In the next year 9 or 10 cigarette smokers out of 100,000 will get lung cancer. ( 1 or 2 nonsmokers will as well, go figure). That translates into about 98% of lifetime smokers not getting lung cancer, ever.
I don't know about you but if 98% of Windows installs could be expected to go for over half a century without crashing even once I'd be a much happier camper.
Really, it amounts to the same thing. LAN communications are private internal affairs with the entire infrastructure payed for and supported by the owner. Taxes are already payed on the power to run them and on whatever outside connections they rely on fully comensurrate with actual usage.
This like saying that if you put an internal memo if a drop tube down to the basement mailroom you owe the Post Office a stamp.
Beyond that is an optimally configured Linux system more secure than an optimally secured Windows system?
Yes, I think so, that's one of the reasons I use Linux. But let me ask you this, how many optimally configured systems do you think there really are? For that matter how sure are you that your system is optimally configured? If you have to spend even a couple seconds thinking about that question think about average bloke.
There's a social flaw in the system as well, which thus effects all systems no matter what operating system they're running.
To secure your home you call in an expert. A locksmith, perhaps an alarm systems expert as well. Virtually everybody does this. It's so ingrained that it's considered a no brainer. You'd have to be an idiot not to have proper locks on your doors and windows, right? If your security is ever breached ( say someone steals your keys) you can't get to the phone fast enough to have the locksmith come over and change all the locks.
How often have you had a pro come over and check the "locks" on your OS? Do you even know anyone who can do this? Can you look one up in the Yellow Pages?
Why not?
If you are such an expert yourself how many systems have you, outside of your "job" bothered to secure for people? Are you too snippy and think that "lusers" just shouldn't be allowed to operate computers? Maybe you're a part of the problem. Help be the cure.
I've just given you an entreprenurial niche on a silver platter. Why not take a nibble?
You need to go back and read the post you are replying to again. You seem to have missed it completely.
Parent is absolutely correct. To provide the energy needed to extract hydrogen from its low energy molecular state (i.e. add energy to the system) you must run generators. . . on?
If you intend to use a purely catalytic process ( nevermind all the enrgy required to run the process, like pumps and things) you still need to expend a lot of energy mining, refining and producing the catalyst.
Please do not suggest running the process from the energy source produced by the process. You cannot mount a fan powered generator to the front bumper of your car and drive forever.
The hydrogen "economy" is a myth. All the hydrogen on earth is in a low energy state and must have energy added to release it. The Second Law applies to this process.
Hydrogen is a form of energy that may be more useful than other forms for certain things ( you don't want a coal fired laptop for instance), but it requires a net loss of energy to produce it.
That energy will have to come from the same damned place that it comes from right now. Petroleum, coal, hydro, wind, whatever.
petroleum, for the same reasons. It might be nice to run your laptop from a fuel cell for an instant "recharge," but when your fuel cell powered car fills its tanks with methanol you're still filling it with a petroleum product.
You can, of course, make your own, but this requires time, expense and, unltimately, more fuel than you gain from the exercise.
It's that damned Second Law of Thermodynamics. I'm going to write my congressman to have it repealed.
The scary thing is I think I could induce congress to do it.
You use biomass to create your own, of course. A "renewable" energy source. So, tell me, do we have more trees today than we did 500 years ago, or do we, perhaps, have fewer?
We don't have an energy problem. None at all. We have a "Too many rats in the cage" problem, pure and simple.
There is no magic bullet that's going to provide free, consequenceless and limitless energy. Get used to it.
What do you think made me switch all of my business (and most of my personal) software from MS products to open source in the first place?
I got really, really tired of chasing their arbitrary changes to Office that were clearly designed to make me purchase new licenses for products I already had.
Years later I'm still a happy camper with Python, KDE, Open Office, MySQL and even vim.
In my personal case MS was the best Linux "advocate" anybody could even want.
The whole "Europe is a continent" thing is just an old wives tale of its formerly ignorant and barbaric natives ( whose own Asian ancestors had walked across the Asian continent to get there in the first place) that simply refuses to die.
Europe is simply a manmade socio-political region.
I don't know. I always thought my black London Fog was kinda dapper.
And hey, tin foil hats are a very practical way to keep your head cool and avoid sunstroke. Good protection against pigeon "bombed" too. I always figured that was the real reason the aliens radioed the fillings in my teeth telling me to wear one.
I guess in the future they can just radio my underwear.
Not all RFID tags are removable. Those in clothing can actually be incorporated into the clothing itself.
In the case of manufacturer applied RFID tags to packaged items the tags may be inside the packaging (to prevent instore removal) and the entire package must be disposed of to "remove" the tags. This could be an issue for "Malling."
On the flip side they're pretty easy to disable, don't last long, and put out a pretty weak signal to begin with.
An educated observation, which is why it basically works.
Please note that the observation was well enough educated that it includes the fact that its validity will be limited in time frame and that before it becomes completely obsolete the multiplying factor will change, as it already has a couple of times.
In order to understand Moore's Law one must read his entire essay, not just have some vague idea of one portion of it.
Just as being able to quote "E=mc^2" in no way implies you have the slightest understanding of the Special Theory of Relativity.
How? I hear you ask. Well if texting bad reviews has the power to kill a carefully crafted marketing plan maybe texting can be incorporated into your fiendish scheme to filch money from the pockets of the "consumer."
Here's what you do. Instead of spending time and money carefully crafting a marketing plan carefully craft a movie.
Then people will text each other how great it is and. ..VOILA!
It's a devilishly fiendish scheme, I know, but it'll work and the bottom end justifies the means, no?
"Why can't we take the collective ingenuity that it would take to build a privacy invading system like this and bend it towards helping these people rather than tracking them? By helping them, there'd be fewer to track!"
We're the government and we're here to help.
For time immemorial these words have roughly translated as "Run away! Run away!" to the "helped." It's even become a joke cliche.
Who determines what "helps" them? It seems unlikely it will be they themselves. God protect me from those that want to "help" me in ways I perceive as harmful.
While many homeless are legitimately mentally ill many have simply fallen on temporary hard times, like the guy who actually has a job but gets locked out of his house by his drunken girlfriend and can't find an apartment in his large city for several months. This actually happens. I have a friend who ran a homeless shelter in SF for a year and he says people like this often made up half the residents. The worthless drunken girlfriend is treated like a valuable member of society and the poor guy is lumped in with the drug addicts and paranoid schizophrenics. Now they want to tag and track him?
There are also people who simply live, by choice, outside the normal realm of behaviour, but aren't mentally ill. In fact, many of them are simply excesively sane to fit well in our idiotic society. Musashi Miyamoto and Euripides fell into this catagory once upon a time. Ghandi tried to. These people aren't sucking on the government tit. That's the whole point, they want to avoid all of that. They live or die on their own. These people are actually taking care of themselves in the true meaning of the phrase. I belive they make up a fair percentage of the homeless. They also scare the bejeezus out of the government. Round 'em up and track them. Them when something bad happens we can't explain we can just "round up the usual suspects" until we find one we can pin it on the make the populace feel secure and happy.
In the old days these people would simply aquire a canoe, an ax and head out for the frontier to become a "fur trapper." Many of our treasured national heros, like Daniel Boone, were such people.
Now there is no frontier and people with real independant gumption, the sort of people who could feed a tribe or conquer a continent are "mentally ill" or feared as criminals and terrorists.
If humanity is destined to become a race of endentured clerks and marketing managers screw the whole lot of 'em and I'll join the homeless myself.
Only problem is they don't make caves on the edge of town like they used to and the FBI is poised to track down anyone who deigns not to participate like rabid dogs.
Even if they distribute they are only "obligated" to do what Chinese law obligates them too. Why is this such a difficult concept for some people? Your GPL may well simply have no legal standing in Beijing.
If you think it does than you can hire a Chinese lawyer to make your case in the Chinese courts.
If they distribute in Newark and you feel they are thus obligated under US law all you have to do is legally serve them ( under US law) to appear in Newark.
Then we'll just have to free "Skylorov" all over again.
Remember him? The guy who wrote software in Russia that was legal in Russia and we all got bent out of shape over his being arrested for violating extortionate American Intellectual "Property" laws?
People, for God's sake, try to figure out what your stance on ip is and stick to it. The GPL only exists in the first place because of western copyright law and seeks to subvert it with its own weapons. If such western copyright law does not exist as such the GPL becomes a non issue.
"Maybe we should send the British navy back in to convince them to start buying our goods again."
Ah yes, the "free market" by military cooercion. Works every time. You do understand that this behaviour played a significant role in the success of the rise of communism in China in the first place?
Nevermind the fact that American copyright law does not extend beyond its borders and that the Chinese ( and Icelandics, Hugarians, New Guinians, Bhutanese, etc.) have the right to decide on their own just what constitutes "piracy" of intellectual property and what doesn't. The Chinese are free to take a more Jeffersonian approach to such matters than America is if they wish to. Ironic, isn't it?
Nor are the Chinese alone in such "piracy." Walk up to nearly any street vendor in NYC and you can walk away with bucket loads of pirated and unlicensed merchandise. At one point the Sam Goody Record stores were selling illegal rips as the legitimate article as fast as they could truck them in. Hell, you yourself just might be in possession of "pirated" music or movies obtained through various purely American channels.
Free Tibet. Up with Democracy. Fine. I'm with you.
But Intellectual "Property" isn't natural law. It's a purely human construct of extremely recent vintage and more dubious under the American Constitutional form of government than just about any other.
It's local code. Like how long you get to park at a meter for your quarter.
I have trees in my neighborhood here in upstate NY that are a mere hundreds of years old. I used to live within bicycling distance of the very pine tree that Ethan Allen chose as the model for the tree on the Vermont flag over 200 years ago. 400 hundred years isn't really considered an unusual age for a tree in the absence of logging.
No, a tree has no life expectency as such and they do not die simply from old age. Something must kill them, be it disease, parasitic infestation or natural disaster.
The California Redwoods are not merely hundreds of years old, that's how long it takes them to merely reach maturity, say 16ish in human terms. they are thousands of years old, many predating the Christian era.
They are also very hardy trees by any terms. The "Chimney Tree" is hollow, its center being burned out in a forest fire. You can stand inside of it and look out its top at the sky.
This tree is not only still alive but gradually healing itself, regrowing material to replace that lost to the fire, and someday may live to appear completely normal again.
The bark of a redwood is up to one foot thick and acts as an insulator during forest fires and many trees can survive major conflagrations with little more than the loss of some "skin."
A fallen redwood is still alive as well and will start putting out roots into the ground, sprouting several new trunks along the length of the old one.
In their natural enviroment the California Redwood is one of the hardiest trees known to exist. If they are dying there is something terribly, terribly wrong.
While the specifics might be a mystery the generalities are plain. What is wrong is that something has changed their enviroment.
I'll give you three guesses at to what that something might be.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but a more tradtional vacuum with an attachement set can be easily converted to blow.
KFG
Cool, and I'm perfectly prepared to design you just such a computer and interface.
All I ask is that you provide me with one thing:
A clear and unambiguous world in which to put it.
KFG
In the next year 9 or 10 cigarette smokers out of 100,000 will get lung cancer. ( 1 or 2 nonsmokers will as well, go figure). That translates into about 98% of lifetime smokers not getting lung cancer, ever.
I don't know about you but if 98% of Windows installs could be expected to go for over half a century without crashing even once I'd be a much happier camper.
KFG
What does this book offer that I can't easily find by asking google or google groups?
A book.
KFG
a tax on passing notes in class.
.I didn't say that.
Really, it amounts to the same thing. LAN communications are private internal affairs with the entire infrastructure payed for and supported by the owner. Taxes are already payed on the power to run them and on whatever outside connections they rely on fully comensurrate with actual usage.
This like saying that if you put an internal memo if a drop tube down to the basement mailroom you owe the Post Office a stamp.
Oh, wait. .
KFG
So the first step is to get used to that idea.
Beyond that is an optimally configured Linux system more secure than an optimally secured Windows system?
Yes, I think so, that's one of the reasons I use Linux. But let me ask you this, how many optimally configured systems do you think there really are? For that matter how sure are you that your system is optimally configured? If you have to spend even a couple seconds thinking about that question think about average bloke.
There's a social flaw in the system as well, which thus effects all systems no matter what operating system they're running.
To secure your home you call in an expert. A locksmith, perhaps an alarm systems expert as well. Virtually everybody does this. It's so ingrained that it's considered a no brainer. You'd have to be an idiot not to have proper locks on your doors and windows, right? If your security is ever breached ( say someone steals your keys) you can't get to the phone fast enough to have the locksmith come over and change all the locks.
How often have you had a pro come over and check the "locks" on your OS? Do you even know anyone who can do this? Can you look one up in the Yellow Pages?
Why not?
If you are such an expert yourself how many systems have you, outside of your "job" bothered to secure for people? Are you too snippy and think that "lusers" just shouldn't be allowed to operate computers? Maybe you're a part of the problem. Help be the cure.
I've just given you an entreprenurial niche on a silver platter. Why not take a nibble?
KFG
You need to go back and read the post you are replying to again. You seem to have missed it completely.
Parent is absolutely correct. To provide the energy needed to extract hydrogen from its low energy molecular state (i.e. add energy to the system) you must run generators. . . on?
If you intend to use a purely catalytic process ( nevermind all the enrgy required to run the process, like pumps and things) you still need to expend a lot of energy mining, refining and producing the catalyst.
Please do not suggest running the process from the energy source produced by the process. You cannot mount a fan powered generator to the front bumper of your car and drive forever.
The hydrogen "economy" is a myth. All the hydrogen on earth is in a low energy state and must have energy added to release it. The Second Law applies to this process.
Hydrogen is a form of energy that may be more useful than other forms for certain things ( you don't want a coal fired laptop for instance), but it requires a net loss of energy to produce it.
That energy will have to come from the same damned place that it comes from right now. Petroleum, coal, hydro, wind, whatever.
TANSTAAFL
KFG
petroleum, for the same reasons. It might be nice to run your laptop from a fuel cell for an instant "recharge," but when your fuel cell powered car fills its tanks with methanol you're still filling it with a petroleum product.
You can, of course, make your own, but this requires time, expense and, unltimately, more fuel than you gain from the exercise.
It's that damned Second Law of Thermodynamics. I'm going to write my congressman to have it repealed.
The scary thing is I think I could induce congress to do it.
You use biomass to create your own, of course. A "renewable" energy source. So, tell me, do we have more trees today than we did 500 years ago, or do we, perhaps, have fewer?
We don't have an energy problem. None at all. We have a "Too many rats in the cage" problem, pure and simple.
There is no magic bullet that's going to provide free, consequenceless and limitless energy. Get used to it.
KFG
That's fantastic. That means that if they lose my data after only 190 years I can return the disc for a new blank one.
The company is saved!
KFG
And I myself consider it a moral duty to fool the people who defend our morality.
KFG
What do you think made me switch all of my business (and most of my personal) software from MS products to open source in the first place?
I got really, really tired of chasing their arbitrary changes to Office that were clearly designed to make me purchase new licenses for products I already had.
Years later I'm still a happy camper with Python, KDE, Open Office, MySQL and even vim.
In my personal case MS was the best Linux "advocate" anybody could even want.
KFG
I'd hazzard a guess that that's an issue dealt with by marketing.
KFG
Corel's attitude is now irrelevant.
What is that attitude of Vector Capital, for whom Corel is simply now an owned brand?
I think you might find that it's very different than Corel's traditional point of view.
KFG
Ostrakon.
KFG
Europe is a peninsula of Asia.
The whole "Europe is a continent" thing is just an old wives tale of its formerly ignorant and barbaric natives ( whose own Asian ancestors had walked across the Asian continent to get there in the first place) that simply refuses to die.
Europe is simply a manmade socio-political region.
KFG
I don't know. I always thought my black London Fog was kinda dapper.
And hey, tin foil hats are a very practical way to keep your head cool and avoid sunstroke. Good protection against pigeon "bombed" too. I always figured that was the real reason the aliens radioed the fillings in my teeth telling me to wear one.
I guess in the future they can just radio my underwear.
KFG
Yeah, and that you're the sort of moron who shaves with the cardboard from the back of the package.
KFG
Not all RFID tags are removable. Those in clothing can actually be incorporated into the clothing itself.
In the case of manufacturer applied RFID tags to packaged items the tags may be inside the packaging (to prevent instore removal) and the entire package must be disposed of to "remove" the tags. This could be an issue for "Malling."
On the flip side they're pretty easy to disable, don't last long, and put out a pretty weak signal to begin with.
KFG
An educated observation, which is why it basically works.
Please note that the observation was well enough educated that it includes the fact that its validity will be limited in time frame and that before it becomes completely obsolete the multiplying factor will change, as it already has a couple of times.
In order to understand Moore's Law one must read his entire essay, not just have some vague idea of one portion of it.
Just as being able to quote "E=mc^2" in no way implies you have the slightest understanding of the Special Theory of Relativity.
KFG
Do some guerilla marketing.
.VOILA!
How? I hear you ask. Well if texting bad reviews has the power to kill a carefully crafted marketing plan maybe texting can be incorporated into your fiendish scheme to filch money from the pockets of the "consumer."
Here's what you do. Instead of spending time and money carefully crafting a marketing plan carefully craft a movie.
Then people will text each other how great it is and. .
It's a devilishly fiendish scheme, I know, but it'll work and the bottom end justifies the means, no?
KFG
"Why can't we take the collective ingenuity that it would take to build a privacy invading system like this and bend it towards helping these people rather than tracking them? By helping them, there'd be fewer to track!"
We're the government and we're here to help.
For time immemorial these words have roughly translated as "Run away! Run away!" to the "helped." It's even become a joke cliche.
Who determines what "helps" them? It seems unlikely it will be they themselves. God protect me from those that want to "help" me in ways I perceive as harmful.
While many homeless are legitimately mentally ill many have simply fallen on temporary hard times, like the guy who actually has a job but gets locked out of his house by his drunken girlfriend and can't find an apartment in his large city for several months. This actually happens. I have a friend who ran a homeless shelter in SF for a year and he says people like this often made up half the residents. The worthless drunken girlfriend is treated like a valuable member of society and the poor guy is lumped in with the drug addicts and paranoid schizophrenics. Now they want to tag and track him?
There are also people who simply live, by choice, outside the normal realm of behaviour, but aren't mentally ill. In fact, many of them are simply excesively sane to fit well in our idiotic society. Musashi Miyamoto and Euripides fell into this catagory once upon a time. Ghandi tried to. These people aren't sucking on the government tit. That's the whole point, they want to avoid all of that. They live or die on their own. These people are actually taking care of themselves in the true meaning of the phrase. I belive they make up a fair percentage of the homeless. They also scare the bejeezus out of the government. Round 'em up and track them. Them when something bad happens we can't explain we can just "round up the usual suspects" until we find one we can pin it on the make the populace feel secure and happy.
In the old days these people would simply aquire a canoe, an ax and head out for the frontier to become a "fur trapper." Many of our treasured national heros, like Daniel Boone, were such people.
Now there is no frontier and people with real independant gumption, the sort of people who could feed a tribe or conquer a continent are "mentally ill" or feared as criminals and terrorists.
If humanity is destined to become a race of endentured clerks and marketing managers screw the whole lot of 'em and I'll join the homeless myself.
Only problem is they don't make caves on the edge of town like they used to and the FBI is poised to track down anyone who deigns not to participate like rabid dogs.
KFG
"If I use a fork, I shouldn't have to worry about tine alignment or upgrade its metallacity or whatever"
You've never been to Denny's, have you?
KFG
Even if they distribute they are only "obligated" to do what Chinese law obligates them too. Why is this such a difficult concept for some people? Your GPL may well simply have no legal standing in Beijing.
If you think it does than you can hire a Chinese lawyer to make your case in the Chinese courts.
If they distribute in Newark and you feel they are thus obligated under US law all you have to do is legally serve them ( under US law) to appear in Newark.
Then we'll just have to free "Skylorov" all over again.
Remember him? The guy who wrote software in Russia that was legal in Russia and we all got bent out of shape over his being arrested for violating extortionate American Intellectual "Property" laws?
People, for God's sake, try to figure out what your stance on ip is and stick to it. The GPL only exists in the first place because of western copyright law and seeks to subvert it with its own weapons. If such western copyright law does not exist as such the GPL becomes a non issue.
KFG
"Maybe we should send the British navy back in to convince them to start buying our goods again."
Ah yes, the "free market" by military cooercion. Works every time. You do understand that this behaviour played a significant role in the success of the rise of communism in China in the first place?
Nevermind the fact that American copyright law does not extend beyond its borders and that the Chinese ( and Icelandics, Hugarians, New Guinians, Bhutanese, etc.) have the right to decide on their own just what constitutes "piracy" of intellectual property and what doesn't. The Chinese are free to take a more Jeffersonian approach to such matters than America is if they wish to. Ironic, isn't it?
Nor are the Chinese alone in such "piracy." Walk up to nearly any street vendor in NYC and you can walk away with bucket loads of pirated and unlicensed merchandise. At one point the Sam Goody Record stores were selling illegal rips as the legitimate article as fast as they could truck them in. Hell, you yourself just might be in possession of "pirated" music or movies obtained through various purely American channels.
Free Tibet. Up with Democracy. Fine. I'm with you.
But Intellectual "Property" isn't natural law. It's a purely human construct of extremely recent vintage and more dubious under the American Constitutional form of government than just about any other.
It's local code. Like how long you get to park at a meter for your quarter.
China isn't in our local jurisdiction.
KFG
I have trees in my neighborhood here in upstate NY that are a mere hundreds of years old. I used to live within bicycling distance of the very pine tree that Ethan Allen chose as the model for the tree on the Vermont flag over 200 years ago. 400 hundred years isn't really considered an unusual age for a tree in the absence of logging.
No, a tree has no life expectency as such and they do not die simply from old age. Something must kill them, be it disease, parasitic infestation or natural disaster.
The California Redwoods are not merely hundreds of years old, that's how long it takes them to merely reach maturity, say 16ish in human terms. they are thousands of years old, many predating the Christian era.
They are also very hardy trees by any terms. The "Chimney Tree" is hollow, its center being burned out in a forest fire. You can stand inside of it and look out its top at the sky.
This tree is not only still alive but gradually healing itself, regrowing material to replace that lost to the fire, and someday may live to appear completely normal again.
The bark of a redwood is up to one foot thick and acts as an insulator during forest fires and many trees can survive major conflagrations with little more than the loss of some "skin."
A fallen redwood is still alive as well and will start putting out roots into the ground, sprouting several new trunks along the length of the old one.
In their natural enviroment the California Redwood is one of the hardiest trees known to exist. If they are dying there is something terribly, terribly wrong.
While the specifics might be a mystery the generalities are plain. What is wrong is that something has changed their enviroment.
I'll give you three guesses at to what that something might be.
KFG