problems on OEM PCs.
You can bet that if OEMs get to the point where they can replace IE, they will have already replaced anything that says "Microsoft" with their own logo, and it will essentially look like "DellOS" (maybe using Microsoft Windows technology) to the consumer.
The car analogy is flawed. What's really going on is: Dell is building the car, and they're using Microsoft engine control software. No matter whether you buy a Dell car, a Gateway car, or a Compaq car, you can't get a car with an alternative to Microsoft engine control software and the large markup that it adds. And, Dell, Gateway, and Compaq are required to use Microsoft AM/FM stereo, Microsoft floor mats, and Microsoft fuzzy dice in order to sell their cars with Microsoft engine control software. You can't go to a car maker that doesn't have to use Microsoft add-ons as well. Even if they wanted to, Dell/Gateway/Compaq can't sell you a car with Microsoft engine control software but without Microsoft floormats, AM/FM radio, and fuzzy dice.
PC OEMs are Microsoft's customers, and it's Microsoft's hold over them that enables Microsoft to foist new apps onto the consumer while denying Microsoft rivals the same chances to sell fuzzy dice and floormats in a new Dell. The monopolistic hold also prevents Dell from selling a car with alternative engine control software, but really that's not as interesting a problem as the middleware/apps lockin that Microsoft also has going on.
(It was hard to avoid using Packard throughout this post, since it was both a car and a PC maker, but somehow I managed.:)
I used to feel that way too. But when you get down to it, having a corporate name like Redhat to attach to Linux makes it a lot easier to get Linux into the average business, whether it's as a server, a desktop, or even in a product. I don't think we'd be nearly as far along with our Linux use at my company (not that we're that far, but we are shipping a product on it) if there wasn't a corporate figurehead or two for the Linux movement.
Redhat doesn't mean Linux to me. But it might to my boss, and it almost definitely does to his boss. Management likes to spend money for names; thus I say that keeping the Redhat name around is good for Linux - at least where I work.
I find it hard to see how someone could have been switched from "employee" to "contractor" status without knowing about it. For one thing, that would require a new employment contract, since you'd be working under different status at this point. So either all the employees forgot about this (unlikely) or else Loki/Draeker are lying about the switch in employee status.
It's sad, really - I liked Loki's games fairly well. Too bad their management were such poor business people and generally slime-like.
Slashdot Mirror
More like 5000 or so, isn't it?
The rule is "Be liberal in what you accept, and strict in what you emit". I don't think it's a bad thing that IE or Mozilla would do that. Strictness should be enforced by web validators; it shouldn't be used to cripple what the user sees.
Unfortunately, this means that the overall quality of HTML isn't as good, but that shouldn't be the most important factor here.
But then nobody can post important editorial comments about fixing bad links, CmdrTaco's atrocious spelling, etc.
ROFL! Thanks.
You know the secret plans will be emailed to Agent X sometime today. You break into Agent X's apartment, and look at his monitor. He has a new message! You resolve to wait in the darkened apartment, and kill Agent X when he enters.
The worst part is that it was probably a spam anyway, so we end up with not only a security leak, but also one of the world's first spam-induced fatalities. When will we ever learn?
obEmbeddedSig, in honor of "Agent X": "I was all of History's great acting robots - Acting unit 07, Thesbomat, David Duchovny..." - Calculon (from Futurama)
Do like the advice always is in the "restrictive employment contract" /. articles - print out the EULA, cross out bits, add your own bits, initial, sign, and date, and mail off to Microsoft (maybe also get it notarized, and use registered mail with a return receipt). Their original EULA (contract) didn't leave you room to negotiate, so I don't think it's unreasonable for you to send them something similar in return.
This would be a fun experiment for someone with some time on their hands and some sheer bloody-mindedness to try :)
There really should be an exception for people for whom the reason almost always was malice in the past, though.
You're missing the point - it's not that they keep logs of searches (pretty much any web server anywhere is keeping similar logs) and use those searches to sort their database, it's that your searches are specifically traceable to you via your license key if you search through this API. So don't be searching for anything particularly private, unless of course you trust Google more than the average corporation.
I don't see why the ancestor got modded down as "flamebait" - this is a good point. Apparently it's "flamebait" to say anything good about Microsoft (not that I've tried that one) or bad about Google around here :)
It prevents "page-widening" attacks, by breaking up any string that would display in such a way as to force the browser window to be too wide. You'll notice that the extra space is only inserted in the displayed text; the actual link itself is OK.
...not to mention pretty much any place that's out in the Big Blue Room :)
Easy counterargument: the majority of heroin users were borne of a woman. Thus, we should outlaw women, or at least motherhood.
Rioting in the streets ensues.
If they can get the government to mandate DRM, they can easily get it to outlaw HTTPS, or mandate a replacement for HTTPS (call it MS-HTTPS) which includes hooks that allow the user's session to be monitored. No man's life or property are safe while the legislature's in session, and no man's freedom is safe while private industry is writing the legislation.
A good example of how reporting half the truth is worse than reporting none of it.
Holsteins: because spots are funny.
What if you're parked vertically?
It's funny that you point out the cost/benefit ratio of using anti-satellite missiles fired from F-15s, but don't think about the same ratio for a ballistic missile defense program. Don't you think it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper to invest in nuclear nonproliferation efforts and better international controls on missile technology, so that we wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing? The U.S. is at a lot more risk from a commercial air liner than it is from an ICBM at present; our risk from a biological attack is probably greater than either of those. We should be spending the money where the greatest risks are, IMHO.
And we can start (he said, launching into pet peeve #138) by stringing up all those scientists who nodded along last century when they were told that smallpox was "eradicated". They've done more of a disservice to the people of the world than any Neville Chamberlain. If it's so eradicated, how come we're desperately stockpiling vaccines right now, hmmm? What a bunch of idiots.
You're not alone; I'm acutely embarrassed on behalf of the U.S. for the actions of our government almost every day. Some amount of this is just that natural Yankee arrogance that we seem to have cultivated since WWII; it's hard to be taught in school that your grandparents basically saved the world, and still look on the other nations of the world as equal partners. But a large part of our current foreign policy failures in this regard does seem to have been instituted by a certain fan of "cowboy diplomacy" that we've recently, erm, "elected". He's moved on from giving Texans a bad name, to giving U.S. citizens as a whole a bad name :) In some cases I agree with his foreign policy goals, but I don't think I've ever agreed with his approach to them yet.
A news discussion that I heard recently summed this up rather nicely: the U.S. foreign policy has almost entirely shifted from a (guarded, and sometimes not entirely supported) multilateralism, to a straight-ahead unilateralist approach to international affairs. You can say what you like about our last President, but he was an expert politician, and he could actually negotiate with foreign leaders rather than just dictating. I fear that our current leadership is not nearly as able in this way, and the rest of the world is catching on to this pretty quickly. I just hope that Saddam doesn't manage to goad the guy into starting a regional war in the Middle East before the four years are up.
obModerationPrediction: a foreign national criticizing the U.S. is modded up, and no one disagrees. A U.S. national agreeing with that criticism is modded down, with a lot of flameage.
Sad but true - if we weren't dying of cancer, we'd be dying of something else. Eventually we'll be left with "natural causes", which basically means that your organs gave up on you. Then we can start curing that with artificial organs, and get people up to 150 or 200 year life spans. At which point the carrying capacity of the planet is gone.
I'm not crazy about dying either, but face it: something will always be the "leading cause of death". The only question before society is whether we'd rather that thing be
I vote for #3, but that's just me.
The Celera case was a little different, though, in that there was a large public interest in keeping the results of this research available for use by the public and unencumbered by Celera's patents. So really, the public money was being used to battle against the publicly-supported but improperly operated USPTO.
I agree that a better use of money would have been to fix the USPTO so that there was no fear of Celera patenting the human genome. On the other hand, then there might not have been any incentive for Celera to do the work in the first place, so we still would have needed the government to do the research. I think this may just be a case where the importance of the research requires that it cannot be allowed to become a prize for private industry, because the results of the research will affect all people.
I think a better question to demonstrate this would be: will space technologies be developed more quickly and efficiently by private industry, or by the government?
Under the scenario that I'm describing, the computer practically doesn't say "Microsoft" anywhere, except if you run Microsoft apps like Word as well. It says "DellOS" or something like that.
People on /. bitching about Windows isn't really the issue, anyway. The average consumer does call Dell, not Microsoft; the average consumer thinks that they have a Dell computer, not a "commodity x86-compatible PC with Microsoft software and OS installed". Anybody who knows enough to install their own video card and experience compatibility problems as a result is likely to be in the know-it-all /. bitching-about-Microsoft-whether-it-makes-sense-or -not crowd anyway.
I agree with you that Microsoft likes to be front-and-center on the boxes sold by their customers; they've effectively co-opted a huge chunk of the advertizing share that normally the OEMs would be expected to have. Which just goes back to the monopoly thing - when was the last time that you bought a car that said "AC-Delco" on it in more places and in larger type than it said "Ford" or "GM" ?
Actually, it's the OEM that would decide to bundle Netscape rather than IE, and it's the OEM that actually handles tech support in those cases. Regular consumers don't call Microsoft for software problems on OEM PCs.
You can bet that if OEMs get to the point where they can replace IE, they will have already replaced anything that says "Microsoft" with their own logo, and it will essentially look like "DellOS" (maybe using Microsoft Windows technology) to the consumer.
The car analogy is flawed. What's really going on is: Dell is building the car, and they're using Microsoft engine control software. No matter whether you buy a Dell car, a Gateway car, or a Compaq car, you can't get a car with an alternative to Microsoft engine control software and the large markup that it adds. And, Dell, Gateway, and Compaq are required to use Microsoft AM/FM stereo, Microsoft floor mats, and Microsoft fuzzy dice in order to sell their cars with Microsoft engine control software. You can't go to a car maker that doesn't have to use Microsoft add-ons as well. Even if they wanted to, Dell/Gateway/Compaq can't sell you a car with Microsoft engine control software but without Microsoft floormats, AM/FM radio, and fuzzy dice.
PC OEMs are Microsoft's customers, and it's Microsoft's hold over them that enables Microsoft to foist new apps onto the consumer while denying Microsoft rivals the same chances to sell fuzzy dice and floormats in a new Dell. The monopolistic hold also prevents Dell from selling a car with alternative engine control software, but really that's not as interesting a problem as the middleware/apps lockin that Microsoft also has going on.
(It was hard to avoid using Packard throughout this post, since it was both a car and a PC maker, but somehow I managed. :)
I used to feel that way too. But when you get down to it, having a corporate name like Redhat to attach to Linux makes it a lot easier to get Linux into the average business, whether it's as a server, a desktop, or even in a product. I don't think we'd be nearly as far along with our Linux use at my company (not that we're that far, but we are shipping a product on it) if there wasn't a corporate figurehead or two for the Linux movement.
Redhat doesn't mean Linux to me. But it might to my boss, and it almost definitely does to his boss. Management likes to spend money for names; thus I say that keeping the Redhat name around is good for Linux - at least where I work.
Lou Diamond Phillips, is that you?
I find it hard to see how someone could have been switched from "employee" to "contractor" status without knowing about it. For one thing, that would require a new employment contract, since you'd be working under different status at this point. So either all the employees forgot about this (unlikely) or else Loki/Draeker are lying about the switch in employee status.
It's sad, really - I liked Loki's games fairly well. Too bad their management were such poor business people and generally slime-like.