Of course the problem is that the question had to be settled by the FEC in the first place. It should be a no brainer, since after all; "Congress shall make no law...."
I await the day when we get enough strict constructionists on the Supreme Court to reverse their previous bad decisions, sweeping away McCain Fiengold and most other 'Campaign Finance Laws' that aren't limited to mandatory disclosure requirements. And even those have to go eventually, after all why can't someone donate anonymously? Yes we voters should normally be highly suspiscous of a candidate funded anonymously but I can theorize situations where it might be acceptable.
> If there are over 160 million+ computers in the US alone, and 90% of those PC's use > Internet Explorer, how can the US Gov. not justify action in insisting these issues > be resolved promptly?
No, how about secure sites take responsibilty for their own incompetence. Both Windows and IE are licensed (and on large sites it really is a license and not a sale) on a general disclaimer of all warranties for suitability to purpose, security, etc. Add in a decade long record of having more remote exploits per year than sendmail's worst year and any IT organization using Windows in general and IE/Outlook especially should be mass terminated for cause, said cause being their choice between gross incompetence and willful disregard for national security.
From a security perspective ANYTHING would be an improvement over deploying Windows/IE/Outlook, OS/2 + Mozilla, Old PowerMacs running OS 9, anything. So any site where security is important, such as the US Military, Department of Homeland Security, etc. deploying the standard Win crap has only itself to blame. Yes saving money by buying COTS is a good thing, but only when it doesn't compromise national security, and if anyone can make an argument that buying Windows isn't risking national security I'd really like to hear em make the pitch.
With the foot icon this would have been a good fun Saturday article to let folks have some fun. Posting it as a power dept article is just wrong. Guess we can feel fortunate it wasn't posted with the science icon.
> http://com.gmail/ would give you access to your username@com.gmail.
Yea, typo on that one, adding.com on urls must be in muscle memory or something. Bleh. But the point still stands that he didn't invent DNS, it was a longstanding established RFC based standard so any attempt to redefine how hosts are named when he published his first draft of the WWW would have been laughed out of town. So it wasn't his decision to make. And while I'm posting again, the history revisionism doesn't stop there, now he claims html wasn't really an instance of sgml and that his 'pure' vision could have escaped the politics of the day we would already be living in xml nirvana. Bullcrap, anyone who has ever looked at sgml can see html is an instance. Plus it was the simplicity of html that allowed it to become established, had a load of xml crap been foisted on us nobody would have known what to do with it back then. Remember that good xml processing tools are only now becoming widespread.
The guy has obviously been reading his own press about how he "invented" the web + the press notion that "WWW == Internet" and has begun believing it. What piffle, we all know Al Gore "invented" the Internet.:)
Ok, I agree with his wishing he could nuke the slashes, they serve no real purpose. But sorry, he didn't invent DNS so he never had the choice of how to specify the hostname portion of a URL. Any attempt to use anything other than a DNS hostname would have resulted in his invention either being fixed or discarded by the Internet community.
Imagine the chaos! http://com.gmail.com/ for access to your username@gmail.com account? Put ftp://com.bigrepository.ftp into a web browser or ftp.bigrepository.com in a standalone ftp (or command line based) client? What a load of crap.
> It does, as bragging rights for Microsoft to show that its server solution is > hosting xx% of the internet.
You are close to the truth. Watch Netcraft. Anytime Microsoft gets near the 20% mark a fresh deal is announced about some parked domains moving to IIS. They really can't afford to drop into the teens and retain any credibility as a player in the server space so they spend whatever it takes to prevent it.
The more important number is Netcraft's active domains number and IIS is only at about 25% there. That gives a better picture of where they stand. Take out their own massive net operations and those of their slaves (Dell, HP, heck, most everybody who sells PCs, software or who develops heavy on Windows) who use IIS because they fear the consequences of using anything else and it would really be pitiful.
> I think my favorite MS black-ops move was when they made "The Matrix" DVD playable on > every DVD player except the Macintosh DVD player, and yes, this is the only DVD that > does this.
No, that was a flaw in a couple of titles that tickled a bug in several players. It wouldn't play on my old GE standalone DVD player either. When I called GE they had a message first up saying "If you are having problems playing _The Matrix_ or _Wild, Wild West_ press 1....." The result was I was S.O.L. and the disc was only playable with xine until I finally bought a newer player.
If the word around the campfire is that Vista is coming right after the first of the year, and there is still doubt as to exactly what hardware is going to be required to use all of the eyecandy, etc. then there is only one real question left to ask...
How many Microsoft execs will Mr. Dell have executed? Seriously, Xmas '06 PC sales will be toast! Ick.
> For example, what are the qualification criteria?
Looks like they are aiming at limiting it to actual expenses, which does help a little in reining in the more obvious abuses. So you could claim hosting expenses for example, so long as all of the expense was your Open project. A site that also had personal stuff would could an accounting nightmare. You could claim travel expenses to a conference. If it happened to be in Orlando and you also go see Mickey while you are there... well current business deductions have the same problem and are abused equally. Why do ya think convention centers tend to be in places with lots of other tourist stuff after all.
I'm still dubious the benefits could ever outweigh the negatives. Perhaps if the major projects, which already tend to be incorporated as non-profits, could somehow formalize the relationship with contributors and work it that way. You still couldn't get anything for time contributed anymore than you can for any non-profit.
> Also, what are the criteria for something to constitute as OSS?
Solved problem. The Open Source Definition is a concrete definition, basically the DSFG.
> Non-viral licensing?
Only in Microsoft's wettest dreams.
> Compiled/interpreted language?
Common misconception from those new to Free/Open Software. Makes no difference, compiled can be Free and interpreted can be Closed. Think of it this way, binaries are simply a temporary quirk of technology. Microsoft could (and I argue all software vendors should be required to by law as a condition for the grant of a Copyright, but that is a different topic) publish the complete buildable source tree for Vista in the next edition of MSDN and it would change nothing related to the openness of Windows. It would still remain the copyrighted work of Microsoft Corp. and unauthorized copying would remain illegal. It would help Windows developers understand the inner workings and could actually complicate the lives of SAMBA devels who could then be accused of lifting sections.
> This happens a lot in politics, for example. See the modern versions of NAACP, NOW, MADD...
With the same result. Long after the original problem is solved the organization lives on, never able to just claim victory and disolve. Does anyone thing lowering blood alchol levels yet again will further reduce drunk driving deaths? Nope, but the only things government action could do aren't politically possible and MADD can't just admit that and pick a new cause to crusade for. The NOW gang long ago won everything they can possibly get through the sort of organized action they do, except defending the sacrement of abortion against all reason. [flamebait] Well no, abortion is defensible from a certain p.o.v., more accurately it is Roe v. Wade that flies in the face of reason, but to a NOW gang lesbian the difference has long disappeared.[/flamebait] The NAACP continues decades past when they had a legitimate problem to solve, pushing quota policies that just have to have MLK spinning in his grave. (Unless someone would like to explain how his vision of a colorblind society is consistent with the current practice of making skin color THE most important thing about a person.)
But now back ontopic; Does anyone really believe Vista will actually stop spyware? Just spawn a new generation which the dedicated spyware vendors will have to clean up behind. Nobody to date has ever went broke betting on Microsoft's incompetence.
> In Bind9 you don't have to return cached data, so though it happens by default you can > turn it off ("additional-from-cache"):
Excellent. The commentary on the aite with the original article didn't seem to know about that trick. So now I just need to make sure I have wrapped my head around all of the details and start making the changes. Going to be a bit of bother this way but managable. Installing another pair of nameservers was right out, this way is doable.
There really isn't a good reason one nameserver can't serve internal and external users. All that is needed is recursive lookups need to be restricted to the internal IP space. It doesn't look like BIND can currently do that but I suspect that if this problem is really serious it will quickly gain the ability.
Some of us don't like the idea of maintaining more servers than are absolutely required, this looks like a pretty bogus reason to install another set of nameservers.
So if we project trends out a couple of years more of GNOME will be C#/.NET than Vista. Figures. So basically.NET was just something to slow down third party Windows devels (and the GNOMEs) and sow discord into the Java weenie camp.
Re:Benchmarking isn't rocket science
on
WinXP on a Mac, Hoax?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
> All you'll really prove if Photoshop is faster on the PC vs Mac is that > the PC version used a better compiler. What are you trying to show exactly?
Exactly. The only differences should depend on the OS and it's supporting infrastructure. Compiler, libraries, memory management, disk throughput, etc. And those differences are likely to be highly variable. OS X might have UNIXy goodness (not sure how Darwin stands compared to a modern Linux or Solaris though) in it's favor while Microsoft probably has the advantage on compilier tech vs GCC. Some good benchmarks should be interesting to read through.
> No, because which is faster is a very complicated answer.
No fanboi it isn't. Comparing a Windows PC to a Sun Niagra based server would be complicated, comparing a PC from Apple running typical desktop loadsets under OS X to basically the same loadsets under Windows XP on the same hardware isn't complicated at all. Encode some video, run Microsoft Office through some timed task lists, script some compute intensive Photoshop transformations, etc. If one OS is faster at all of the tasks it is the clearcut winner, if as is more likely, each excel at some tasks and falter at others this will inform customers which is more appropriate for their intended loads. Of course if the intended load doesn't imply long waits under either OS the choice of which to boot can be made purely on personal preference.
> Do you have the integrity to educate your self on why our laws are that way, instead of using the knee jerk > term "draconian anti-speech laws"?
I don't know about the original poster, but I don't give a damn why Canada is a repressive regime, if they have banned classes of speech it is repressive, period full stop. Not that the USA is perfect on that score, we have McCain/Feingold after all.
Listen up folks; Freedom Zero, the one all of the others depend upon is the Right to Be Wrong. Because once one person or group of people manages to declare themselves "Right" and able to decide others are "Wrong" and punish them for thinking incorrectly, none of the other so called "Rights" mean a Goddamned thing except using the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to start shooting the tyrants who believe themselves your master.
Nazi's want to deny the Crimes of their beloved nutjob? Fine, let em rant and we will laugh cruelly at the morons and make sure the facts are out there. The Right to Speech doesn't include a Right to be taken seriously after all. So long as they aren't trying to take over and reestablish the Reich they have the right to be wrong, even the right to be idiots. Personally I think the Moveon/Kos crowd is insane and a far greater menace to our Republican form of government than anything the sad remnants of the Nazi Party is likely to ever be, but if anyone tried to censor either set of crackpots I'd be willing to man the barracades with em because anybody who can censor them will most likely get around to censoring me so it would be better to hang together than seperately.
> Republicans traditionally try to suppress voter turnout.
Exactly. As I said, a lot of Republicans WOULD commit outright voter fraud if they could, but they a) can't get away with it nearly as easily as Democrats can and b) Democrats dominate in running most of the voting operations, especially in the target rich urban areas. But they do try to throw up legal obstacles to stop likely Democratic voters from voting, because they can get away with that. Most of what they do is technically legal, but only a moron would believe it is done from a high minded goal of stopping voting irregularities; it is being done for crass political gains which makes it morally suspect.
Which brings me back to the point I was making in the original post (currently modded into oblivion) that technical fixes can't fix the real problems with our elections. The most secure voting machines possible won't produce a fair election if people can't get at em or the accurate counts they render are replaced with fake ones by the election officials. Or when votor rolls are full of dead or otherwise invalid names who nevertheless 'vote'. Because in the end it is the officials and the system they put in place we are trusting, as they operate the machines, certify the results and decide WHO gets to vote and how many times they can vote.
Yes, a properly designed system could make both sorts of abuse much harder and a lot easier to detect. Then what. The reports of documented widespread fraud (and unlike the moonbats howls about Ohio where the disputed votes were still within the margin, the documented cases were more than sufficient to actually swing the election) were all over both the national press and the statewide papers here in Louisiana back in '96. Mary Landrieu was still seated and serves today. The half-dozen Republican crypto weenies adding "but the signatures were tampered with" to the chorus would have made zero difference because everyone knew the election had been stolen, the question was what to do about it. In the end the Democrats hung tough and made a press release threatening to 'shut down the Senate' if there was any sort of investigation and that was the end of it.
> There are places where technology does not belong and the old fashioned paper trail is > still the best. I do not trust any voting system that the voter does not mark the paper. > Anything else can be hacked or riged too easily.
Paper is a good start, but won't solve the problem of vote fraud. Forget who votes, look at who counts the votes. I'm from Louisiana, where the dead vote early and often.
I could design an electronic voting system that I'd trust and so would 99% of Slashdot, it would even be cheaper than what they are buying now if bought in sufficient quantity, But the problem isn't one of technology, it is a people problem. I would never be dumb enough to believe a perfect system would eliminate voting fraud.
So long as there remains a single city with a Democratic Machine in charge there will be fraud. For all the moonbats howling about Diabold being run by evil Republicans out to steal elections, it remains an incontrovertable fact that every provable case of voting fraud in the last fifty years has been Democrats padding their own totals. Our own Senator Landriau owes her seat to the dead in New Orleans coming out in record numbers back in 96. Most historians now agree President Kennedy won office due to the dead in Chicago and other big Democratic bastions. For all the moonbat wails about the last presidential election, almost every example of clearcut fraud was committed by their side. And lets not forget the numberous 'irregularities' in Washington State recently. This isn't because Republicans are more moral than Democrats, it is because Democrats can get away with it due to their control of the mainstream media. Hopefully the decline of the MSM will bring this sorry practice to an end.
That was my first thought. Same display resolution, same WiFi/Bluetooth+cellphone net access model. Now add in a laptop hard drive, faster processor and at least tripple the size and weight so it can run Windows and probably perform at about the same level as the Nokia and get less runtime on a charge.
Of course since it runs Windows and the MHz specs will be higher it will be what all the wannabe lamer nerds will just have to have. Just like WinCE vs Palm. A Palm was more useful but the Windows CE machines had bigass color screens and 400MHz processors and could play two minute movie trailers so of course all the idiots flocked to em. So Palm felt like they had to chase Microsoft's taillights and give up all the features that made a Palm worth owning, like long battery life and simplicity.
Re:Yep--hardware is the one thing they get right
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Microsoft Origami Unfolds
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· Score: 2, Informative
> Since I spend my days typing (I'm a tech writer) a good keyboard is a must, and despite looking around quite a bit, > I really haven't found anything as good as the MS keyboards.
Get thee to eBay and buy yourself an IBM Model M or a Northgate Omnikey. They are both still available if you are patient. There is even a company that has bought the rights to the Model M's design and making new ones, can't recall the name right now. A couple of years ago I lucked up on a pair of Model M keyboards with a 1994 manufacture date still in the original sealed boxes. Put one at home and at work and have been happy as a pig in poop since.
Also have an Omnikey, it is very nice also but a little different feel. If I had a matched pair of em I might use them instead. The omnikey will even comes with extra keycaps and stuff to allow you to put CTRL back where God intended it, but since I have to use too many other machines I couldn't get away with that.
There is a fairly simple solution to the problem of vendors forbidding security reaseachers from examining their products. At the next big security confab float and get a lot of signatures on a resolution something like this:
"Some companies object to our legitimate research, even though we report our findings responsibly. So be it. We resolve to continue to locate defects in these irresponsible vendor's products. However since they now make it a crime to do the right thing, we resolve to anonymously publish our results for these products to the most vile and wicked cracking gangs we can contact as ready to use fully weaponized exploits. We further assert that we do not fear any legal reprecussions on the grounds that if any Fed can tag us we aren't worthy to continue in this line of research."
Let the business press cogitate on that announcement a day or two and see how fast vendors start backpeddling.
> Democracy is not an end in itself, it is a means, a means to preserve liberties and > freedoms that people are entitled to from birth. It is a tool, and like any tool can > be used constructively or destructively.
I have to go with the Founding Fathers here and disagree. Democracy is an evil, always. Which is why we were given a Republic with clearly defined and limited powers spelled out in a written Constituition. A nation of Laws not Men, where the minority has inalienable Rights not even a majority can revoke. (Too bad we discarded it, it was actually a pretty nice Constitution.) Democracy is 51 voting to piss in the 49's Corn Flakes and if they believe in Democracy the 49 are supposed to accept it. Democracy is mob rule. Democracy is the plebs voting themselves bread and circuses.
> Whatever we write, no matter how much we try to be 100% objective, will be subjective > due to our own experiences, culture etc.
Which is why I don't mind bias as long as it is out in the open. My objection to the NYT, for example, is that they insist they aren't biased. Dailykos or Rush Limbaugh don't bother me because both are honest about what they are and what they are trying to accomplish. Heck, even Fox is pretty open about the fact they lean right but make sure they let the other side get in their take on events also.
That said, I do take exception to your postmoden view that objectivity isn't possible. It may be true that 100% pure isn't possible (welcome to the real world) 99% is an attainable goal and mainstream journalism should be held accountable when they don't measure up. The BBC used to be the canonical example of objective reporting, even if nowadays they are banned at many British military installations because of their blatent biases.
It isn't rocket science either. It used to be the first thing they taught cub reporters, to get and report "just the facts". The Who, What, When, Where and Why. The reporter really shouldn't be in the business of 'explaining' the news, they should be reporting the facts and allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. In cases where extra material is helpful a seperate background piece or analysis/opinion piece can run near the hard reporting. Seperating the reporting from the opinion makes it easy to hold the reporting accountable; anything not provably 'true' in a reported piece gets a correction in the next edition or else the paper's reputation can be made to suffer.
While some stories can't be broke without an anonymous source they should be be shunned normally because depending on them turns the news into rumor and innuendo instead of fact based reporting. If you dont't believe me, open a newspaper and see for yourself.
This isn't even about terrorism, this is part of the War On Some Drugs. This is "Know Your Customer" from years ago, been going on over a decade in one form or another.
Any unexpected transaction these days gets the once over, any cash purchase over X gets reported to the FBI. (Last I heard, X was $10K) Buy a car with cash, get investigated. Walk into an airport with a sack of cash and it will simply be taken, no appeals, no trial, no recourse. Simply being in an airport with cash is a crime subject to asset forfeiture. Bitch too loud and they will simply arrest you along with the money. Been that way since the '80s.
> Posted anonymous for additional data for my theory that anti republican poster get > thier old posts modded down.
I can give ya some good datapoints on mods. Posting conservative ideas may or may not mod up ititially, my parent post is up right now for example. They almost never stay positive modded after the night (in north america) cycle. A few time I have managed to post good enough that mod wars break out, soaking up large numbers of mod points. Some of those have remained positive but the odds are against it.
But look at my UID, what else is karma for than to spend. I hit the cap years ago and posts on non political topics more than maintain my posting bonus. So I bring truth to the truth starved masses.:)
Now if you really want to see negative moderation, speak ill of Apple. Speak ill of Steve jobs or mention the Kool-Aid or the reality distortion field and the negative mods will whap ya fast and furious. But even there it is possible to succeed, and have a post survive if it is well done. I recently had a post on DRM where I got away with saying "and if Steve doesn't like it he can go perform an improbable act of self procreation" and end up with a positive moderation.
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Of course the problem is that the question had to be settled by the FEC in the first place. It should be a no brainer, since after all; "Congress shall make no law...."
I await the day when we get enough strict constructionists on the Supreme Court to reverse their previous bad decisions, sweeping away McCain Fiengold and most other 'Campaign Finance Laws' that aren't limited to mandatory disclosure requirements. And even those have to go eventually, after all why can't someone donate anonymously? Yes we voters should normally be highly suspiscous of a candidate funded anonymously but I can theorize situations where it might be acceptable.
> If there are over 160 million+ computers in the US alone, and 90% of those PC's use
> Internet Explorer, how can the US Gov. not justify action in insisting these issues
> be resolved promptly?
No, how about secure sites take responsibilty for their own incompetence. Both Windows and IE are licensed (and on large sites it really is a license and not a sale) on a general disclaimer of all warranties for suitability to purpose, security, etc. Add in a decade long record of having more remote exploits per year than sendmail's worst year and any IT organization using Windows in general and IE/Outlook especially should be mass terminated for cause, said cause being their choice between gross incompetence and willful disregard for national security.
From a security perspective ANYTHING would be an improvement over deploying Windows/IE/Outlook, OS/2 + Mozilla, Old PowerMacs running OS 9, anything. So any site where security is important, such as the US Military, Department of Homeland Security, etc. deploying the standard Win crap has only itself to blame. Yes saving money by buying COTS is a good thing, but only when it doesn't compromise national security, and if anyone can make an argument that buying Windows isn't risking national security I'd really like to hear em make the pitch.
With the foot icon this would have been a good fun Saturday article to let folks have some fun. Posting it as a power dept article is just wrong. Guess we can feel fortunate it wasn't posted with the science icon.
> http://com.gmail/ would give you access to your username@com.gmail.
.com on urls must be in muscle memory or something. Bleh. But the point still stands that he didn't invent DNS, it was a longstanding established RFC based standard so any attempt to redefine how hosts are named when he published his first draft of the WWW would have been laughed out of town. So it wasn't his decision to make. And while I'm posting again, the history revisionism doesn't stop there, now he claims html wasn't really an instance of sgml and that his 'pure' vision could have escaped the politics of the day we would already be living in xml nirvana. Bullcrap, anyone who has ever looked at sgml can see html is an instance. Plus it was the simplicity of html that allowed it to become established, had a load of xml crap been foisted on us nobody would have known what to do with it back then. Remember that good xml processing tools are only now becoming widespread.
:)
Yea, typo on that one, adding
The guy has obviously been reading his own press about how he "invented" the web + the press notion that "WWW == Internet" and has begun believing it. What piffle, we all know Al Gore "invented" the Internet.
Ok, I agree with his wishing he could nuke the slashes, they serve no real purpose. But sorry, he didn't invent DNS so he never had the choice of how to specify the hostname portion of a URL. Any attempt to use anything other than a DNS hostname would have resulted in his invention either being fixed or discarded by the Internet community.
Imagine the chaos! http://com.gmail.com/ for access to your username@gmail.com account? Put ftp://com.bigrepository.ftp into a web browser or ftp.bigrepository.com in a standalone ftp (or command line based) client? What a load of crap.
> It does, as bragging rights for Microsoft to show that its server solution is
> hosting xx% of the internet.
You are close to the truth. Watch Netcraft. Anytime Microsoft gets near the 20% mark a fresh deal is announced about some parked domains moving to IIS. They really can't afford to drop into the teens and retain any credibility as a player in the server space so they spend whatever it takes to prevent it.
The more important number is Netcraft's active domains number and IIS is only at about 25% there. That gives a better picture of where they stand. Take out their own massive net operations and those of their slaves (Dell, HP, heck, most everybody who sells PCs, software or who develops heavy on Windows) who use IIS because they fear the consequences of using anything else and it would really be pitiful.
> I think my favorite MS black-ops move was when they made "The Matrix" DVD playable on
> every DVD player except the Macintosh DVD player, and yes, this is the only DVD that
> does this.
No, that was a flaw in a couple of titles that tickled a bug in several players. It wouldn't play on my old GE standalone DVD player either. When I called GE they had a message first up saying "If you are having problems playing _The Matrix_ or _Wild, Wild West_ press 1....." The result was I was S.O.L. and the disc was only playable with xine until I finally bought a newer player.
If the word around the campfire is that Vista is coming right after the first of the year, and there is still doubt as to exactly what hardware is going to be required to use all of the eyecandy, etc. then there is only one real question left to ask...
How many Microsoft execs will Mr. Dell have executed? Seriously, Xmas '06 PC sales will be toast! Ick.
> For example, what are the qualification criteria?
Looks like they are aiming at limiting it to actual expenses, which does help a little in reining in the more obvious abuses. So you could claim hosting expenses for example, so long as all of the expense was your Open project. A site that also had personal stuff would could an accounting nightmare. You could claim travel expenses to a conference. If it happened to be in Orlando and you also go see Mickey while you are there... well current business deductions have the same problem and are abused equally. Why do ya think convention centers tend to be in places with lots of other tourist stuff after all.
I'm still dubious the benefits could ever outweigh the negatives. Perhaps if the major projects, which already tend to be incorporated as non-profits, could somehow formalize the relationship with contributors and work it that way. You still couldn't get anything for time contributed anymore than you can for any non-profit.
> Also, what are the criteria for something to constitute as OSS?
Solved problem. The Open Source Definition is a concrete definition, basically the DSFG.
> Non-viral licensing?
Only in Microsoft's wettest dreams.
> Compiled/interpreted language?
Common misconception from those new to Free/Open Software. Makes no difference, compiled can be Free and interpreted can be Closed. Think of it this way, binaries are simply a temporary quirk of technology. Microsoft could (and I argue all software vendors should be required to by law as a condition for the grant of a Copyright, but that is a different topic) publish the complete buildable source tree for Vista in the next edition of MSDN and it would change nothing related to the openness of Windows. It would still remain the copyrighted work of Microsoft Corp. and unauthorized copying would remain illegal. It would help Windows developers understand the inner workings and could actually complicate the lives of SAMBA devels who could then be accused of lifting sections.
> This happens a lot in politics, for example. See the modern versions of NAACP, NOW, MADD...
With the same result. Long after the original problem is solved the organization lives on, never able to just claim victory and disolve. Does anyone thing lowering blood alchol levels yet again will further reduce drunk driving deaths? Nope, but the only things government action could do aren't politically possible and MADD can't just admit that and pick a new cause to crusade for. The NOW gang long ago won everything they can possibly get through the sort of organized action they do, except defending the sacrement of abortion against all reason. [flamebait] Well no, abortion is defensible from a certain p.o.v., more accurately it is Roe v. Wade that flies in the face of reason, but to a NOW gang lesbian the difference has long disappeared.[/flamebait] The NAACP continues decades past when they had a legitimate problem to solve, pushing quota policies that just have to have MLK spinning in his grave. (Unless someone would like to explain how his vision of a colorblind society is consistent with the current practice of making skin color THE most important thing about a person.)
But now back ontopic; Does anyone really believe Vista will actually stop spyware? Just spawn a new generation which the dedicated spyware vendors will have to clean up behind. Nobody to date has ever went broke betting on Microsoft's incompetence.
> In Bind9 you don't have to return cached data, so though it happens by default you can
> turn it off ("additional-from-cache"):
Excellent. The commentary on the aite with the original article didn't seem to know about that trick. So now I just need to make sure I have wrapped my head around all of the details and start making the changes. Going to be a bit of bother this way but managable. Installing another pair of nameservers was right out, this way is doable.
There really isn't a good reason one nameserver can't serve internal and external users. All that is needed is recursive lookups need to be restricted to the internal IP space. It doesn't look like BIND can currently do that but I suspect that if this problem is really serious it will quickly gain the ability.
Some of us don't like the idea of maintaining more servers than are absolutely required, this looks like a pretty bogus reason to install another set of nameservers.
So if we project trends out a couple of years more of GNOME will be C#/.NET than Vista. Figures. So basically .NET was just something to slow down third party Windows devels (and the GNOMEs) and sow discord into the Java weenie camp.
> All you'll really prove if Photoshop is faster on the PC vs Mac is that
> the PC version used a better compiler. What are you trying to show exactly?
Exactly. The only differences should depend on the OS and it's supporting infrastructure. Compiler, libraries, memory management, disk throughput, etc. And those differences are likely to be highly variable. OS X might have UNIXy goodness (not sure how Darwin stands compared to a modern Linux or Solaris though) in it's favor while Microsoft probably has the advantage on compilier tech vs GCC. Some good benchmarks should be interesting to read through.
> No, because which is faster is a very complicated answer.
No fanboi it isn't. Comparing a Windows PC to a Sun Niagra based server would be complicated, comparing a PC from Apple running typical desktop loadsets under OS X to basically the same loadsets under Windows XP on the same hardware isn't complicated at all. Encode some video, run Microsoft Office through some timed task lists, script some compute intensive Photoshop transformations, etc. If one OS is faster at all of the tasks it is the clearcut winner, if as is more likely, each excel at some tasks and falter at others this will inform customers which is more appropriate for their intended loads. Of course if the intended load doesn't imply long waits under either OS the choice of which to boot can be made purely on personal preference.
> Do you have the integrity to educate your self on why our laws are that way, instead of using the knee jerk
> term "draconian anti-speech laws"?
I don't know about the original poster, but I don't give a damn why Canada is a repressive regime, if they have banned classes of speech it is repressive, period full stop. Not that the USA is perfect on that score, we have McCain/Feingold after all.
Listen up folks; Freedom Zero, the one all of the others depend upon is the Right to Be Wrong. Because once one person or group of people manages to declare themselves "Right" and able to decide others are "Wrong" and punish them for thinking incorrectly, none of the other so called "Rights" mean a Goddamned thing except using the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to start shooting the tyrants who believe themselves your master.
Nazi's want to deny the Crimes of their beloved nutjob? Fine, let em rant and we will laugh cruelly at the morons and make sure the facts are out there. The Right to Speech doesn't include a Right to be taken seriously after all. So long as they aren't trying to take over and reestablish the Reich they have the right to be wrong, even the right to be idiots. Personally I think the Moveon/Kos crowd is insane and a far greater menace to our Republican form of government than anything the sad remnants of the Nazi Party is likely to ever be, but if anyone tried to censor either set of crackpots I'd be willing to man the barracades with em because anybody who can censor them will most likely get around to censoring me so it would be better to hang together than seperately.
> Republicans traditionally try to suppress voter turnout.
Exactly. As I said, a lot of Republicans WOULD commit outright voter fraud if they could, but they a) can't get away with it nearly as easily as Democrats can and b) Democrats dominate in running most of the voting operations, especially in the target rich urban areas. But they do try to throw up legal obstacles to stop likely Democratic voters from voting, because they can get away with that. Most of what they do is technically legal, but only a moron would believe it is done from a high minded goal of stopping voting irregularities; it is being done for crass political gains which makes it morally suspect.
Which brings me back to the point I was making in the original post (currently modded into oblivion) that technical fixes can't fix the real problems with our elections. The most secure voting machines possible won't produce a fair election if people can't get at em or the accurate counts they render are replaced with fake ones by the election officials. Or when votor rolls are full of dead or otherwise invalid names who nevertheless 'vote'. Because in the end it is the officials and the system they put in place we are trusting, as they operate the machines, certify the results and decide WHO gets to vote and how many times they can vote.
Yes, a properly designed system could make both sorts of abuse much harder and a lot easier to detect. Then what. The reports of documented widespread fraud (and unlike the moonbats howls about Ohio where the disputed votes were still within the margin, the documented cases were more than sufficient to actually swing the election) were all over both the national press and the statewide papers here in Louisiana back in '96. Mary Landrieu was still seated and serves today. The half-dozen Republican crypto weenies adding "but the signatures were tampered with" to the chorus would have made zero difference because everyone knew the election had been stolen, the question was what to do about it. In the end the Democrats hung tough and made a press release threatening to 'shut down the Senate' if there was any sort of investigation and that was the end of it.
> There are places where technology does not belong and the old fashioned paper trail is
> still the best. I do not trust any voting system that the voter does not mark the paper.
> Anything else can be hacked or riged too easily.
Paper is a good start, but won't solve the problem of vote fraud. Forget who votes, look at who counts the votes. I'm from Louisiana, where the dead vote early and often.
I could design an electronic voting system that I'd trust and so would 99% of Slashdot, it would even be cheaper than what they are buying now if bought in sufficient quantity, But the problem isn't one of technology, it is a people problem. I would never be dumb enough to believe a perfect system would eliminate voting fraud.
So long as there remains a single city with a Democratic Machine in charge there will be fraud. For all the moonbats howling about Diabold being run by evil Republicans out to steal elections, it remains an incontrovertable fact that every provable case of voting fraud in the last fifty years has been Democrats padding their own totals. Our own Senator Landriau owes her seat to the dead in New Orleans coming out in record numbers back in 96. Most historians now agree President Kennedy won office due to the dead in Chicago and other big Democratic bastions. For all the moonbat wails about the last presidential election, almost every example of clearcut fraud was committed by their side. And lets not forget the numberous 'irregularities' in Washington State recently. This isn't because Republicans are more moral than Democrats, it is because Democrats can get away with it due to their control of the mainstream media. Hopefully the decline of the MSM will bring this sorry practice to an end.
> The nokia 770 runs linux and is more practical.
That was my first thought. Same display resolution, same WiFi/Bluetooth+cellphone net access model. Now add in a laptop hard drive, faster processor and at least tripple the size and weight so it can run Windows and probably perform at about the same level as the Nokia and get less runtime on a charge.
Of course since it runs Windows and the MHz specs will be higher it will be what all the wannabe lamer nerds will just have to have. Just like WinCE vs Palm. A Palm was more useful but the Windows CE machines had bigass color screens and 400MHz processors and could play two minute movie trailers so of course all the idiots flocked to em. So Palm felt like they had to chase Microsoft's taillights and give up all the features that made a Palm worth owning, like long battery life and simplicity.
> Since I spend my days typing (I'm a tech writer) a good keyboard is a must, and despite looking around quite a bit,
> I really haven't found anything as good as the MS keyboards.
Get thee to eBay and buy yourself an IBM Model M or a Northgate Omnikey. They are both still available if you are patient. There is even a company that has bought the rights to the Model M's design and making new ones, can't recall the name right now. A couple of years ago I lucked up on a pair of Model M keyboards with a 1994 manufacture date still in the original sealed boxes. Put one at home and at work and have been happy as a pig in poop since.
Also have an Omnikey, it is very nice also but a little different feel. If I had a matched pair of em I might use them instead. The omnikey will even comes with extra keycaps and stuff to allow you to put CTRL back where God intended it, but since I have to use too many other machines I couldn't get away with that.
There is a fairly simple solution to the problem of vendors forbidding security reaseachers from examining their products. At the next big security confab float and get a lot of signatures on a resolution something like this:
"Some companies object to our legitimate research, even though we report our findings responsibly. So be it. We resolve to continue to locate defects in these irresponsible vendor's products. However since they now make it a crime to do the right thing, we resolve to anonymously publish our results for these products to the most vile and wicked cracking gangs we can contact as ready to use fully weaponized exploits. We further assert that we do not fear any legal reprecussions on the grounds that if any Fed can tag us we aren't worthy to continue in this line of research."
Let the business press cogitate on that announcement a day or two and see how fast vendors start backpeddling.
> Democracy is not an end in itself, it is a means, a means to preserve liberties and
> freedoms that people are entitled to from birth. It is a tool, and like any tool can
> be used constructively or destructively.
I have to go with the Founding Fathers here and disagree. Democracy is an evil, always. Which is why we were given a Republic with clearly defined and limited powers spelled out in a written Constituition. A nation of Laws not Men, where the minority has inalienable Rights not even a majority can revoke. (Too bad we discarded it, it was actually a pretty nice Constitution.) Democracy is 51 voting to piss in the 49's Corn Flakes and if they believe in Democracy the 49 are supposed to accept it. Democracy is mob rule. Democracy is the plebs voting themselves bread and circuses.
> Whatever we write, no matter how much we try to be 100% objective, will be subjective
> due to our own experiences, culture etc.
Which is why I don't mind bias as long as it is out in the open. My objection to the NYT, for example, is that they insist they aren't biased. Dailykos or Rush Limbaugh don't bother me because both are honest about what they are and what they are trying to accomplish. Heck, even Fox is pretty open about the fact they lean right but make sure they let the other side get in their take on events also.
That said, I do take exception to your postmoden view that objectivity isn't possible. It may be true that 100% pure isn't possible (welcome to the real world) 99% is an attainable goal and mainstream journalism should be held accountable when they don't measure up. The BBC used to be the canonical example of objective reporting, even if nowadays they are banned at many British military installations because of their blatent biases.
It isn't rocket science either. It used to be the first thing they taught cub reporters, to get and report "just the facts". The Who, What, When, Where and Why. The reporter really shouldn't be in the business of 'explaining' the news, they should be reporting the facts and allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. In cases where extra material is helpful a seperate background piece or analysis/opinion piece can run near the hard reporting. Seperating the reporting from the opinion makes it easy to hold the reporting accountable; anything not provably 'true' in a reported piece gets a correction in the next edition or else the paper's reputation can be made to suffer.
While some stories can't be broke without an anonymous source they should be be shunned normally because depending on them turns the news into rumor and innuendo instead of fact based reporting. If you dont't believe me, open a newspaper and see for yourself.
This isn't even about terrorism, this is part of the War On Some Drugs. This is "Know Your Customer" from years ago, been going on over a decade in one form or another.
Any unexpected transaction these days gets the once over, any cash purchase over X gets reported to the FBI. (Last I heard, X was $10K) Buy a car with cash, get investigated. Walk into an airport with a sack of cash and it will simply be taken, no appeals, no trial, no recourse. Simply being in an airport with cash is a crime subject to asset forfeiture. Bitch too loud and they will simply arrest you along with the money. Been that way since the '80s.
> Posted anonymous for additional data for my theory that anti republican poster get
:)
> thier old posts modded down.
I can give ya some good datapoints on mods. Posting conservative ideas may or may not mod up ititially, my parent post is up right now for example. They almost never stay positive modded after the night (in north america) cycle. A few time I have managed to post good enough that mod wars break out, soaking up large numbers of mod points. Some of those have remained positive but the odds are against it.
But look at my UID, what else is karma for than to spend. I hit the cap years ago and posts on non political topics more than maintain my posting bonus. So I bring truth to the truth starved masses.
Now if you really want to see negative moderation, speak ill of Apple. Speak ill of Steve jobs or mention the Kool-Aid or the reality distortion field and the negative mods will whap ya fast and furious. But even there it is possible to succeed, and have a post survive if it is well done. I recently had a post on DRM where I got away with saying "and if Steve doesn't like it he can go perform an improbable act of self procreation" and end up with a positive moderation.