> Clearly Jar-Jar Binks is the example to prove your point.
Actually it does prove the original poster's point. Jar Jar looked real enough in most of his screen time to not notice he was CG. And his 'acting' was exactly the performance Mr. Lucas wanted. Just because the director was insane is no reason to slight the work of the skilled artisans who created and animated Jar Jar or to ignore what it portends as the cost of doing 100% CG characters continues to drop.
> The amperage required is not any more than typical household service, particularly if you are willing to let it charge overnight. > 220 volts is even better than 110 for charging cars, and it really doesn't take more than your house already has.
Yes it would add a hell of a lot of load to the grid if everyone had an electric car cooking at home every night, but that problem is probably managable, since night time is normally lighter loaded.
The big question nobody wants to look at is Interstate recharging. Take a look at a big fscking Roadrunner station with twenty plus 'pumps' recharging batteries in five minutes and run those numbers. Put the sucker out in the boonies between cities and ask yourself where they are going to get the power from? Now imagine everyone is running away from a hurricane/terrorist attack and those 'pumps' are going to have to be able to hammer away for 12 plus hours with a line at every pump. Onsite storage isn't an option for that kind of demand and the grid as it currently exists simply can't do it either.
Everyone wants to think it just because 'big oil' doesn't want electric cars that the infrastructure hasn't magically appeared. It isn't. Even if the demand existed to justify it, nobody currently knows HOW to build it. These are hard problems, but we do need to keep trying to solve them because buying oil from our enemies isn't the brightest idea even if you think 'global warming' is a communist plot.
> I personally don't know if the patches are any good or in keeping with GNOME's design or need changes or.... But I do think that Linus > needs to chill and let the GNOME core developers run the way they want to and accept or postpone (if there's a freeze) or reject his > patches as they deem appropriate.
More likely he will do what I did, don't even try to send patches. Just from their public reputation I didn't even bother trying to figure where/how to send in a fix I made to gdm, figuring I'd almost certainly just get abused.
btw, my patch added an extra tap to call a PrePreSession script because PreSession, despite the name is called AFTER the session is opened. I'm doing some odd things in a public lab that automount isn't enough for.... or I couldn't figure out how to do with automount at any rate.
> This is a company whose founders contribute very little back of their wealth to charitable causes > and instead choose to spend it on 747's with waterbeds and other such items.
Sounds like they gave something back then, bet they made friends at Boeing at any rate and kept a few ordinary workers gainfully employed.
Getting involved in charities is something rich industrialists should NOT do until they retire from day to day operations, until then they are performing a far greater service to society by PRODUCING WEALTH. After they tire of working eighty hour weeks creating wealth and start feeling their mortality is the time to use their share of the wealth they created to leave monuments to themselves. And I'm good with that too, after all ya can't take it with you and leaving craploads of cash to your offspring is an almost sure fire way to destroy em.
> Well, robots.txt is hardly an accepted custom. Even the most official definitions indicate that it is > a voluntary protocol.
It has been well publicized since it was created in 1994, any webmaster not aware of it is incompetent to be running any sort of site with valuable content. As for official, RFC 1945 & 2616 are just voluntary protocols as well, although they underpin sagans (billions and billions) in ecommerce daily.
> If you remove it, you pretty much remove any argument of implied consent as well.
Yea, and next time Googlebot comes to visit it will disappear from the Google cache, it isn't like they are trying to duplicate the Internet Wayback machine.
> Being delisted from Google is not suicide for a web site.
I don't have to make that argument, the plaintifs in this case have implicitly made it themselves. By not availing themselves of the simple solution of telling googlebot to pass them by and instead trying this stupid case to force Google to index them, but on their terms and conditions, they are shouting to all that they NEED Google. All I am suggesting is that the big G simply tell them and the court, "We are Google, everyone knows how Google operates. We will index your site on exactly the same terms that we index the other billion or so sites or not at all; because no other solution is viable for Google. Put your decision into a robots.txt file on your webserver and we shall honor it. If this court decides Google may not operate in this country, we shall honor that decision as well, by deleting the lot of you. Note however that.com/.net/.org content is NOT yours to rule."
This sort of threat isn't just for Google, but all of the bigger players should be using the same tactic to beat back per country restrictions on operations. eBay and Amazon vs the German and French govt over Nazi stuff should have been dealt with the same way. Tell em, "STFU or watch us flip off the.de and.fr subdomains." Because in the end they could do almost as much business through their.com and fulfiling orders from more sane countries, and thus avoid leaving any tentacles dangling where repressive governments can get at em but those governments would no longer get any taxes. Guess who would blink first.
And of course when the US Gov gets uppity the threat becomes, "STFU or we can have a server farm in Canada/Mexico/Caymens up and running in a month and all operations there by next year and you will get to explain to the voters where all that tax base and all those tech jobs went."
The beauty of the Internet is almost all of the value in an Internet company is virtual, it can transend national borders almost at will. It is time to start using that ability to get the nation states to keep their grubby paws off of the Internet.
> i know of more than one incident where deb and rpm servers have been compromised.
Unless someone is being overly trusting it won't matter. You would have to own the buildhost and/or signing host. Although Debian only got there very recently (rpms has had crypto signing for years) both major formats support signed packages. You will get your distro key installed automagically and then you install the keys for additional repos you want to pull from. So when some asshole roots a mirror server somewhere and replaces a package no well administered system will accept the replacement since it won't be signed with a key present on anyone's machine.
Windows can do something similar, but pretty much only in the context of Windows Update and only stuff signed by Microsoft. (Yea it can probably have keys/repos/servers added but in the real world I have never heard of 3rd party apps updating with Windows Update)
This is one of the reasons I always reply to calls for Linux to have something like Windows InstallShield to get 3rd party apps with, "Why would we want something as retarded as that?"
Once you get adjusted to the new mindset, adding a repo makes so much more sense. You get updates for 3rd party software selivered right in the same UI with system updates. It 'just works.' Removing it later also 'just works' and does not involve a custom uninstall app that may or may not actually remove everything.
The one thing Linux does need is package management that allows for user installed packages, i.e NOT prompting for the root password; I mean the option for packages that install only with the rights of a user in their home directory. No you could not install everything, but a game or browser plugin should not require system privleges to be installed.
I can't believe Dell actually posted that description as their 'good' configuration guideline. Silly me, I always thought the purpose of an OS was to run applications, 'it can boot' isn't the 'good' baseline it is the 'absolute minimum'.
The amazing thing is Dell is one of Microsoft's oldest allies, if they are admitting you can't do ANY real work on a 'modern processor' with 512M memory and that you will suffer until you get a dual core machine with 2GB memory and a 256MB video, that just about kills off most of the upgrade market, especially in corporate America.
> but as far as I know, robots.txt has no special status in law anywhere.
Long accepted custom counts in most jurisdictions court systems. Especially in light of the default, everyone permitted. By making content available on a public web server you are obviously OK with anyone looking at it, Google included. If you don't want the big G looking, the accepted custom is to place a line into robots.txt telling that search engine to stay out. Of course no sane business would willingly disappear themselves from the net like that, so these guys want to dictate the TERMS under which Google indexes and presents their content.
Google should start making examples of some of these cases. Simply delete them. And ask for a declaratory judgement as to whether any other entity in that country can sue on similar grounds. If the court gives the wrong answer announce a near date when they will delete the entire.cc from their results until such time as the local laws are corrected. Provided they exercised some good judgement on the selected date the local laws would get fixed.
Governments will continue to try extending their tentacles into the network until the major stakeholders start kneecapping em at the first hint of interferrence.
> In any event, if you want people who have information vital to keeping government honest to come forward and > share that information (ie leak it), you have to have protections against revealing their identities, otherwise > they'll stay buried and you'd never know that Nixon was breaking into Democratic offices AND undermining the > judicial process to his heart's content (for example).
No. Someone in the Nixon administration should have had the balls to break that one in public. Or find a journalist willing to protect it all the way to jail as an act of civil disobiedience. Because Watergaet was SO fudged up making laws to prevent something like that just doesn't work, either you trust that SOMEBODY at the top will have some balls or no laws can possibly save us.
> This is also why you CAN'T leave it up to the Government to decide who gets to be considered "the Press"; > that would make them the gatekeepers over the very people who are SUPPOSED to keep them honest...
Which is exactly why a press shield law at ANY level is a stupid idea, it turns the press into a special government annointed priesthood, which is of course how the mainstream press see themselves, but whatever, its wrong. The MSM is dying and the wall between journalists and the reading public is bluring; lets not enshrine bad 20th Century ideas in law.
> One important tool in a journalist's arsenal that enables them to do the above is their ability > to collect news without being seen as tools/agents of the government.
Requiring a journalist to testify in a trial doesn't make the a tool of the State, it just makes them American Citizens. Of course most mainstream journalists would reject that label, preferring to think of themselves as Priests belonging in a class above mere nation states.
I know you probably went to a government school and didn't receive much education about our form of government so I'll give you the five cent summary version.
In our form of Justice the accused has the right to face his accusers and compel their testimony under Oath. They have the right to compel both the presence and the testimony of Witnesses in their defense. The clauses in our Constituition laying out these Rights have a conspicious absence of an asterisk pointing to an exception for journalists. Our very important 1st Amendment says many things about Free Speech and a Free Press but does NOT include any sort of special exception for journalists testifying in trials. So no Press Shield law can pass constituitional muster, an Amendment would be required and even the current idiots in Washington would never muster the super majority of fools to do something that unwise.
Because a Press Shield law would do as much violence to the 1st Amendment as McCain/Fiengold did. The only way to enforce it would mean federal licensing of journalists, so you could show a potential source your papers proving you wouldn't have to testify. Unless of course you mean only the dozen or so 'household name' journalists would be protected.
> Think of Bob Woodward and Deep Throat (aka Mark Felt) - Woodward went 3 decades refusing to name Felt > because he'd promised him confidentiality.
Nice thought but they didn't have the power to make any such promise, other than a promise to rot in jail if ordered to testify. Bob Woodward isn't an agent of the Court. Of course it was a different age, all of Washington was aflame with an abiding passion to get rid of Nixon and most of the case never went through the normal court system where any such order could have been issued. But yes, even in the crazy 1970's had a Federal Judge order Woodward to name "Deep Throat" he would have either gave up the name or sat in a cell a long time.
> If journalists can be compelled to testify about what they've done and seen in the course of doing > their jobs, people around them are less likely to be interested in being filmed, interviewed, etc.
Again, what makes a journalist different from any other Citizen? If thee or me witness a crime we will be compelled to bear witness in court, why does the fact someone is being paid by Pinch Sulzburger change a person's obligations as a Citizen?
> She claimed it would incriminate her and refused based on directly worded constitutional rights- > not an interpretation someone could change if neccesary.
Yea, but the prosecuters have found a 100% legal way around Amendment #5. Use immunity. Because they didn't really want Susan, they wanted the Clintons. So they offered her use immunity and she still refused, then they could toss her in the joint for contempt. But while the special prosecuter could jail her for a bit, the Clintons could have her shot so she kept her mouth shut and did her time and the case ended up going nowhere.
> Apparently there's a disconnect between Josh's attorney, the judge, and the US attorney. I don't see > anything unreasonable in the above text.
But YOU (nor I for that matter) weren't appointed to the Federal Bench. We don't decide what is the 'reasonable' way to deal with evidence, and neither does this Josh character. The Judge bangs his gavel and you either obey, appeal or suffer the consequences, any other result means no more Courts and anarchy reigns. Which is of course what most of the G8 protesters are into so that wouldn't be so much a threat as a wet dream for those asshats.
A grand jury or a court can order you to produce damned near anything it wants. Being a jouralist (or a blogger) is no shield, or haven't you kids been watching the Plamegate/Libby trial?
And this is a good thing. You can't have justice without first establishing the truth and for that you have to be able to present ALL of the evidence. I really can't see why journalists think they are some sort of fscking priesthood set above all other instituitions. Get over yourselves, you are mostly talentless hacks anyway.
This idiot was issued an order to produce evidence, he refused and his butt is in jail. And that is exactly where he belongs, for his refusal to comply with one of the most basic responsibilities attached to citizenship.
> Oh, sure, there are dollars involved - but it's a closed system - nobody is magically creating wealth, > we are just moving it around to different places.
And there is the flaw in your argument. Wealth is NOT a closed system, it can be created and destroyed. Just to use an example everyone reading slashdot should be familiar with, the founders of Google created a metric assload of wealth without diminishing anyone else's wealth by an equal amount.
But don't feel too bad, almost all of the failed *isms of the 20th Century were based on same logic flaw so you have plenty of company. Lack of personal liberty is a bad thing, but widespread ignorance of basic economics seems to be at least as big an indicator of mass graves to come.
You haven't been paying attention. Anti-semitism, Holocaust Denial and outright jew hatred are now pretty much mainstream on sites like Daily Kos and DU. So as long as you are a deranged leftie Jews are now in season. Best I can figure they have decided that if they throw Israel under the bus the terrorists will stop hating us. Pathetic if you ask me, but I'm just a right wing reactionary neocon.
Sorry if this is too much truthiness, but when I have to pick sides in the Middle East I'll take the only one with a representitive government and basic liberties over the 7th century rejects. And as for the "Palestinian", to paraphrase Kos himself, "screw em." They elected a terrorist government when they could have had peace and a real country of their own, let em live with the consequences of their stupidity.
> The cut Mohammad scene was an innocuous three-second clip of Mohammad handing a guy a fish.
It gets even more silly. Ol Mo featured for much of the 5th Season ep "Super Best Friends" and clips were used to put together the 6th season opening credits. Every 6th season episode has a visual depiction of the Prophet. Comedy Central has neither pulled the entire season or edited the credit roll.
Just being politically correct pussies. Of course they fear getting their heads cut off but that is no excuse, if you give in to the fear the terrorists have won. Being a TV exec isn't all fun and getting your dick sucked, sometimes it requires some leadership and Viacom failed.
> You are using the old "if you don't have anything to hide you need not hide anything" fallacy.
No, I'm using the rational argument that our inept government doesn't really have the clue most of the time to chase actual perverts, let alone real menaces like terrorists. Simple matter of the ratio of watchers to the watched. Despite the delusions of importance in the moonbat camp, their ravings just aren't important enough for the G to bother trying to tap into, especially since they spew most of their venom openly onto their blogs.
It's not like they could actually DO anything with dissidents if they could catch em, we ain't got prison space for gangsters as it is. Because we are NOT a police state. In Soviet Russia they didn't have any problem finding places to build new gulags or the slave labor to build em with, just to pick a recent vivid example of what a REAL police state looked like.
> If you're trying to hide something from legal authorities, you'd best find another way to hide your data.
But this is the point of the article and the discussion. Law enforcement and the software vendors who supply them are making a bunch of handwaving "not a problem" noise but this just puts the question onto teh table for discussion, it doesn't even start to answer it.
The question: Is BitLocker safe for really secure work? Which breaks down to smaller questions. Even when used correctly, with a TCPM chip and a good passphrase and good logoff/umount displine is the implementation and design sound? Or is this just a FUD campaign to keep the coppers buying EnCase? Is BitLocker vulnerable to attacks that other encrption solutions would defend against?
Because while, despite the Daily Hate here on Slashdot, America isn't a police state and the innocent have little to fear from their governemt unless they are crimelords, terrorists or that most dreadful scourge, a kiddie porn fiend But that isn't much comfort for the billions of huddled masses yearning to breath free in the unfree parts of the world. PGP was a godsend to political dissidents around the world, is BitLocker a useful tool for them as well or a trojan horse to help despots fill their forced labor camps with the fools who trust it with their secrets?
The article is long on airy handwaving, "not a problem in the real world" , "Don't worry be happy!" stuff. Specifically, while they minimize the possibility of someone using BitLocker correctly on trusted hardware, just what will law enforcement do when they start running into Thinkpads (with the Trusted Platform chip) combined with suspects smart enough to use a decent length passphrase? Is there a way in? If the crypto is implemented correctly it should be damned near impossible; as hard a nut to crack as the problem of getting homebrew software to run on an unchipped xbox, just as one example of something even the best haxors have tried and failed at for years.
And btw, obviously anyone depending on the fingerprint scanner doesn't understand that protects against a totally different threat.
> There's no reason Twilight Princess couldn't use conventional controls, any Wii-specific stuff > is superfluous at best and sometimes more of a main than a joystick.
Probably because it was released on the wii and the GC, which lacks a WiMote.
> And don't even get me started on the Pokemon card game. That was a retarded Bizarro world rip-off > of Magic and I never saw its appeal.
Admittedly I don't really give a rat's rear about Pokemon, considering it retarded. But you can't really escape some exposure. (And there IS no safe exposure level.) On the fscking Pokemon cartoon it is pretty apparent they are just PLAYING the card game. So if the Nintendo versions are an improvement I say hurray!
Of course it does get worse, one of the cartoon/cardgame spinoffs/ripoffs is even more blatent about being a pure infomercial for how to play the cardgame. Good grief, I'm as Pro 1st Amendment as they get, but crap like that makes me want to turn a blind eye the next time the nanny state talks regulating children's TV.
Pokemon original? What a rewrite of history. Pokemon was just a ripoff of Magic: The Gathering, one of dozens. What made Pokemon was the tie-in to Nintendo, that was what opened lots of new levels in the gold mine for harvesting. But Magic did have a go at a PC game tie in, just not as successfully. Never played either myself, but I gather it was the gameboy that really made the trading style of gameplay work with the kids.
Nice gadget, but I don't think it will work in my situation. That one isn't Wi-Fi so would only work within the range of it's supplied base. And unless I found a US version it probably isn't using the right freqs and would not be legal in the US. Finally, it says it can transfer between its handsets but since they aren't SIP (the base is) it an open question if they could transfer to a regular SIP phone.
> It's a regular GSM/UMTS phone which also has WiFi and a full blown SIP client on board.
Sounds nice, but overkill for my need. We binned a aging AT&T/Lucent/Avaya key system for an Asterisk PBX. The Lucent system had cordless phones that were freaking huge, generally crappy and cost a fortune. But it had them. Now our choices are:
a) a standard cordless phone with an ATA on the base station. Cheap but since you lose the extra features it is only good for a few situations.
b) a Wi-Fi SIP phone. Even $350 is less expensive than Avaya was reaming us for but we don't need a cellphone and a PDA/smartphone is so overkill it would confuse our staff so that Nokia you suggest is out. To date the two SIP phones we have tried have sucked. As in frequent crashing and really lousy battery life.
> Works great with asterisk or any other SIP-friendly service.
Do you actually have one? Does it suck? I'm still looking for a WiFi SIP phone that doesn't suck. So far Zyxel and D-Link have failed to pass muster. Both have wretched battery life, such that they can't be relied upon to spend a work day off the charger in standby. Both suffer from random lockups. I'm talking HARD take the battery out to recover lockups. The Zyxel also has the nasty problem of requiring a reboot if it loses association with the access point.
I'm looking for a phone that can:
1. Stay on standby a full 12 hours, preferrably with an hour or two of talk time.
2. Has a proven history of at least running weeks between reboots. I'm not asking for Linux inside, but daily hangs get old fast.
3. A sticker price under $200 would be nice, $300 is a deal breaker.
4. And of course it needs to be unlocked so I can program it to talk to our Asterisk server.
Slashdot Mirror
> Clearly Jar-Jar Binks is the example to prove your point.
Actually it does prove the original poster's point. Jar Jar looked real enough in most of his screen time to not notice he was CG. And his 'acting' was exactly the performance Mr. Lucas wanted. Just because the director was insane is no reason to slight the work of the skilled artisans who created and animated Jar Jar or to ignore what it portends as the cost of doing 100% CG characters continues to drop.
> The amperage required is not any more than typical household service, particularly if you are willing to let it charge overnight.
> 220 volts is even better than 110 for charging cars, and it really doesn't take more than your house already has.
Yes it would add a hell of a lot of load to the grid if everyone had an electric car cooking at home every night, but that problem is probably managable, since night time is normally lighter loaded.
The big question nobody wants to look at is Interstate recharging. Take a look at a big fscking Roadrunner station with twenty plus 'pumps' recharging batteries in five minutes and run those numbers. Put the sucker out in the boonies between cities and ask yourself where they are going to get the power from? Now imagine everyone is running away from a hurricane/terrorist attack and those 'pumps' are going to have to be able to hammer away for 12 plus hours with a line at every pump. Onsite storage isn't an option for that kind of demand and the grid as it currently exists simply can't do it either.
Everyone wants to think it just because 'big oil' doesn't want electric cars that the infrastructure hasn't magically appeared. It isn't. Even if the demand existed to justify it, nobody currently knows HOW to build it. These are hard problems, but we do need to keep trying to solve them because buying oil from our enemies isn't the brightest idea even if you think 'global warming' is a communist plot.
> I personally don't know if the patches are any good or in keeping with GNOME's design or need changes or .... But I do think that Linus
> needs to chill and let the GNOME core developers run the way they want to and accept or postpone (if there's a freeze) or reject his
> patches as they deem appropriate.
More likely he will do what I did, don't even try to send patches. Just from their public reputation I didn't even bother trying to figure where/how to send in a fix I made to gdm, figuring I'd almost certainly just get abused.
btw, my patch added an extra tap to call a PrePreSession script because PreSession, despite the name is called AFTER the session is opened. I'm doing some odd things in a public lab that automount isn't enough for.... or I couldn't figure out how to do with automount at any rate.
> This is a company whose founders contribute very little back of their wealth to charitable causes
> and instead choose to spend it on 747's with waterbeds and other such items.
Sounds like they gave something back then, bet they made friends at Boeing at any rate and kept a few ordinary workers gainfully employed.
Getting involved in charities is something rich industrialists should NOT do until they retire from day to day operations, until then they are performing a far greater service to society by PRODUCING WEALTH. After they tire of working eighty hour weeks creating wealth and start feeling their mortality is the time to use their share of the wealth they created to leave monuments to themselves. And I'm good with that too, after all ya can't take it with you and leaving craploads of cash to your offspring is an almost sure fire way to destroy em.
> Well, robots.txt is hardly an accepted custom. Even the most official definitions indicate that it is
.com/.net/.org content is NOT yours to rule."
.de and .fr subdomains." Because in the end they could do almost as much business through their .com and fulfiling orders from more sane countries, and thus avoid leaving any tentacles dangling where repressive governments can get at em but those governments would no longer get any taxes. Guess who would blink first.
> a voluntary protocol.
It has been well publicized since it was created in 1994, any webmaster not aware of it is incompetent to be running any sort of site with valuable content. As for official, RFC 1945 & 2616 are just voluntary protocols as well, although they underpin sagans (billions and billions) in ecommerce daily.
> If you remove it, you pretty much remove any argument of implied consent as well.
Yea, and next time Googlebot comes to visit it will disappear from the Google cache, it isn't like they are trying to duplicate the Internet Wayback machine.
> Being delisted from Google is not suicide for a web site.
I don't have to make that argument, the plaintifs in this case have implicitly made it themselves. By not availing themselves of the simple solution of telling googlebot to pass them by and instead trying this stupid case to force Google to index them, but on their terms and conditions, they are shouting to all that they NEED Google. All I am suggesting is that the big G simply tell them and the court, "We are Google, everyone knows how Google operates. We will index your site on exactly the same terms that we index the other billion or so sites or not at all; because no other solution is viable for Google. Put your decision into a robots.txt file on your webserver and we shall honor it. If this court decides Google may not operate in this country, we shall honor that decision as well, by deleting the lot of you. Note however that
This sort of threat isn't just for Google, but all of the bigger players should be using the same tactic to beat back per country restrictions on operations. eBay and Amazon vs the German and French govt over Nazi stuff should have been dealt with the same way. Tell em, "STFU or watch us flip off the
And of course when the US Gov gets uppity the threat becomes, "STFU or we can have a server farm in Canada/Mexico/Caymens up and running in a month and all operations there by next year and you will get to explain to the voters where all that tax base and all those tech jobs went."
The beauty of the Internet is almost all of the value in an Internet company is virtual, it can transend national borders almost at will. It is time to start using that ability to get the nation states to keep their grubby paws off of the Internet.
> i know of more than one incident where deb and rpm servers have been compromised.
Unless someone is being overly trusting it won't matter. You would have to own the buildhost and/or signing host. Although Debian only got there very recently (rpms has had crypto signing for years) both major formats support signed packages. You will get your distro key installed automagically and then you install the keys for additional repos you want to pull from. So when some asshole roots a mirror server somewhere and replaces a package no well administered system will accept the replacement since it won't be signed with a key present on anyone's machine.
Windows can do something similar, but pretty much only in the context of Windows Update and only stuff signed by Microsoft. (Yea it can probably have keys/repos/servers added but in the real world I have never heard of 3rd party apps updating with Windows Update)
This is one of the reasons I always reply to calls for Linux to have something like Windows InstallShield to get 3rd party apps with, "Why would we want something as retarded as that?"
Once you get adjusted to the new mindset, adding a repo makes so much more sense. You get updates for 3rd party software selivered right in the same UI with system updates. It 'just works.' Removing it later also 'just works' and does not involve a custom uninstall app that may or may not actually remove everything.
The one thing Linux does need is package management that allows for user installed packages, i.e NOT prompting for the root password; I mean the option for packages that install only with the rights of a user in their home directory. No you could not install everything, but a game or browser plugin should not require system privleges to be installed.
> "booting the OS, w/o running apps or games"
I can't believe Dell actually posted that description as their 'good' configuration guideline. Silly me, I always thought the purpose of an OS was to run applications, 'it can boot' isn't the 'good' baseline it is the 'absolute minimum'.
The amazing thing is Dell is one of Microsoft's oldest allies, if they are admitting you can't do ANY real work on a 'modern processor' with 512M memory and that you will suffer until you get a dual core machine with 2GB memory and a 256MB video, that just about kills off most of the upgrade market, especially in corporate America.
> but as far as I know, robots.txt has no special status in law anywhere.
.cc from their results until such time as the local laws are corrected. Provided they exercised some good judgement on the selected date the local laws would get fixed.
Long accepted custom counts in most jurisdictions court systems. Especially in light of the default, everyone permitted. By making content available on a public web server you are obviously OK with anyone looking at it, Google included. If you don't want the big G looking, the accepted custom is to place a line into robots.txt telling that search engine to stay out. Of course no sane business would willingly disappear themselves from the net like that, so these guys want to dictate the TERMS under which Google indexes and presents their content.
Google should start making examples of some of these cases. Simply delete them. And ask for a declaratory judgement as to whether any other entity in that country can sue on similar grounds. If the court gives the wrong answer announce a near date when they will delete the entire
Governments will continue to try extending their tentacles into the network until the major stakeholders start kneecapping em at the first hint of interferrence.
> In any event, if you want people who have information vital to keeping government honest to come forward and
> share that information (ie leak it), you have to have protections against revealing their identities, otherwise
> they'll stay buried and you'd never know that Nixon was breaking into Democratic offices AND undermining the
> judicial process to his heart's content (for example).
No. Someone in the Nixon administration should have had the balls to break that one in public. Or find a journalist willing to protect it all the way to jail as an act of civil disobiedience. Because Watergaet was SO fudged up making laws to prevent something like that just doesn't work, either you trust that SOMEBODY at the top will have some balls or no laws can possibly save us.
> This is also why you CAN'T leave it up to the Government to decide who gets to be considered "the Press";
> that would make them the gatekeepers over the very people who are SUPPOSED to keep them honest...
Which is exactly why a press shield law at ANY level is a stupid idea, it turns the press into a special government annointed priesthood, which is of course how the mainstream press see themselves, but whatever, its wrong. The MSM is dying and the wall between journalists and the reading public is bluring; lets not enshrine bad 20th Century ideas in law.
> One important tool in a journalist's arsenal that enables them to do the above is their ability
> to collect news without being seen as tools/agents of the government.
Requiring a journalist to testify in a trial doesn't make the a tool of the State, it just makes them American Citizens. Of course most mainstream journalists would reject that label, preferring to think of themselves as Priests belonging in a class above mere nation states.
I know you probably went to a government school and didn't receive much education about our form of government so I'll give you the five cent summary version.
In our form of Justice the accused has the right to face his accusers and compel their testimony under Oath. They have the right to compel both the presence and the testimony of Witnesses in their defense. The clauses in our Constituition laying out these Rights have a conspicious absence of an asterisk pointing to an exception for journalists. Our very important 1st Amendment says many things about Free Speech and a Free Press but does NOT include any sort of special exception for journalists testifying in trials. So no Press Shield law can pass constituitional muster, an Amendment would be required and even the current idiots in Washington would never muster the super majority of fools to do something that unwise.
Because a Press Shield law would do as much violence to the 1st Amendment as McCain/Fiengold did. The only way to enforce it would mean federal licensing of journalists, so you could show a potential source your papers proving you wouldn't have to testify. Unless of course you mean only the dozen or so 'household name' journalists would be protected.
> Think of Bob Woodward and Deep Throat (aka Mark Felt) - Woodward went 3 decades refusing to name Felt
> because he'd promised him confidentiality.
Nice thought but they didn't have the power to make any such promise, other than a promise to rot in jail if ordered to testify. Bob Woodward isn't an agent of the Court. Of course it was a different age, all of Washington was aflame with an abiding passion to get rid of Nixon and most of the case never went through the normal court system where any such order could have been issued. But yes, even in the crazy 1970's had a Federal Judge order Woodward to name "Deep Throat" he would have either gave up the name or sat in a cell a long time.
> If journalists can be compelled to testify about what they've done and seen in the course of doing
> their jobs, people around them are less likely to be interested in being filmed, interviewed, etc.
Again, what makes a journalist different from any other Citizen? If thee or me witness a crime we will be compelled to bear witness in court, why does the fact someone is being paid by Pinch Sulzburger change a person's obligations as a Citizen?
> She claimed it would incriminate her and refused based on directly worded constitutional rights-
> not an interpretation someone could change if neccesary.
Yea, but the prosecuters have found a 100% legal way around Amendment #5. Use immunity. Because they didn't really want Susan, they wanted the Clintons. So they offered her use immunity and she still refused, then they could toss her in the joint for contempt. But while the special prosecuter could jail her for a bit, the Clintons could have her shot so she kept her mouth shut and did her time and the case ended up going nowhere.
> Apparently there's a disconnect between Josh's attorney, the judge, and the US attorney. I don't see
> anything unreasonable in the above text.
But YOU (nor I for that matter) weren't appointed to the Federal Bench. We don't decide what is the 'reasonable' way to deal with evidence, and neither does this Josh character. The Judge bangs his gavel and you either obey, appeal or suffer the consequences, any other result means no more Courts and anarchy reigns. Which is of course what most of the G8 protesters are into so that wouldn't be so much a threat as a wet dream for those asshats.
A grand jury or a court can order you to produce damned near anything it wants. Being a jouralist (or a blogger) is no shield, or haven't you kids been watching the Plamegate/Libby trial?
And this is a good thing. You can't have justice without first establishing the truth and for that you have to be able to present ALL of the evidence. I really can't see why journalists think they are some sort of fscking priesthood set above all other instituitions. Get over yourselves, you are mostly talentless hacks anyway.
This idiot was issued an order to produce evidence, he refused and his butt is in jail. And that is exactly where he belongs, for his refusal to comply with one of the most basic responsibilities attached to citizenship.
> Oh, sure, there are dollars involved - but it's a closed system - nobody is magically creating wealth,
> we are just moving it around to different places.
And there is the flaw in your argument. Wealth is NOT a closed system, it can be created and destroyed. Just to use an example everyone reading slashdot should be familiar with, the founders of Google created a metric assload of wealth without diminishing anyone else's wealth by an equal amount.
But don't feel too bad, almost all of the failed *isms of the 20th Century were based on same logic flaw so you have plenty of company. Lack of personal liberty is a bad thing, but widespread ignorance of basic economics seems to be at least as big an indicator of mass graves to come.
> but never speak ill of the jews
You haven't been paying attention. Anti-semitism, Holocaust Denial and outright jew hatred are now pretty much mainstream on sites like Daily Kos and DU. So as long as you are a deranged leftie Jews are now in season. Best I can figure they have decided that if they throw Israel under the bus the terrorists will stop hating us. Pathetic if you ask me, but I'm just a right wing reactionary neocon.
Sorry if this is too much truthiness, but when I have to pick sides in the Middle East I'll take the only one with a representitive government and basic liberties over the 7th century rejects. And as for the "Palestinian", to paraphrase Kos himself, "screw em." They elected a terrorist government when they could have had peace and a real country of their own, let em live with the consequences of their stupidity.
> The cut Mohammad scene was an innocuous three-second clip of Mohammad handing a guy a fish.
It gets even more silly. Ol Mo featured for much of the 5th Season ep "Super Best Friends" and clips were used to put together the 6th season opening credits. Every 6th season episode has a visual depiction of the Prophet. Comedy Central has neither pulled the entire season or edited the credit roll.
Just being politically correct pussies. Of course they fear getting their heads cut off but that is no excuse, if you give in to the fear the terrorists have won. Being a TV exec isn't all fun and getting your dick sucked, sometimes it requires some leadership and Viacom failed.
> You are using the old "if you don't have anything to hide you need not hide anything" fallacy.
No, I'm using the rational argument that our inept government doesn't really have the clue most of the time to chase actual perverts, let alone real menaces like terrorists. Simple matter of the ratio of watchers to the watched. Despite the delusions of importance in the moonbat camp, their ravings just aren't important enough for the G to bother trying to tap into, especially since they spew most of their venom openly onto their blogs.
It's not like they could actually DO anything with dissidents if they could catch em, we ain't got prison space for gangsters as it is. Because we are NOT a police state. In Soviet Russia they didn't have any problem finding places to build new gulags or the slave labor to build em with, just to pick a recent vivid example of what a REAL police state looked like.
> If you're trying to hide something from legal authorities, you'd best find another way to hide your data.
But this is the point of the article and the discussion. Law enforcement and the software vendors who supply them are making a bunch of handwaving "not a problem" noise but this just puts the question onto teh table for discussion, it doesn't even start to answer it.
The question: Is BitLocker safe for really secure work? Which breaks down to smaller questions. Even when used correctly, with a TCPM chip and a good passphrase and good logoff/umount displine is the implementation and design sound? Or is this just a FUD campaign to keep the coppers buying EnCase? Is BitLocker vulnerable to attacks that other encrption solutions would defend against?
Because while, despite the Daily Hate here on Slashdot, America isn't a police state and the innocent have little to fear from their governemt unless they are crimelords, terrorists or that most dreadful scourge, a kiddie porn fiend But that isn't much comfort for the billions of huddled masses yearning to breath free in the unfree parts of the world. PGP was a godsend to political dissidents around the world, is BitLocker a useful tool for them as well or a trojan horse to help despots fill their forced labor camps with the fools who trust it with their secrets?
The article is long on airy handwaving, "not a problem in the real world" , "Don't worry be happy!" stuff. Specifically, while they minimize the possibility of someone using BitLocker correctly on trusted hardware, just what will law enforcement do when they start running into Thinkpads (with the Trusted Platform chip) combined with suspects smart enough to use a decent length passphrase? Is there a way in? If the crypto is implemented correctly it should be damned near impossible; as hard a nut to crack as the problem of getting homebrew software to run on an unchipped xbox, just as one example of something even the best haxors have tried and failed at for years.
And btw, obviously anyone depending on the fingerprint scanner doesn't understand that protects against a totally different threat.
> There's no reason Twilight Princess couldn't use conventional controls, any Wii-specific stuff
> is superfluous at best and sometimes more of a main than a joystick.
Probably because it was released on the wii and the GC, which lacks a WiMote.
> And don't even get me started on the Pokemon card game. That was a retarded Bizarro world rip-off
> of Magic and I never saw its appeal.
Admittedly I don't really give a rat's rear about Pokemon, considering it retarded. But you can't really escape some exposure. (And there IS no safe exposure level.) On the fscking Pokemon cartoon it is pretty apparent they are just PLAYING the card game. So if the Nintendo versions are an improvement I say hurray!
Of course it does get worse, one of the cartoon/cardgame spinoffs/ripoffs is even more blatent about being a pure infomercial for how to play the cardgame. Good grief, I'm as Pro 1st Amendment as they get, but crap like that makes me want to turn a blind eye the next time the nanny state talks regulating children's TV.
Pokemon original? What a rewrite of history. Pokemon was just a ripoff of Magic: The Gathering, one of dozens. What made Pokemon was the tie-in to Nintendo, that was what opened lots of new levels in the gold mine for harvesting. But Magic did have a go at a PC game tie in, just not as successfully. Never played either myself, but I gather it was the gameboy that really made the trading style of gameplay work with the kids.
Nice gadget, but I don't think it will work in my situation. That one isn't Wi-Fi so would only work within the range of it's supplied base. And unless I found a US version it probably isn't using the right freqs and would not be legal in the US. Finally, it says it can transfer between its handsets but since they aren't SIP (the base is) it an open question if they could transfer to a regular SIP phone.
Great idea for the SoHo market though.
> It's a regular GSM/UMTS phone which also has WiFi and a full blown SIP client on board.
Sounds nice, but overkill for my need. We binned a aging AT&T/Lucent/Avaya key system for an Asterisk PBX. The Lucent system had cordless phones that were freaking huge, generally crappy and cost a fortune. But it had them. Now our choices are:
a) a standard cordless phone with an ATA on the base station. Cheap but since you lose the extra features it is only good for a few situations.
b) a Wi-Fi SIP phone. Even $350 is less expensive than Avaya was reaming us for but we don't need a cellphone and a PDA/smartphone is so overkill it would confuse our staff so that Nokia you suggest is out. To date the two SIP phones we have tried have sucked. As in frequent crashing and really lousy battery life.
> Works great with asterisk or any other SIP-friendly service.
Do you actually have one? Does it suck? I'm still looking for a WiFi SIP phone that doesn't suck. So far Zyxel and D-Link have failed to pass muster. Both have wretched battery life, such that they can't be relied upon to spend a work day off the charger in standby. Both suffer from random lockups. I'm talking HARD take the battery out to recover lockups. The Zyxel also has the nasty problem of requiring a reboot if it loses association with the access point.
I'm looking for a phone that can:
1. Stay on standby a full 12 hours, preferrably with an hour or two of talk time.
2. Has a proven history of at least running weeks between reboots. I'm not asking for Linux inside, but daily hangs get old fast.
3. A sticker price under $200 would be nice, $300 is a deal breaker.
4. And of course it needs to be unlocked so I can program it to talk to our Asterisk server.