...who's up for setting up a tent outside RedHat HQ and waiting for the first 2.5.3 release?
Why? RedHat does not govern nor control the Linux kernel, nor does it's internal release schedules determine the release schedules of the Linux kernel.
I really wish people would get off of the "Linux is RedHat" bandwagon.
Nobody doubts that ALSA will be included, the only question is how.
Personally as an audiophile, I find the sound reproduction quality of ALSA atrocious when compared to the OSS drivers. On every machine I've tried it on, ranging from laptops to full-blown desktops with the latest Turtle, SB, etc. cards, you can hear a perceptable hiss and overall the volume is lower, even at the same mixer settings. Many dozens of people have reported it, so I am not alone here. I will never use ALSA in a production box, though I think their efforts are noble.
Weren't you ever bothered that just by having your supposedly-secret (and obviously not) social security number that someone could steal your identity? We've never had a way of proving to someone with certainty that we are who we say we are without jumping through hoops - and even then identity theft can still be committed.
You've missed the point. There's a huge difference in being assigned a Social Security number vs. being required to present an ID card for entrance into public venues and to travel on airplanes and other public services.
I don't mind carrying a license or a social security card, but I do mind being forced to present my "National ID Card" at every traffic stop or stadium event I frequent or for every purchase I make that requires authorization.
What I would envision for the future is the biometric info (e.g. fingerprint) is stored in that barcode. It's not a picture of your thumbprint on the card. Whoever wants to check it would have a piece of equipment that would take your thumbprint live, then swipe your card and compare immediately that way. It would be a pretty simple and quick check. So you'd need a machine that would produce a credit-card style hard plastic photographic id with all the pertinent ID information encoded on the magnetic strip.
And what's to stop that person from storing your fingerprint and using it later, or selling his large list of stored fingerprints in his database to someone else.
My idea is better, and I've been saying this for 5+ years now. We need a card which is all cards. You have one magstripe, a small thumbpad area, and a tiny keypad on the device. You walk into a vendor to make a purchase, tap the 'Visa' button on the card, enter a pin number, press your thumb, then the stripe becomes "live", if you got the information correct. Swipe the card, and away you go. You then walk to the ATM, hit the ATM button on the card, enter ATM pin code on card, press finger, and away you go. The technology exists today, and the cards don't have to be any larger. It also eliminates fraud, theft of your fingerprint ID, and satisfies CFR-21:11 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which states that you have to have 2 out of three pieces of information to be "proven authentic"
Something you have: ID card, keys (i.e. door keys), etc.
Something you are: Retinal scan, thumbprint, voiceprint (ordered from most secure to least in this example)
Something you know: PIN code, validating questions, etc.
Using a system as I've described gives you not 2, but all 3 of the required elements of validity. Any two pieces of information can be stolen, and the card is still useless, as well as the information it contains.
Take the card, and you don't have the PIN, or the fingerprint.
Take the card and cut off my finger, and you still don't have the PIN (and the newer biometrics will not allow a severed digit to authenticate)
Take the card and somehow Social Engineer the PIN from me, you still need a fingerprint.
...and so on.
The best part of this system though, is that if identification is stolen or misused, it is through conspiracy, since Party A would have to have given Party B all three pieces of information. The best part is that the vendors who deal with these card never get your pin, your thumbprint to store, or your card itself, and yet it proves beyond a doubt, that the transaction came from a legitimately authorized individual.
States could make you answer questions correctly on things like your tax refund, driving history, etc. to prove you are who you say you are.
...or to prove that their information in their federal database is indeed correct, and relates it to one more datapoint, tying it all together. You've just walked in and validated 10 pieces of information about yourself that they couldn't validate, and you linked it to you.
How incredibly easy it was for them to get fake drivers licenses, SS Numbers and Birth certificates. So now if you get a driver's license in California under a fake name, you can create a person that exsists in every single state. I don't see how this will help.
What's even more interesting, is how the law looks at this...
If you get a legal license, with your photograph on it, and then take a scalpel and open it up from the side, changing your birthdate for example, you have committed a crime (if caught), and the punishment is fairly severe, including jail time, suspension of your license (your legal one), and hefty fines.
However, if you go to the DMV with fake information in hand, such as your older cousin's birth certificate, and get a driver's license, it is a legal document, and the punishment for using it if caught is nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Similarly, driving with stolen plates is much more severe of an offense than driving with no plates at all, though the latter is clearly more obvious. Ask your local law-enforcement official sometime, and they'll tell you.
There's alot of very interesting twists on the way the law looks at things in the books. I think everyone should take a law class, even if just to let people know where their limits, restrictions, and resources are, so they can protect and armour themselves against the onslaught of unjust laws.
But seriously, though, if information is property, how long will it be before everyday citizens claim their personal information as IP? How long will it be before we get a right to privacy? How much of Big Brother and Big Corp invading our lives does it take?
There was a case a long time ago, and I cannot for the life of me remember the names, but it set a Supreme Court precedent that fingerprints are property, and unless you waive your rights to your property, you cannot even legally be fingerprinted without a trial or being accused of a crime. Your personal identification is very close to this as well. If they add biometrics which require fingerprinting or retinal eye scans to authorize, you should be very careful how you waive your rights away, or maintain them, because they are your personal property.
Right now, driving is considered a "privilege" (If you ask me, it's pretty much a requirement nowadays), which makes it real easy for states to take away your driving "privileges" for accumulating too many points, etc... If this becomes a national ID card, what is going to happen to that "privilege" philosophy?
You don't have to carry a license, you know. It is not a requirement to drive, though of course, it's convenient. If your state changes it's laws and they no longer agree with your personal beliefs, you still have several options:
Relocate to a state which still does support your beliefs
Stop driving, hand in your license, find other means of travel and transportation
Make a note of the people who brought those "unjust" laws upon you and do not vote for them in the future
Suck it up and deal with it
For me, I'm very close to giving up my license, and declaring sovreighnity. It's still legal to do that in the U.S., though it draws much more suspiscion on you.
I don't live in this country solely for the "right" to be raped by the same government I fund with 60% of my salary!!
The slippery slope argument is perfectly valid when applied to a person or organization with a proven record of sliding down the slippery slope.
..last time I checked, this National ID card business was being forced down our throats by Ashcroft and the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy. If this is truly another means of catching terrorists, why is it being forced on United States citizens. You can't be a legally licensed driver in the U.S. without being a citizen.
These should be enforced on passports, i.e. people who are not from this country travelling here, and not citizens who pay an unearthly amount of taxes for the "right" of being raped by their own government in this fashion.
windows users are the ones who have money for gadgets like handheld pc's. Linux users use mostly free software, that should tell you something about their financial situation.
Quite the opposite in fact. Linux users and developers have much more "spare" cash than Windows developers and users
because we use Free Software. We are paid more as developers than equivalent Microsoft developers, we work harder, and we can afford our expensive toys, because we're not spending thousands of dollars on Microsoft restrictive licensing agreements.
pilot-link for Agenda/Yopy/Zaurus/Linux DA?
on
Linux PDA Part Deux
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· Score: 1
If they would send me a few units and some specifications, I could probably retrofit pilot-link to work with it, assuming it's using sane (documented) protocols.
I asked the same thing of the Yopy and and Agenda people, with exactly the same response... none.
Their loss, not mine.
It's not that these tools don't exist, it's that the vendors don't see the target market clearly enough to want to use them.
1. Microsoft declined to tell U.S. officials Friday how many consumers downloaded and installed its fix during the first 24 hours it was available.
The reasons for point 1 are quite clear though. Acting on point 1 would indicate what a fiction the sales figures for XP really are.
Or that 2 million copies were sold, and 9 million people required the patch.
Point 2 is more difficult to fathom... perhaps they're hoping people won't notice? Why on earth, other than their disdain for non-corporate users, wouldn't they send out the reminder? Or even a reminder stressing the improtance of installing the auto-updater?
I can give you several reasons:
The longer a problem exists, the more support calls they will get to address it. Support calls to Microsoft are not free. Read: coffers.
The longer a problem exists, the more time they have to sell product that is vulnerable to it (see 1. above)
The longer a problem exists, they more they can milk their training program and create a new MCSE test for "Securing the Enterprise", or some such drivel.
They can't probably email everyone that purchased XP, because the piracy for it has gone through the roof. Every-single-person I've spoken to (more than 2 dozen) that have XP installed tell me that they pirated it. Nice going, Microsoft, that was a good plan.
Wasn't the whole point of XP and the "online ease of installation" supposed to automatically send you fixes?
Hi there. I designed the interface for Mozilla's Javascript prefs back in September, and Doron Rosenberg has spent the past couple of months implementing it.
I have a suggestion for another interface for a 0.9.8 release; a UserAgent Editor. You would be surprised how intricate my junkbuster config is now with forged UserAgent strings so I can get into sites which simply block based on them (my bank now requires IE to do online banking, and nothing else will do. When I called them to let them know their previously working website was no longer working, they suggested I "upgrade" to Windows instead.. and I pay for this service?!). I should be able to selectively create/send/restrict my UserAgent string as sent to the remote system via a nice user-friendly UI that lets me hand-enter strings, or pass parts of my browser UserAgent across.
Using it as a daily browser for both work and home, I do have a few problems with it. Some javascripts dont work with internal business sites. (LiveLink and Eroom which we use for documents and communications) No spell checker yet. (But im told its coming.)
Excuse me? A spell checker? It's a browser. Say it slowly. BROWSER. What are you, a grammar nazi, spell-checking everyone's webpages now?
It would be nice if anything on mozdev actually worked, including Pubmed. I tried Chameleon, Aphrodite, Pubmed. They load fine, I restart mozilla, and then... nothing. Under the Tasks menu is a new "sliver" of a menu, with no text, that I can click on, and there are sub options, also slivers with no text, which do nothing when clicked.
Without the ability to cleanly install or uninstall these widgets, Mozilla will always be felt to be sub-par. Even an 'about: tasks' with clickable XUL uninstall options would be nice.
Wrong. To pick a ridiculously obvious example, have you heard of RedHat? They pay Alan Cox to code the kernel. They pay Steven Tweedie to do the same (or they used to).
No, actually they do not. Alan Cox is paid to help solve customer problems, including customers like HP, Amazon.com, and others. He does not have it in his contract with Redhat that his time is "allowed" to be working on the Linux kernel source code, but they know that he does, and part of his time is dedicated to Open Source work. He'd made it a full-time job working on the kernel source code, if Redhat didn't have "real" work for him to do for their paying customers.
It's the same with all of us who work for companies and are also Linux advocates, developers, and supporters. Linus doesn't work on the Linux kernel during his day job, except of course, when there's slow periods or he is waiting on work at Transmeta. This applies to all the big names you can throw at me.
Companies do not fund Linux development directly, unless it can be directly attributed to saving their bottom line, or putting them in the black. They pay the salaries of people who work to solve customer or product problems, and when there's spare time, many work on their open source work. Some have it written into their contracts that a percentage of their paid time is to be used for Open Source work, but I have yet to see someone who is directly paid to work on Open Source projects.
Not informative at all. Here's the real information: The patches can be applied to IE 6.0 OR IE 5.5 SP2 ONLY. If you do not have either of those you need to upgrade to one of them then apply the appropriate patch
What do you think Joe Home User is going to do? They're going to download the latest, greatest IE6 version (most current must be most secure, right? bleh). What they don't realize, is that IE6 contains all of the.NET client libraries with it, which basically turns the back-end of your system into a.NET-ready interface, ripe for the online pickings of patches, application downloads, and whatever else Microsoft wants to throw at you. They can also disable/enable/tinker with your OS at their leisure now, since they have enough "onboard" to do whatever they want.
And like someone else mentioned already, what if this isn't just a way to get some leniency from the DOJ by injecting enough code in the core of the.NET client-lib infrastructure to render a Magic Lantern hook into the running OS as simple as telnetting to a listening port.
This is THE major problem with Open Source software. Since you can't make money with it, you can't commit yourself to it full time. Therefore you get a whole bunch of people who sorta work on it rather than a real programming team.
This is how open source works. Welcome to the fold. Linux didn't get where it is today because of any commercial funding. In fact,
NO company has yet financially contributed to the development of Linux itself by paying people to work on it. Sure, they donate hardware, rack time, stuff like that, but it's for their own benefit; PR or product work. Development funding for Linux and Linux applications is never given away gratis, ever. This needs to change if people expect professional quality work out of competent developers who are clearly capable of delivering it. These developers do it in their spare time, because the rest of their time is spent earning a living, providing for their families, and working day jobs.
What you linux kids need is a micropayment system or SOME kind of way to support your "Forget capitalism, I must give away the product of hours and hour of my work" attitude. If you could make $40K/year while working on your open project, you could do it full time! THEN we'd see some nice word processors, web browsers, etc. for Linux and *BSD.
Let's not forget the other side of your argument... who is going to
make these micropayments? Certainly not other developers, otherwise we get back into the same rut, where the same amount of money is just changing hands.
Companies sure aren't going to make the micropayments, because most companies do not believe in Open Source, and certainly don't believe in it enough to fund it's development, without something else coming back their way to put their own ledgers in the black.. trust me on this one, I just resigned from my employer and this was one of the major reasons for my departure. They believe in Linux,as long as it makes them rich, but they do not believe in returning back to the community that gave them their name, their mission.
It baffles me why commercial companies continue to rape the Linux and Open Source community in this fashion. We need stricter licensing that forbids this. I'm not on the side of stricter licensing, but..
Back to the issue at hand. Commercial companies aren't going to fund Linux unless it hits their bottom line.
Developers aren't going to fund Linux development or applications because they need that money to eat and survive and pay rent.
Users aren't going to fund the development, because they will (barely) want to send money even if the product is finished, polished, and in a shrinkwrapped box with a manual. They do not want to pay for the development up-front.
Lastly, Linux is not out to make money. Sure, it makes money for lots of people, but I'm sure I side with Linus, Alan, and hundreds of other Linux developers when I say that we are here to do some cool and interesting stuff. If nobody uses it, oh well. If it's useful, great. If it advances the technology or pushes the envelope, we've done our job.
This isn't the only time I've had a problem, I don't want to even get in to how IE badly handle dynamically generated PDF's, how since 5.5 it ignores the settings to not embed PDF since that's the only work-around, and how 5.5 also asks the "open here/save" question TWICE when passing it some file types.
I have one very basic question:
WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL USING IT THEN??!
There are hundreds of alternatives out there for you to use both in the OS and application space, which WILL do what you want, and if it doesn't, there are even some alternatives that give you the full source code so you can make it do what you want anyway.
Microsoft does it's best (or worst) to provide something. But, heck, it's FREE. IE costs us nothing.
Ah, but it's not free, now is it. You had to pay for your operating system (Microsoft $TITLE Version $RANDOMSTRING) and IE came with it. You can't select to use your system
without IE, nor can you "uninstall" IE from your system. It's free, because it's required (or so they'd have you think).
Heck, your transmission is free, with the purchase of your automobile too.
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Why did they spin *THIS* part off?
on
Palm OS Spinoff
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I for one, do not understand this. Their hardware business is the lower cost-center. They get licensing from all of their OEM partners,
and frankly, Palm's hardware sucks. They haven't yet innovated in any way that they can call their own. They're on third and fourth
generation devices, and they're still shipping with 8 megs of memory.
Symbol Technologies licenses the Palm and creates several units which can do RF, 802.11, and include a barcode
scanner (high-output LED)
Sony mimics that with the MemoryStick, but adds VFS support, and takes Handspring's USB protocol, changes
one function, and makes their own spin on it.
Handera, formerly TRG builds upon that with a
sliding graffiti area (thanks for incorporating my idea from #palmchat back in 1998 on that one), and adds CF and SD slot architectures
(still serially connected storage though, can't "run apps" from each card concurrently)
Palm comes
out with the replacement to the Vx, called the m505, and includes the Sony VFS
extensions, the Handspring hardware port design (internally) and the Handspring USB modifications, but changes it enough to make yet a
third fork of this pseudo-USB protocol. They also make sure to make every single thing about this new device completely
incompatible with every single other thing available for their devices, even down to a 2mm change in the stylus length (I have a more
detailed enumeration of those changes found here).
Why does Palm
think they're about to, in any way, create a new hardware device that they think will surpass these existing innovative devices? Palm is
ALWAYS behind the curve on hardware advances in this area. We're not even talking about comparing them to the iPAQ, VTech Helio, Agenda, Yopy, and the other dozens of non-PalmOS, non-WinCE handheld PDA devices.
Currently, Palm's OEMs for the PalmOS® software include:
They get licensing from each and every one of these OEMs. Their hardware is the last thing to ever be updated. It is without a doubt, the least innovative portion of their business.. and they're choosing to keep it?!
I don't
quite understand the motive behind this decision on their part. I suppose I'll find out at Palmsource in February.
At this point, our best hope is that they don't have a good mix of the stuff.
Here's another scary thought to ponder. What if there are people here in the U.S. working for those "evil deeds" who are simply testing our procedures, and perfecting the recipe, so that it passes all the tests we throw at it.
The Microsoft one has passed two tests, and failed on the third. What if they get the recipe right and it passes the third test? Do we keep trying? What if it passes 9 tests? Do we keep testing?
For example, out of the thousands of people in the subway in tokyo where a bunch of wacko's sprayed sarin gas only 12 people were killed. 12 out of thousands. A success? I say no.
As you probably already know, they had the right concentration, wrong implementation. Their sprayers clogged, because the spore size was too large to go through in a long-term spray.
Slashdot Mirror
I really wish people would get off of the "Linux is RedHat" bandwagon.
Your Thought-Crime is disconcerting, citizen.
You've missed the point. There's a huge difference in being assigned a Social Security number vs. being required to present an ID card for entrance into public venues and to travel on airplanes and other public services.
I don't mind carrying a license or a social security card, but I do mind being forced to present my "National ID Card" at every traffic stop or stadium event I frequent or for every purchase I make that requires authorization.
And what's to stop that person from storing your fingerprint and using it later, or selling his large list of stored fingerprints in his database to someone else.
My idea is better, and I've been saying this for 5+ years now. We need a card which is all cards. You have one magstripe, a small thumbpad area, and a tiny keypad on the device. You walk into a vendor to make a purchase, tap the 'Visa' button on the card, enter a pin number, press your thumb, then the stripe becomes "live", if you got the information correct. Swipe the card, and away you go. You then walk to the ATM, hit the ATM button on the card, enter ATM pin code on card, press finger, and away you go. The technology exists today, and the cards don't have to be any larger. It also eliminates fraud, theft of your fingerprint ID, and satisfies CFR-21:11 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which states that you have to have 2 out of three pieces of information to be "proven authentic"
- Something you have: ID card, keys (i.e. door keys), etc.
- Something you are: Retinal scan, thumbprint, voiceprint (ordered from most secure to least in this example)
- Something you know: PIN code, validating questions, etc.
Using a system as I've described gives you not 2, but all 3 of the required elements of validity. Any two pieces of information can be stolen, and the card is still useless, as well as the information it contains.The best part of this system though, is that if identification is stolen or misused, it is through conspiracy, since Party A would have to have given Party B all three pieces of information. The best part is that the vendors who deal with these card never get your pin, your thumbprint to store, or your card itself, and yet it proves beyond a doubt, that the transaction came from a legitimately authorized individual.
...or to prove that their information in their federal database is indeed correct, and relates it to one more datapoint, tying it all together. You've just walked in and validated 10 pieces of information about yourself that they couldn't validate, and you linked it to you.
No thanks, I'd rather pay cash and walk to work.
What's even more interesting, is how the law looks at this...
If you get a legal license, with your photograph on it, and then take a scalpel and open it up from the side, changing your birthdate for example, you have committed a crime (if caught), and the punishment is fairly severe, including jail time, suspension of your license (your legal one), and hefty fines.
However, if you go to the DMV with fake information in hand, such as your older cousin's birth certificate, and get a driver's license, it is a legal document, and the punishment for using it if caught is nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Similarly, driving with stolen plates is much more severe of an offense than driving with no plates at all, though the latter is clearly more obvious. Ask your local law-enforcement official sometime, and they'll tell you.
There's alot of very interesting twists on the way the law looks at things in the books. I think everyone should take a law class, even if just to let people know where their limits, restrictions, and resources are, so they can protect and armour themselves against the onslaught of unjust laws.
There was a case a long time ago, and I cannot for the life of me remember the names, but it set a Supreme Court precedent that fingerprints are property, and unless you waive your rights to your property, you cannot even legally be fingerprinted without a trial or being accused of a crime. Your personal identification is very close to this as well. If they add biometrics which require fingerprinting or retinal eye scans to authorize, you should be very careful how you waive your rights away, or maintain them, because they are your personal property.
You don't have to carry a license, you know. It is not a requirement to drive, though of course, it's convenient. If your state changes it's laws and they no longer agree with your personal beliefs, you still have several options:
For me, I'm very close to giving up my license, and declaring sovreighnity. It's still legal to do that in the U.S., though it draws much more suspiscion on you.
I don't live in this country solely for the "right" to be raped by the same government I fund with 60% of my salary!!
..last time I checked, this National ID card business was being forced down our throats by Ashcroft and the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy. If this is truly another means of catching terrorists , why is it being forced on United States citizens . You can't be a legally licensed driver in the U.S. without being a citizen.
These should be enforced on passports, i.e. people who are not from this country travelling here, and not citizens who pay an unearthly amount of taxes for the "right" of being raped by their own government in this fashion.
I asked the same thing of the Yopy and and Agenda people, with exactly the same response... none.
Their loss, not mine.
It's not that these tools don't exist, it's that the vendors don't see the target market clearly enough to want to use them.
The reasons for point 1 are quite clear though. Acting on point 1 would indicate what a fiction the sales figures for XP really are.
Point 2 is more difficult to fathom... perhaps they're hoping people won't notice? Why on earth, other than their disdain for non-corporate users, wouldn't they send out the reminder? Or even a reminder stressing the improtance of installing the auto-updater?
I have a suggestion for another interface for a 0.9.8 release; a UserAgent Editor. You would be surprised how intricate my junkbuster config is now with forged UserAgent strings so I can get into sites which simply block based on them (my bank now requires IE to do online banking, and nothing else will do. When I called them to let them know their previously working website was no longer working, they suggested I "upgrade" to Windows instead.. and I pay for this service?!). I should be able to selectively create/send/restrict my UserAgent string as sent to the remote system via a nice user-friendly UI that lets me hand-enter strings, or pass parts of my browser UserAgent across.
Just a thought...
Excuse me? A spell checker? It's a browser. Say it slowly. BROWSER. What are you, a grammar nazi, spell-checking everyone's webpages now?
Without the ability to cleanly install or uninstall these widgets, Mozilla will always be felt to be sub-par. Even an 'about: tasks' with clickable XUL uninstall options would be nice.
It's the same with all of us who work for companies and are also Linux advocates, developers, and supporters. Linus doesn't work on the Linux kernel during his day job, except of course, when there's slow periods or he is waiting on work at Transmeta. This applies to all the big names you can throw at me.
Companies do not fund Linux development directly, unless it can be directly attributed to saving their bottom line, or putting them in the black. They pay the salaries of people who work to solve customer or product problems, and when there's spare time, many work on their open source work. Some have it written into their contracts that a percentage of their paid time is to be used for Open Source work, but I have yet to see someone who is directly paid to work on Open Source projects.
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Why does Palm think they're about to, in any way, create a new hardware device that they think will surpass these existing innovative devices? Palm is ALWAYS behind the curve on hardware advances in this area. We're not even talking about comparing them to the iPAQ, VTech Helio, Agenda, Yopy, and the other dozens of non-PalmOS, non-WinCE handheld PDA devices.
Currently, Palm's OEMs for the PalmOS® software include:
They get licensing from each and every one of these OEMs. Their hardware is the last thing to ever be updated. It is without a doubt, the least innovative portion of their business.. and they're choosing to keep it?!
I don't quite understand the motive behind this decision on their part. I suppose I'll find out at Palmsource in February.
Here's another scary thought to ponder. What if there are people here in the U.S. working for those "evil deeds" who are simply testing our procedures, and perfecting the recipe, so that it passes all the tests we throw at it.
The Microsoft one has passed two tests, and failed on the third. What if they get the recipe right and it passes the third test? Do we keep trying? What if it passes 9 tests? Do we keep testing?
As you probably already know, they had the right concentration, wrong implementation. Their sprayers clogged, because the spore size was too large to go through in a long-term spray.
I say they had the right idea, wrong design.