I don't see the logic in a system being so critical to be working 24/7 that they force it to crash if the maintenance is missed. Does anyone else see a problem with this logic?
So the "copyright holder" says he owns the rights under penalty of perjury but doesn't explicitly say in the notice that the designated file infringes that copyright under penalty of perjury. The DMCA doesn't seem to explicitly say what thay have to declare under penalty of perjury, just that they have to "declare" under penalty of perjury.
I doubt if there would even be a case for false claims of infringement under the DMCA, let alone getting the government to prosecute them for it.
The individual has no rights here to avoid being persecuted by any organization that wants to go after them, for any reason. Meanwhile, the individual has absolutely no recourse when an organization attacks him.
"There is such a large number of spammers,'' said Enrique Salem, a senior vice president of Symantec, "that no matter how many you arrest, more people will send spam.''
Can you see someone explaining:
"There is such a large number of bank robbers that no matter how many you arrest, more people will rob banks.''
You do realize that the use of credit to make a purchase is not a right but an option vendors allow you to have. Would you prefer that instead of a credit card they only accepted cash, forcing thousands of people to carry large sums of money on them.
It's an option vendors allow because they want to attract customers. If they accepted only cash, they would lose customers in droves. It's in the best interests of the vendors to give their customers the most options to buy their products as they can. When they decide to take money from VISA in order to REDUCE the options their customers have to spend money in their establishment, that's their option. It's also my option to decide whether or not to buy there based on how friendly they are to me. Personally, I hope that they end up with a net loss by making this kind of deals, but that's just me. I'm certainly not going to carry huge sums of cash on me in order to buy from stores that want VISA's money more than they want to build their business based on serving their customers.
COSTCO only accepts American Express. Does that make me complain and get an AE card?
Actually, now that you're bringing up silly things like that, I DO react to those anti-competitive deals too.
Costco used to be a place where I shopped regularly. I actually got a Discover card when THAT was all they would accept. When they changed to American Express and quit takiing Discover, I cancelled the Discover card and stopped shopping at Costco.
Same with Shell Oil. I've been a customer since 1967, and had one of their cards. They dropped their credit cards and came out with the "Chase Manhatten Shell Card". I got one of those for the gas discounts, and then a few years later, they went to the "Citibank Shell Card". I no longer have a Shell card, and Chase Manhatten extended their discounts to all gas purchases. I'm now a happy "Rotten Robbie" gas customer with a nice discount whenever I use my Chase Manhatten MasterCard.
The venues alone would cost a million dollars to rent for the time neccessary
What if they actually made it an international event? Have the different events in totally different places? I'm sure plenty of cities could easily host perhaps JUST the swimming events or some other small part of it. It would certainly make the thing much cheaper to use already existing venues, and the splitting of venues would make it a MUCH smaller target for terrorists.
What really frosts me about these sponsorship wars is when the sponsors are allowed to pay to keep me from using competing products. I can see VISA paying to be the Olympic sponsor, and getting the resulting publicity, but when they can pay places to NOT take my credit card, it crosses a line.
Personally, I have a "token" VISA card which is ONLY used when I end up at one of their "purchased" venues (accidentally), and NEVER used anywhere else.
The fact that they're proud of making these deals ("be sure to bring your VISA card because you can't use American Express"), knowing that they have paid to force me to carry extra credit cards with me, especially in these times of identity theft and credit card fraud where I'd much rather just carry one card and watch it closely, seems to me like it should be illegal.
I thought the problem with flash was a limited number of write cycles (10,000-100,000?). With this thing rated at up to 25,000 IOPS, is would seem that they might not last all that long (4 seconds?). I don't see any indication of some breakthrough in flash memory itself.
Also, what's so different from this and just using a standard CF card? You can get 1GB of CF for under $150. It should be fairly simple to put together a "CF-raid" drive for way less than $1K/GB.
Why not stop them before they get dangerous. Notify their ISP and get them a warning. Just "letting it go" will only encourage them to continue to keep on trying and learning until they figure out how to break in without being caught. A quick warning from their ISP might be just enough to scare them off, and word of mouth to their friends might help to keep others from thinking it's "cool" to attempt to break into computer systems.
I don't see anything wrong with being against software patents in general while at the same time being against companies that abuse the patents they have. How is that "hypocritical"?
In this case, a company with a virtual monopoly forcing anyone who uses their software to give up their own patent rights. How many companies don't have at least ONE copy of windows, especially if they're writing and patenting software themselves? If they want to test their software to insure that it works with Windows, they have to agree to give Microsoft their patent rights.
"It's sort of like somebody stealing your car, and you hunt them down and you find them, and they say you can have your car back, but there's no penalty for that. If there's no penalty for stealing property, then where are we?"
The only two relevant formats are CF and SD, in my opinion.
This appears to be just a standards upgrade to the MMC format. Same size card, faster maximum speed and wider address. Since MMC is a one-bit interface, it looks like this just changes the standard to a 16-bit interface (120MB vs. 2.5MB/s), and changes the address to a 512-byte block address rather than a single byte address (2TB vs 4GB).
There's already a "High speed MMC" that appears to have an 8-bit interface, this is just an incremental change to keep up with the other players and keep the MMC standard (and probably related patents and licensing) competative in the marketplace.
AFAICT, "High speed MMC" didn't really set the world on fire, so they need some other way to break you of your CF habit.
This review goes a step further and measures the output with a multimeter. Good on them.
And then he makes a big deal about a hundredth of a volt difference in output voltage while not even bothering to measure the output current? And a big two hundredths of a volt on the 12V rail while running heavy CPU load? What exactly does he think the 12V rail powers?
Yes, perhaps there should be a licensing board for computer technicians so that they have to show at least a minimum level of competency before selling their services to consumers, but how does that affect the fact that the "TV Technicians" don't seem to have to have any competency in computers to install and service computer based systems?
It seems to me that, if the "TV repair Technicians Board" wants to classify computer repair and installation as "their" field of expertise, they should be required to show that their technicians are competent in the field. Do they test their licensed technicians for competency to install computer driven systems?
If "the licensing requirement is designed to protect consumers who have hired computer technicians to install or repair new entertainment systems that employ computers." as the licensing board is stating, then where are they "protecting consumers" from TV technicians who install computer systems that drive home entertainment systems?
I might agree with this licensing if: 1) they could show that the licensing actually meant something other than sending $55 to their bank account, and 2) they could show that the consumer was somehow better off with a "TV technician" installing a computer system, rather than someone who has competency in computer systems. Perhaps, before they start trying to license computer technicians to perform installations, they should try to determine whether or not their current technicians have have the skills and knowledge to handle a computer-driven home entertainment system.
Sure they (Green Hills) have an agenda, and it should be noted. However, they may have a point and shouldn't be discredited out of hand.
Yes, but it should also be clearly noted that they have the exact same problem. Their software could just as easily be compromised by a mole. The main difference is that, with open source, the code can be looked at and reviewed far more easily in order to detect malicious code.
It's exactly the same scenario as software for voting. Which would you trust more, proprietary software from Diebold, or open source where anyone can look at and review it?
There isn't a simple answer here. With open source, *IF* there is a bug that can be exploited, many more people can look for it and perhaps find it. With closed source, you have to rely on trust for the vendor and all his employees, but it's much harder for an outsider, without access to the code, to find a bug and exploit it.
But... didn't Darl tell us all that the stock was a great buy at $10 and they're going to do a massive buyback of the stock, any 'ol minute now? Or was the buyback announcement just more posturing to pump the stock price?
Let's see... Darl *KNOWS it's a great value at $10/share... it's now at $4/share... and I still haven't seen them buying back stock.
It couldn't be that Darl lied to us all and still doesn't think it's worth it to buy, even at $4 could it?
First, look at the opportunities for fraud. Say I set up a porn site with an email address. You email me and the system asks you to post a huge bond to get the message through, say $1000. Somewhere out there will be id10ts who haven't configured their systems properly. The bond gets posted, I mark your message spam. Result: legal profit. Or if I get lots of replies, I can just set the bond to say 49c and then collect lots of small sums from people.
DAMMIT! Stop trying to break my email! Spam is not that bad.
Which spam are you referring to? The spam you receive, or the spam you send?
If you don't ask for any bond for mail sent to your account, all your mail will get through just fine, complete with the spam.
On the other hand, if you send out mail that the recipients regard as spam, even if you think your spam is "not that bad", the person who's email box you're cluttering is the one who gets to decide. If that "breaks your email" then face it, you're a spammer.
Well, back in my day, the mainframe had 32K, and the tube was black and green. And we were happy to have it!! ('course, the only game we had was sorting a tray full of punched cards... but it was FUN and we LOVED it)
It's got nothing to do with the software but the data.
That is the key. Any data that might be needed many years from now needs to be kept and archived in a format that is documented (hopefully self-documented) and usable for as long as the data might be valuable. This could easily be far longer than 200 years. In addition, these archives must be maintained and migrated to media that will last over time.
The time frame that the data will be needed will differ with each application. Parking ticket data? A few years. Corporate records? Until the statute of limitations is up on taxes/criminal activity. Birth/death records, historical data, etc? Forever.
The point is that each type of data needs to be looked at and stored appropriately. That's the job of the systems analyst and designers, perhaps with some help from legislation making some of the requirements clear.
Storing it in Oracle database format is useless. When state of the art becomes a petabit content addressable holographic memory chip with 2 picoseond access time, the physical format of how the data is stored for 'online' access will be far different than it is today. Still, the raw data should be kept archived in a manner that is not subject to whatever the current hardware/software of the day happens to use. In addition, there should be standardization of the format in which it is stored. You shouldn't have to know the format that Podunk, Iowa used to keep their genealogical records a thousand years ago to access that kind of data.
The programs that access the data, the online formats of the data and the hardware that it exists on can all change dramatically over time. The data itself can't be allowed to be lost, either because it was stored on 1/2" 556 BPI magnetic tape, or stored in a 200 year old database format. Perhaps some sorts of data (geneology, literature, court records, anything of historical value) should be archived by something like the Library of Congress and maintained by them so it doesn't deteriorate and is available in a format that can be used on whatever "current technology" is at the time.
Well, it's not. RedHat's Q4 2003 earnings are now $0.02 instead of $0.03 which is either a 33% or 50% reduction, depending on which way you count, and the stock fall represents just portion of that.
Well, actually, they were down 10.6% for last quarter, 2.2% for the year (the 0.03 to 0.02/share is a rounding anomaly -- 0.0260 to 0.0227/share).
In any case, the share price is NOT based on the earnings in the current quarter anywhere NEAR as much as it is based on expected future earnings (as evidenced by the astronomical 133 PE ratio). The accounting change in question simply (and properly IMHO) accounts for income later rather than earlier, and actually makes future earnings higher. Add that to the fact that there is absolutely zero net change in total earnings, and it seems that there is a huge short term overreaction in stock price.
The only possible change in earnings due to this restatement is due to the increased costs that will be incurred defending lawsuits like this. I can't possibly see how a lawsuit like this one is in the best interests of the shareholders. Without the lawsuit or the threat of lawsuits, I would think the stock would rebound quickly, and with the accounting change and the honesty of management to admit it, I can only see it as a positive influence on the stock price.
I thought Google kept track of host systems accessing their search engine in some fashion. That's still going to have some problems (masquerading, randomness of sample, etc.), but it seems like it would be at least as good as the Netcraft stats.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see the logic in a system being so critical to be working 24/7 that they force it to crash if the maintenance is missed. Does anyone else see a problem with this logic?
So the "copyright holder" says he owns the rights under penalty of perjury but doesn't explicitly say in the notice that the designated file infringes that copyright under penalty of perjury. The DMCA doesn't seem to explicitly say what thay have to declare under penalty of perjury, just that they have to "declare" under penalty of perjury.
I doubt if there would even be a case for false claims of infringement under the DMCA, let alone getting the government to prosecute them for it.
The individual has no rights here to avoid being persecuted by any organization that wants to go after them, for any reason. Meanwhile, the individual has absolutely no recourse when an organization attacks him.
The "church" of Scientology is loving it.
You do realize that the use of credit to make a purchase is not a right but an option vendors allow you to have. Would you prefer that instead of a credit card they only accepted cash, forcing thousands of people to carry large sums of money on them.
It's an option vendors allow because they want to attract customers. If they accepted only cash, they would lose customers in droves. It's in the best interests of the vendors to give their customers the most options to buy their products as they can. When they decide to take money from VISA in order to REDUCE the options their customers have to spend money in their establishment, that's their option. It's also my option to decide whether or not to buy there based on how friendly they are to me. Personally, I hope that they end up with a net loss by making this kind of deals, but that's just me. I'm certainly not going to carry huge sums of cash on me in order to buy from stores that want VISA's money more than they want to build their business based on serving their customers.
COSTCO only accepts American Express. Does that make me complain and get an AE card?
Actually, now that you're bringing up silly things like that, I DO react to those anti-competitive deals too.
Costco used to be a place where I shopped regularly. I actually got a Discover card when THAT was all they would accept. When they changed to American Express and quit takiing Discover, I cancelled the Discover card and stopped shopping at Costco.
Same with Shell Oil. I've been a customer since 1967, and had one of their cards. They dropped their credit cards and came out with the "Chase Manhatten Shell Card". I got one of those for the gas discounts, and then a few years later, they went to the "Citibank Shell Card". I no longer have a Shell card, and Chase Manhatten extended their discounts to all gas purchases. I'm now a happy "Rotten Robbie" gas customer with a nice discount whenever I use my Chase Manhatten MasterCard.
The venues alone would cost a million dollars to rent for the time neccessary
What if they actually made it an international event? Have the different events in totally different places? I'm sure plenty of cities could easily host perhaps JUST the swimming events or some other small part of it. It would certainly make the thing much cheaper to use already existing venues, and the splitting of venues would make it a MUCH smaller target for terrorists.
What really frosts me about these sponsorship wars is when the sponsors are allowed to pay to keep me from using competing products. I can see VISA paying to be the Olympic sponsor, and getting the resulting publicity, but when they can pay places to NOT take my credit card, it crosses a line.
Personally, I have a "token" VISA card which is ONLY used when I end up at one of their "purchased" venues (accidentally), and NEVER used anywhere else.
The fact that they're proud of making these deals ("be sure to bring your VISA card because you can't use American Express"), knowing that they have paid to force me to carry extra credit cards with me, especially in these times of identity theft and credit card fraud where I'd much rather just carry one card and watch it closely, seems to me like it should be illegal.
I thought the problem with flash was a limited number of write cycles (10,000-100,000?). With this thing rated at up to 25,000 IOPS, is would seem that they might not last all that long (4 seconds?). I don't see any indication of some breakthrough in flash memory itself.
Also, what's so different from this and just using a standard CF card? You can get 1GB of CF for under $150. It should be fairly simple to put together a "CF-raid" drive for way less than $1K/GB.
Why not stop them before they get dangerous. Notify their ISP and get them a warning. Just "letting it go" will only encourage them to continue to keep on trying and learning until they figure out how to break in without being caught. A quick warning from their ISP might be just enough to scare them off, and word of mouth to their friends might help to keep others from thinking it's "cool" to attempt to break into computer systems.
I don't see anything wrong with being against software patents in general while at the same time being against companies that abuse the patents they have. How is that "hypocritical"?
In this case, a company with a virtual monopoly forcing anyone who uses their software to give up their own patent rights. How many companies don't have at least ONE copy of windows, especially if they're writing and patenting software themselves? If they want to test their software to insure that it works with Windows, they have to agree to give Microsoft their patent rights.
The only two relevant formats are CF and SD, in my opinion.
This appears to be just a standards upgrade to the MMC format. Same size card, faster maximum speed and wider address. Since MMC is a one-bit interface, it looks like this just changes the standard to a 16-bit interface (120MB vs. 2.5MB/s), and changes the address to a 512-byte block address rather than a single byte address (2TB vs 4GB).
There's already a "High speed MMC" that appears to have an 8-bit interface, this is just an incremental change to keep up with the other players and keep the MMC standard (and probably related patents and licensing) competative in the marketplace.
AFAICT, "High speed MMC" didn't really set the world on fire, so they need some other way to break you of your CF habit.
This review goes a step further and measures the output with a multimeter. Good on them.
And then he makes a big deal about a hundredth of a volt difference in output voltage while not even bothering to measure the output current? And a big two hundredths of a volt on the 12V rail while running heavy CPU load? What exactly does he think the 12V rail powers?
Yes, perhaps there should be a licensing board for computer technicians so that they have to show at least a minimum level of competency before selling their services to consumers, but how does that affect the fact that the "TV Technicians" don't seem to have to have any competency in computers to install and service computer based systems?
most TV repairmen can't fix computers
It seems to me that, if the "TV repair Technicians Board" wants to classify computer repair and installation as "their" field of expertise, they should be required to show that their technicians are competent in the field. Do they test their licensed technicians for competency to install computer driven systems?
If "the licensing requirement is designed to protect consumers who have hired computer technicians to install or repair new entertainment systems that employ computers." as the licensing board is stating, then where are they "protecting consumers" from TV technicians who install computer systems that drive home entertainment systems?
I might agree with this licensing if: 1) they could show that the licensing actually meant something other than sending $55 to their bank account, and 2) they could show that the consumer was somehow better off with a "TV technician" installing a computer system, rather than someone who has competency in computer systems. Perhaps, before they start trying to license computer technicians to perform installations, they should try to determine whether or not their current technicians have have the skills and knowledge to handle a computer-driven home entertainment system.
A betting pool on when exactly SCO will file their next lawsuit.
... Darl said he wasn't going to do that any more.
But
Of course, if they ever do want to have any more customers, or keep some of the ones they have, perhaps not suing them is a reasonable first step.
Sure they (Green Hills) have an agenda, and it should be noted. However, they may have a point and shouldn't be discredited out of hand.
Yes, but it should also be clearly noted that they have the exact same problem. Their software could just as easily be compromised by a mole. The main difference is that, with open source, the code can be looked at and reviewed far more easily in order to detect malicious code.
It's exactly the same scenario as software for voting. Which would you trust more, proprietary software from Diebold, or open source where anyone can look at and review it?
There isn't a simple answer here. With open source, *IF* there is a bug that can be exploited, many more people can look for it and perhaps find it. With closed source, you have to rely on trust for the vendor and all his employees, but it's much harder for an outsider, without access to the code, to find a bug and exploit it.
Most embedded systems have update mechanisms, usually the software is in flash memory.
But ... didn't Darl tell us all that the stock was a great buy at $10 and they're going to do a massive buyback of the stock, any 'ol minute now? Or was the buyback announcement just more posturing to pump the stock price?
... Darl *KNOWS it's a great value at $10/share ... it's now at $4/share ... and I still haven't seen them buying back stock.
Let's see
It couldn't be that Darl lied to us all and still doesn't think it's worth it to buy, even at $4 could it?
First, look at the opportunities for fraud. Say I set up a porn site with an email address. You email me and the system asks you to post a huge bond to get the message through, say $1000. Somewhere out there will be id10ts who haven't configured their systems properly. The bond gets posted, I mark your message spam. Result: legal profit. Or if I get lots of replies, I can just set the bond to say 49c and then collect lots of small sums from people.
Kinda like a 900 number for email?
DAMMIT! Stop trying to break my email! Spam is not that bad.
Which spam are you referring to? The spam you receive, or the spam you send?
If you don't ask for any bond for mail sent to your account, all your mail will get through just fine, complete with the spam.
On the other hand, if you send out mail that the recipients regard as spam, even if you think your spam is "not that bad", the person who's email box you're cluttering is the one who gets to decide. If that "breaks your email" then face it, you're a spammer.
Well, back in my day, the mainframe had 32K, and the tube was black and green. And we were happy to have it!! ('course, the only game we had was sorting a tray full of punched cards ... but it was FUN and we LOVED it)
... gotta go...
What? Matlock's on
It's got nothing to do with the software but the data.
That is the key. Any data that might be needed many years from now needs to be kept and archived in a format that is documented (hopefully self-documented) and usable for as long as the data might be valuable. This could easily be far longer than 200 years. In addition, these archives must be maintained and migrated to media that will last over time.
The time frame that the data will be needed will differ with each application. Parking ticket data? A few years. Corporate records? Until the statute of limitations is up on taxes/criminal activity. Birth/death records, historical data, etc? Forever.
The point is that each type of data needs to be looked at and stored appropriately. That's the job of the systems analyst and designers, perhaps with some help from legislation making some of the requirements clear.
Storing it in Oracle database format is useless. When state of the art becomes a petabit content addressable holographic memory chip with 2 picoseond access time, the physical format of how the data is stored for 'online' access will be far different than it is today. Still, the raw data should be kept archived in a manner that is not subject to whatever the current hardware/software of the day happens to use. In addition, there should be standardization of the format in which it is stored. You shouldn't have to know the format that Podunk, Iowa used to keep their genealogical records a thousand years ago to access that kind of data.
The programs that access the data, the online formats of the data and the hardware that it exists on can all change dramatically over time. The data itself can't be allowed to be lost, either because it was stored on 1/2" 556 BPI magnetic tape, or stored in a 200 year old database format. Perhaps some sorts of data (geneology, literature, court records, anything of historical value) should be archived by something like the Library of Congress and maintained by them so it doesn't deteriorate and is available in a format that can be used on whatever "current technology" is at the time.
Well, it's not. RedHat's Q4 2003 earnings are now $0.02 instead of $0.03 which is either a 33% or 50% reduction, depending on which way you count, and the stock fall represents just portion of that.
Well, actually, they were down 10.6% for last quarter, 2.2% for the year (the 0.03 to 0.02/share is a rounding anomaly -- 0.0260 to 0.0227/share).
In any case, the share price is NOT based on the earnings in the current quarter anywhere NEAR as much as it is based on expected future earnings (as evidenced by the astronomical 133 PE ratio). The accounting change in question simply (and properly IMHO) accounts for income later rather than earlier, and actually makes future earnings higher. Add that to the fact that there is absolutely zero net change in total earnings, and it seems that there is a huge short term overreaction in stock price.
The only possible change in earnings due to this restatement is due to the increased costs that will be incurred defending lawsuits like this. I can't possibly see how a lawsuit like this one is in the best interests of the shareholders. Without the lawsuit or the threat of lawsuits, I would think the stock would rebound quickly, and with the accounting change and the honesty of management to admit it, I can only see it as a positive influence on the stock price.
I thought Google kept track of host systems accessing their search engine in some fashion. That's still going to have some problems (masquerading, randomness of sample, etc.), but it seems like it would be at least as good as the Netcraft stats.