To be fair I've seen comments that upgrading from Ubuntu Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft (late beta) broke things. That's why you shouldn't upgrade to a beta on a "has to run" system. If you want to tinker around, do it in a VM;-) Fair, but my system *IS* for tinkering. I've got four different distributions installed, each in their own partition, a partition for backup, and a main home partition. (And a vfat partition and a few swap partitions.)
I didn't even try, but just did a reinstall...as I usually do. A reinstall gets rid of lots of old cruft that I'd otherwise never get around to cleaning. That's thinking around the lines of Windows. If you use the package manager EXCLUSIVELY for software maintenance and don't circumvent it with manual installation procedures, there is no cruft to clean up except of the one or other orphaned config file. I don't know about you, but I don't remember what I've installed or why. Some libraries get installed to satisfy dependencies, etc. OTOH, I've recent aptitude remove libraries that were just installed to satisfy dependencies, and were no longer needed. But some of the libraries were manually installed to satisfy a requirement for something that I installed manually (either because there wasn't a package for it, or because I wanted to have a later version, or a version to tinker with. E.g., I usually install a test version of Python long before it's ready for the unstable tree. (OTOH, Python doesn't usually have missing dependencies....but sometimes it requires a different version of a library than the system currently has installed.)
Over time cruft builds up.
OTOH, Linux makes it easy to have/home be a separate partition, and if you do that, then a reinstall is pretty cheap. In fact, every distro I know creates a separate home partition by default. If you really think you have to reinstall, also make a backup of/etc, by the way. That makes it even cheaper. Actually, many distributions now make the entire disk one large partition (plus a swap partition), or did a few years ago. Several distro's do this. The last Mandrake that I tried did that. Ubuntu, Debian, the last Red Hat I tried, etc. (Maybe not Mandrake. That was long enough ago that I'm uncertain.) It all depends on which install options you pick. But I've got all the partitions in use, and I want to control the allocation, so I always pick manual. (To be fair, I'm not sure what would happen if I just told it to "automatically configure", but I did that once, and the results were such that I'm not likely to do it again. Fortunately at that time I had a tape backup...something I'm currently lacking.)
A virtual machine ought to be a nice alternative, but I keep upgrading the base layer OS, and the virtual machine stops working. Partitions don't have that problem. I've still got one partition running Sarge...I think the only thing I use it for is running CivCTP, and I keep thinking I should virtualize it...but I haven't.
Interesting. When I was younger I considered the MS monopoly an improvement over the IBM monopoly.
Then I read the MS EULA. And thought about it. And began looking for alternatives. Now I still have one computer that I haven't managed to extract from MS. It sits running MSWind95, and disconnected from all networks. Because of one program that I haven't managed to replace.
Everything else runs either Linux or OS X. I'd like to move everything over to Linux, but there are still a few gaps in the application line. I have a lot less trouble with my computers these days.
FWIW, my reasons for wanting to move away from OS X are: 1) I don't really like many of the choices that the Windows Manager makes. I prefer native KDE. 2) Applications tend to come with proprietary file formats. I don't like being locked in. 3) I really despise the EULA screens that appear with every software update. They aren't a predefined license like GPL, so I don't understand what they mean without reading every word and then trying to think about it. Even then I'm likely to not understand. So I want AWAY!!! OTOH, when I read the EULA I generally find it to be less abusive than the MS EULA...but that's ALL the praise I can give it. You don't get much fainter than "Not quite as bad as MS.".
The third reason is my real reason for wanting to ditch OS X nearly as much as I wanted to ditch MS. The second is what ought to be the main reason. And the first is just a contributory factor.
You're correct. E.g., I have an MSWind95 box that stopped crashing shortly after I stopped installing new program or allowing it network connections. These days I only run two programs on it, and they're the reason that I still have any MS software at all. (Well, three programs if you count PySol.)
To be fair I've seen comments that upgrading from Ubuntu Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft (late beta) broke things. I didn't even try, but just did a reinstall...as I usually do. A reinstall gets rid of lots of old cruft that I'd otherwise never get around to cleaning.
OTOH, Linux makes it easy to have/home be a separate partition, and if you do that, then a reinstall is pretty cheap.
I don't know just how often MS goofs royally, but you are presuming a kind of overhead that many companies can't afford (or won't).
I'll grant you that your scenario would be preferable for everything but short-notice attacks...and even for those if a good firewall could keep them out. It would also be more expensive most of the time. Managers notice things like that. Most are willing to tolerate "emergency action", but many of those won't tolerate normal "wasted time", even if the "wasted time" would prevent the need for "emergency action". For one thing, because the need for emergency action was prevented, it never became necessary, and thus, to the manager, was unreal.
And it's also true that sometimes applying the patch QUICKLY is important. When Debian found that someone had gotten improper access to their repositories they shut-down updating INSTANTLY. Later they examined machine by machine to see which were good, and which had to be recovered from backup. It took a week for them to get fully back to normal. Security patches were among the first repositories back on line. Sometimes quick action is necessary. AFAIK they never found that any of their repositories had actually been corrupted, but they did "the right thing". And that involved two fast actions. 1) Take down anything that might have become corrupt 2) Get the security updates back up as quickly as is safe
Usually a security update doesn't have strong urgency, merely strong importance. Sometimes it also has strong urgency. With MS updates, you only know what they're telling you, and they're only telling you what will benefit them. So you never know which updates are important, which are urgent, and which are both. And from whose point of view.
I've certainly encountered at least one person on a mailing list who felt like that. He expected his computer to work properly NOW!!, and wasn't willing to hear technical explanations as to how to fix it. This was the more annoying as it was totally off topic for the mailing list, which was only semi-moderated (obnoxious posters get banned, but anyone can post). Naturally he started off appearing to be reasonable, but experiencing trouble...and he tied it peripherally onto the topic of the list.
I doubt that anyone that I've encountered is broadly unique. (Probabilities seem against it.) Therefore it's probable that some percentage of the population is like that guy.
Unfortunately, it's not clear to me that it's possible for general purpose computers to be secured from unexpected failures...especially failures that aren't expected by people who are only vaguely familiar with the technology. ("I know what a computer is. It's that thing that calculates numbers and talks over the internet. And it plays games too.") This is the more true when some properties of computing are covered by patents that are unintelligible as to what they mean. So just because one computer does things one way doesn't mean that other computers are even legally allowed to do it the same way. (Note that here I'm not drawing a distinction between hardware and software patents. For this argument their effects are identical. If someone were to patent a mouse that could recognize who was using it, and automatically log them in appropriately [see a recent Apple announcement...though I'm extrapolating a bit], then only computers that could use that mouse could recognize a person by feel. Other computers couldn't act the same way because of legal impediments. The patents could all be hardware based.)
Totally. I have not bought anything that I have been aware was associated with Sony since this story broke. I do not plan to change my mind. Ever. (Plans can change, so this isn't a promise. If Sony came out strongly supporting GPL3, then I might buy something from them *IF* all of the firmware and all accompanying software was licensed under GPL3.)
But I'm not sure. I may be underestimating the extent to which I dislike a company that would first install rootkits on people's computers, and then defend it because the people didn't realize that they had been damaged.
I don't see any plausible deniability here. I don't even see much dubious deniability. And only a bit of really-far-fetched deniability, if you mix in massive helpings of incompetence.
Well, I'll agree they didn't expect to get sued over it, but they sure did a fine bit of cover-up once it happened. I suspect that they had it in their contingency plans.
Did they know they were planting a rootkit? I'd say yes. They probably didn't know about the problem that attempting to remove it would cause, but if you damage someone accidentally while committing a criminal act, that is counted as intentional harm.
If they didn't know they were installing a rootkit, then you should never buy anything from them ever again, because they are clearly incompetent. If they did, then you shouldn't buy from them because they are malicious. I don't need to decide which reason applies to decide on which course of action to take.
FWIW, I seem to recall back from when this broke that the company was formed by Sony insiders to create this software. If that's actually the truth, they there will be lots of documentation only if they were figuring on CYA from the start. Otherwise the specs will have been primarily verbal.
Be interesting to find out who was playing a sneakier game, though.
I you want to make that distinction, go ahead. They're both paying money into the same pockets, however.
Personally, I don't currently intend to ever purchase anything from Sony again. I suppose that they *could* change my mind, but not without understanding just how evil it is to put rootkits in people's computers. After realizing that, then they'd need to decide to provide genuine, as opposed to symbolic, recompense. Then they'd have to actually do the deed. That would bring them back close to neutral. At that point I'd start considering them again. Then I'd reject them because I don't like DRM. Currently I reject them for being treacherous backstabbing sleaze mongers who make equipment that can't be trusted because they either think rootkits are good or have neither morals nor ethics.
Once they recover their status to just being DRM vendors, then I can consider them. They'll still probably lose out against the competition, because I don't like DRM and won't pay extra to support it, but they'll have a possibility of a sale if they provide superior equipment at a good price, and if non-DRM software isn't discriminated against. But they'll need to prove that latter.
Historic "facts" are usually a tissue of lies, with a few definite facts holding them together.
E.g., Julius Caesar was killed in the Senate after assuming dictatorial power. This appears to be a fact.
Why? Does anyone know? Why do they believe that their knowledge is fact? You can certainly accept that the written records then are no more honest than they are now, merely much sparser.
For all we know Brutus had been Caesar's lover, and was angry at him for being jilted. (Caesar is reliably reported to have been bi. "The wife of every husband and the husband of every wife." is one description applied to him, probably not by an admirer.
Who did kill Kennedy? Why do you believe it? How certain are you of the honesty of your sources? Why are you so certain (or dubious)?
Uncertainty is not only a principle of physics, it's everywhere. Physics is unique in being able to mathematically express the degree of uncertainty. According to some theories of physics every possible history of the current instant is a real history, which a particular (possibly incalculable) probability. The sum of all the probabilities of pasts is one, but there are an infinite number of them. At any particular nanosecond (about a light-foot) everything outside the light-cone has to be considered unknown. Your brain is about a foot in diameter.
N.B.: The theory of physics that I mentioned is called "sum over histories" and is considered orthodox since Feynman. It's just not usually considered for macroscopic objects...but Hawking has applied it to the entire universe...back when it was around a foot in size.
This means that EVERY theory which is consistent with all locally available evidence is true with a probability. So the next question is "How much do you trust your memories?" Just recently my red coffee cup disappeared for a week, and reappeared as a blue one. Same shape, texture, design, etc. Memory glitch? Merging multiverses? But if memory of sensory experiences is faulty, why not memories of other evidence?
Physics is making naive theories of reality look more and more absurd. Perhaps truth and false shouldn't be considered booleans, but reals (range [1.0, 0]). Then there are the "physics as computation" people who assert that these truth values (probabilities) don't have infinite precision. Only around 10^26 digits of precision. That's a kick. I would have expected 10^33. But maybe I'm misremembering, and they really said 10^126? Since that was an upper limit to the precision, I'd be comfortable with that, and continue to believe that it was around 10^33 (or, possibly given slightly different assumption, 10^66) digits of precision. (Check "quantum foam" for why those numbers.)
But our minds can't deal with that kind of precision. And another result of physics says that if a measurement can't be taken, then the result is intrinsically undecided. It's not at all clear to me what this implies. One thing, however, is (relatively) certain: Certainty is an oversimplification.
Then there's the question: How do you know you're not living in a simulation? That would explain the limited degree of precision, the lazy evaluation of truth, etc. And the loss of information about what history really was as it fades into the past. Storage conservation and cpu cycle conservation.
But other physicists are now asserting that the universe *IS* a computer. I think I may be experiencing a bit of stress trying to understand what that means. I tend to consider the computer and the program to be separable, but I'm not sure whether they do or not. I *suspect* that this is just an extravagant phrasing for "we can establish an isomorphic mapping between portions of how the universe works and portions of how a computer works, but that's just a guess.
I did not think that the conclusion he came to was that odd actually. I personally would rather think that governments do some things deliberately rather than think they are incompetent.
Try it both ways. I'm sure that's the correct answer, the problem is trying to deduce the proportions.
The way I've always thought of it is that the Democrats are more interested in having people like them, and the Republicans are more focused on **POWER**!!!. This is purely a matter of emphasis, except for occasional Republicans who believe "Nobody would ever like me no matter what I do, so screw everyone!". And occasional Democrats who aren't really THAT interested in power, but want the public adulation. (Kennedy? Carter? FDR?) (FWIW: Kennedy got pushed into running for president by his father. Carter really does seem to be religious of the "do good works!" school. And FDR is a bit of an enigma. I wasn't around when he was active, so all information is what got recorded by the hagiographers and the vilifiers. Maybe he was just desperate. Maybe he didn't want to live in Teddy's shadow.)
By and large, though, it's all about power. You don't see the Democrats repealing the autocratic measures taken by the Republicans. Not without **TREMENDOUS** pressure, anyway. (Check how the restoration of habeas corpus is going.)
And that explains why they held my sister up in Las Vegas for over six hours. Without explanation or apology other than "Somebody must have filled out a form incorrectly."
Due to the timing of various things, this caused her a tremendous amount of stress and nearly cost her her degree. It's something I find a bit hard to forgive, especially since I'm rather convinced that the program is mainly PR anyway.
Now I'll grant that this was a separate sub-agency than the FBI, but these days they're both Homeland Security, so they both get charged with what the other guys did. And deservedly. They appear to be in the job of letting politically connected criminals go free without investigation, and making a lot of noise about how much work they're doing harassing people without power who aren't doing anything very bad. More politically connected crimes appear to have been discovered by news reporters than by FBI agents, so one wonders what their excuse is for being allowed more investigative rights than journalists.
I *really* doubt that saber-tooth tigers were tasty. That's not the reputation that cats have.
I suspect that people contributed to the extinction of those animals (and of other less spectacular species) not only by eating them, but also by carrying diseases that they had not co-evolved with. Also, in the case of the saber-tooth, e.g., by competing for the same food supply. (Mammoths, perhaps. One of the recorded ways of hunting mammoths is to set a grass-fire and stampede a herd over a cliff.)
3) My thought on this is that code with lots of small instructions could swell in size if you switched to a 64-bit instruction set. I don't know modern assembler, so this may not be true. But it could. If a no-op now takes 64-bits instead of 32-bits, that code had just doubled in size. The, presumably excellent, new instructions don't do you any good if you aren't doing the kinds of things that require them. If each instruction doubles in size at the same time, you're paying a hefty price for changes that you usually aren't using.
I can think of several reasons to prefer a default install of 32 bit Linux. Not sure if any of them are correct, though: 1) That was what they negotiated last year 2) The 64-bit drivers weren't available in time to test 3) Most people don't get any advantage from the 64-bit system 4) etc.
Any, or several, of these could be correct. Can't think of a way to check that's easy enough to bother with.
For me, the primary advantage of Dell selling a computer with Linux pre-installed is that it's guaranteed to have Linux compatible hardware. Now if only I could depend on the hardware drivers being available if I switch to another distro... well, the chances are pretty good. I'll certainly be considering Dell seriously the next time I'm in the market. (OTOH, Lenovo's new ThinkPad looks interesting...)
ALL girls are a PITA to have a relationship with. And so are all guys, ask any girl.
Also, FWIW, beauty isn't all it's cracked up to be. Beautiful girls are usually the vain ones, because you don't get to be beautiful without devoting as much effort to beauty as a jock devotes to being a jock.
Also, you don't want one with the same interests. Merely compatible ideals. If you get married, you want to have a complementary relationship, where the strengths of one covers the weaknesses of the other. (I really lucked out...eventually. But it took me long enough. [I.e., a great deal longer than I wanted it to. And a few mistakes along the way that, fortunately, weren't disastrous. Only wasted a few years and a bit of money.])
Beauty. Here's a secret, that shouldn't be one. When you look at something after awhile you stop seeing it, except when you look again on purpose. Pick someone that you enjoy looking at, but don't worry much about more than that. The three of the four most beautiful girls I ever met were all borderline psycho (though not blatantly). And they all believed that because they were beautiful the world owed them not merely a living, but also most of their whims. OTOH, the absolute most beautiful girl I ever met was charming, personable, and warm as well as beautiful. (She went for someone else, the lucky dog.) Personality should rule your preferences...right after ideals. Unfortunately, both personality and ideals can't be told at a glance, so you've got to spend a bit of time. But you can enjoy the research...or at least try to. (If you don't, you're likely to miss out.)
Hint: Compliment her. Often. And don't stop when you get married.
Hint: Be affectionate, indirectly. Pet dogs sensually. People put themselves in the place of others, and imagine how they are feeling. Women like to be petted...as long as they feel safe. If you're petting a dog and she's watching, she may empathize with the dog, and imagine you petting her. (Check out mirror neurons for why this works.)
Hint: Always resolve arguments. This can be a lot of work, and you can need to force yourself to continue, but it can be crucial to your staying together. If you get into an argument with her, SOLVE IT!!. Sometimes this takes awhile, but try to resolve it before you go to sleep. Stop occasionally for a timed five minutes to cool off. (Use a timer with a bell. During that five minutes, try not to talk to each other...it's too likely to drift back into the argument.) N.B.: Apologizing doesn't work, but it's a necessary step. But be sincere. "I'm sorry I made you mad." is often good, as it's usually easy to say this honestly.
Hint: Avoid lying to yourself. Just don't. Give yourself permission to avoid justifying, to yourself, things that you do which you consider immoral or unethical. (This isn't the same as giving yourself permission to do them. The point is to encourage honesty, so don't lie to yourself to justify it.) Try to avoid lying to others, but the crucial thing is to be honest with yourself. This can take practice, so start now.
Hint: When you are resolving an argument with your S.O., and you don't know why you did something...admit it. Then try to invent a reason...but explain that it's a guess or invention.
N.B.: These are things that have worked for me. I hope they help someone else, but no guarantees.
It's been said before, and there are prominent scientists that agree with you.
But I believe that you are wrong. I believe that science must pre-exist before you can merge math with it (unless you are counting primitive concepts such as intuitive geometry as math). Chess players don't need to even know the existence of game theory, even though game theory can, in theory, predict the proper move in any position. Note that in practice game theory is too unwieldy for a human to use in such a way, and I suspect that it's too unwieldy for a computer to use it for such a task, also. That's why all good chess-playing programs come with a library of openings. And they have specialized rules that can be mapped to pieces of game theory that they invoke at characteristic places in the game. E.g., knight forks are generally worth avoiding...except when they aren't.
Tennis players don't need to know physics, certainly not mathematical physics, except at an intuitive level.
Similarly, science and scientists existed before math was mapped onto science...except at an intuitive level. Currently that's about the only kind of science that's taught and recognized, but it was not always so. There are many reasons why the mathematical versions of the various sciences came to dominate. One in particular is that mathematics represents generalized knowledge of how patterns interact without needing any substance. This means that when you can map some part of knowledge or action onto math, you can easily make a large number of predictions that would not have been easy to create. You must then CHECK those predictions, to discover whether your mapping has been valid. This interplay between separated theory and experiment has largely replaced an older and less powerful interplay between theory and experiment. The older theory was based around physical models rather than mathematical models (and is, I believe, still the dominant informal mode). The benefit of the older theoretical models are that our brains are adapted to manipulating physical models, and are at best clumsy at manipulating mathematical models, so if you want to be at all creative you first generate your models in the older framework, and only then translate them into math. As I recall Einstein spent YEARS searching for the right mathematical model for his mental pictures before he was introduced to tensor calculus. But he was already making predictions for how the experiments would turn out before he could make them sufficiently precise to show that the new model was an improvement on the old. (I read the book that contained that information decades ago, and I no longer recall it's title. The same information is probably elsewhere if you go searching.)
I assert that it is the interplay between theory and experiment that determine science. The mathematics is an add-on, and one that is un-natural to the human thought process. It is, however, an add-on of such power that once it occurs it quickly dominates...IF enough of the people you are trying to communicate to have the appropriate background knowledge of math.
You need to read Michael Faraday, or some of his predecessors.
Math is a relatively late addition to science. Yes, it's proved very useful. But science happened long before they introduced math.
Well, thinking again, this depends on what you mean by math. Leonardo used math to figure out perspective. Does this means that art depends on math? If so, then science depends on math, and so does walking across the room. And I can see a valid argument to be made along those lines, but that's not what people normally mean. If we look at what people normally mean, then science didn't depend on math until around the time of Kepler. Perhaps you want to call everything earlier engineering rather than science, but engineering depends on math just as heavily as science.
What actually happened was that after algebra was invented, and arabic numerals, it became a lot easier to describe things in math, so people gradually switched away from describing things in ordinary language and to describing them in math. This has had both advantages and disadvantages. Certainly precision has improved. But comprehension by "ordinary folk" has declined, and not entirely because of the arcane subject matter, but also because they needed to learn a new language in order to understand what was being talked about.
OTOH, can you imagine talking about computer programming without using "jargon"?
If Novell is guilty of copyright violation in the distribution of GPL3 software, it will be because they software was covered by patents that they knew about, and didn't have the right to allow others to redistribute. If this is the case, then they knowingly exposed other people to legal danger, and therefore deserve to be punished.
If Novell is not guilty, then either they didn't know about the patents, or they had the right to distribute. Novell's claim is that they don't know of any valid MS patents that cover the GPL software that they distribute.
If MS is endangered by the GPL3, it will be because of some part of the MS-Novell agreement that isn't public knowledge. As such, they will deserve to lose any benefit from hidden patents.
My suspicion is that Novell is being honest, and that MS is engaged in a massive FUD project. Nevertheless, to protect myself I do not intend to purchase from Novell or MS, or to use any recent Novell software, including mono, until this is resolved. I hope that Novell got LOTS of money from MS, but I don't care enough to re-examine the public parts of the deal.
Slashdot Mirror
Over time cruft builds up. OTOH, Linux makes it easy to have
A virtual machine ought to be a nice alternative, but I keep upgrading the base layer OS, and the virtual machine stops working. Partitions don't have that problem. I've still got one partition running Sarge...I think the only thing I use it for is running CivCTP, and I keep thinking I should virtualize it...but I haven't.
Interesting. When I was younger I considered the MS monopoly an improvement over the IBM monopoly.
Then I read the MS EULA. And thought about it. And began looking for alternatives. Now I still have one computer that I haven't managed to extract from MS. It sits running MSWind95, and disconnected from all networks. Because of one program that I haven't managed to replace.
Everything else runs either Linux or OS X. I'd like to move everything over to Linux, but there are still a few gaps in the application line. I have a lot less trouble with my computers these days.
FWIW, my reasons for wanting to move away from OS X are:
1) I don't really like many of the choices that the Windows Manager makes. I prefer native KDE.
2) Applications tend to come with proprietary file formats. I don't like being locked in.
3) I really despise the EULA screens that appear with every software update. They aren't a predefined license like GPL, so I don't understand what they mean without reading every word and then trying to think about it. Even then I'm likely to not understand. So I want AWAY!!!
OTOH, when I read the EULA I generally find it to be less abusive than the MS EULA...but that's ALL the praise I can give it. You don't get much fainter than "Not quite as bad as MS.".
The third reason is my real reason for wanting to ditch OS X nearly as much as I wanted to ditch MS. The second is what ought to be the main reason. And the first is just a contributory factor.
You're correct.
E.g., I have an MSWind95 box that stopped crashing shortly after I stopped installing new program or allowing it network connections. These days I only run two programs on it, and they're the reason that I still have any MS software at all. (Well, three programs if you count PySol.)
To be fair I've seen comments that upgrading from Ubuntu Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft (late beta) broke things. I didn't even try, but just did a reinstall...as I usually do. A reinstall gets rid of lots of old cruft that I'd otherwise never get around to cleaning.
/home be a separate partition, and if you do that, then a reinstall is pretty cheap.
OTOH, Linux makes it easy to have
I don't know just how often MS goofs royally, but you are presuming a kind of overhead that many companies can't afford (or won't).
I'll grant you that your scenario would be preferable for everything but short-notice attacks...and even for those if a good firewall could keep them out. It would also be more expensive most of the time. Managers notice things like that. Most are willing to tolerate "emergency action", but many of those won't tolerate normal "wasted time", even if the "wasted time" would prevent the need for "emergency action". For one thing, because the need for emergency action was prevented, it never became necessary, and thus, to the manager, was unreal.
And it's also true that sometimes applying the patch QUICKLY is important. When Debian found that someone had gotten improper access to their repositories they shut-down updating INSTANTLY. Later they examined machine by machine to see which were good, and which had to be recovered from backup. It took a week for them to get fully back to normal. Security patches were among the first repositories back on line. Sometimes quick action is necessary. AFAIK they never found that any of their repositories had actually been corrupted, but they did "the right thing". And that involved two fast actions.
1) Take down anything that might have become corrupt
2) Get the security updates back up as quickly as is safe
Usually a security update doesn't have strong urgency, merely strong importance. Sometimes it also has strong urgency. With MS updates, you only know what they're telling you, and they're only telling you what will benefit them. So you never know which updates are important, which are urgent, and which are both. And from whose point of view.
You've got a point...but note the number of posts by "anonymous coward" on this heading.
If it's not astroturfing, it's sure hit a nerve on SOMEBODY(ies).
I've certainly encountered at least one person on a mailing list who felt like that. He expected his computer to work properly NOW!!, and wasn't willing to hear technical explanations as to how to fix it. This was the more annoying as it was totally off topic for the mailing list, which was only semi-moderated (obnoxious posters get banned, but anyone can post). Naturally he started off appearing to be reasonable, but experiencing trouble...and he tied it peripherally onto the topic of the list.
I doubt that anyone that I've encountered is broadly unique. (Probabilities seem against it.) Therefore it's probable that some percentage of the population is like that guy.
Unfortunately, it's not clear to me that it's possible for general purpose computers to be secured from unexpected failures...especially failures that aren't expected by people who are only vaguely familiar with the technology. ("I know what a computer is. It's that thing that calculates numbers and talks over the internet. And it plays games too.") This is the more true when some properties of computing are covered by patents that are unintelligible as to what they mean. So just because one computer does things one way doesn't mean that other computers are even legally allowed to do it the same way. (Note that here I'm not drawing a distinction between hardware and software patents. For this argument their effects are identical. If someone were to patent a mouse that could recognize who was using it, and automatically log them in appropriately [see a recent Apple announcement...though I'm extrapolating a bit], then only computers that could use that mouse could recognize a person by feel. Other computers couldn't act the same way because of legal impediments. The patents could all be hardware based.)
Microsoft has indeed made high quality products:
1) mice
2) MSWord 5.2a for the Macintosh. The best word processor I ever used.
They've probably made something else...I haven't tried everything that they made. But those two were quality products.
Have you considered how many companies still sign contracts with MS?
Totally.
I have not bought anything that I have been aware was associated with Sony since this story broke. I do not plan to change my mind. Ever. (Plans can change, so this isn't a promise. If Sony came out strongly supporting GPL3, then I might buy something from them *IF* all of the firmware and all accompanying software was licensed under GPL3.)
But I'm not sure. I may be underestimating the extent to which I dislike a company that would first install rootkits on people's computers, and then defend it because the people didn't realize that they had been damaged.
I don't see any plausible deniability here. I don't even see much dubious deniability. And only a bit of really-far-fetched deniability, if you mix in massive helpings of incompetence.
Well, I'll agree they didn't expect to get sued over it, but they sure did a fine bit of cover-up once it happened. I suspect that they had it in their contingency plans.
Did they know they were planting a rootkit? I'd say yes. They probably didn't know about the problem that attempting to remove it would cause, but if you damage someone accidentally while committing a criminal act, that is counted as intentional harm.
If they didn't know they were installing a rootkit, then you should never buy anything from them ever again, because they are clearly incompetent. If they did, then you shouldn't buy from them because they are malicious. I don't need to decide which reason applies to decide on which course of action to take.
FWIW, I seem to recall back from when this broke that the company was formed by Sony insiders to create this software. If that's actually the truth, they there will be lots of documentation only if they were figuring on CYA from the start. Otherwise the specs will have been primarily verbal.
Be interesting to find out who was playing a sneakier game, though.
I you want to make that distinction, go ahead. They're both paying money into the same pockets, however.
Personally, I don't currently intend to ever purchase anything from Sony again. I suppose that they *could* change my mind, but not without understanding just how evil it is to put rootkits in people's computers. After realizing that, then they'd need to decide to provide genuine, as opposed to symbolic, recompense. Then they'd have to actually do the deed. That would bring them back close to neutral. At that point I'd start considering them again. Then I'd reject them because I don't like DRM. Currently I reject them for being treacherous backstabbing sleaze mongers who make equipment that can't be trusted because they either think rootkits are good or have neither morals nor ethics.
Once they recover their status to just being DRM vendors, then I can consider them. They'll still probably lose out against the competition, because I don't like DRM and won't pay extra to support it, but they'll have a possibility of a sale if they provide superior equipment at a good price, and if non-DRM software isn't discriminated against. But they'll need to prove that latter.
Historic "facts" are usually a tissue of lies, with a few definite facts holding them together.
E.g., Julius Caesar was killed in the Senate after assuming dictatorial power. This appears to be a fact.
Why? Does anyone know? Why do they believe that their knowledge is fact? You can certainly accept that the written records then are no more honest than they are now, merely much sparser.
For all we know Brutus had been Caesar's lover, and was angry at him for being jilted. (Caesar is reliably reported to have been bi. "The wife of every husband and the husband of every wife." is one description applied to him, probably not by an admirer.
Who did kill Kennedy? Why do you believe it? How certain are you of the honesty of your sources? Why are you so certain (or dubious)?
Uncertainty is not only a principle of physics, it's everywhere. Physics is unique in being able to mathematically express the degree of uncertainty. According to some theories of physics every possible history of the current instant is a real history, which a particular (possibly incalculable) probability. The sum of all the probabilities of pasts is one, but there are an infinite number of them. At any particular nanosecond (about a light-foot) everything outside the light-cone has to be considered unknown. Your brain is about a foot in diameter.
N.B.: The theory of physics that I mentioned is called "sum over histories" and is considered orthodox since Feynman. It's just not usually considered for macroscopic objects...but Hawking has applied it to the entire universe...back when it was around a foot in size.
This means that EVERY theory which is consistent with all locally available evidence is true with a probability. So the next question is "How much do you trust your memories?" Just recently my red coffee cup disappeared for a week, and reappeared as a blue one. Same shape, texture, design, etc. Memory glitch? Merging multiverses? But if memory of sensory experiences is faulty, why not memories of other evidence?
Physics is making naive theories of reality look more and more absurd. Perhaps truth and false shouldn't be considered booleans, but reals (range [1.0, 0]). Then there are the "physics as computation" people who assert that these truth values (probabilities) don't have infinite precision. Only around 10^26 digits of precision. That's a kick. I would have expected 10^33. But maybe I'm misremembering, and they really said 10^126? Since that was an upper limit to the precision, I'd be comfortable with that, and continue to believe that it was around 10^33 (or, possibly given slightly different assumption, 10^66) digits of precision. (Check "quantum foam" for why those numbers.)
But our minds can't deal with that kind of precision. And another result of physics says that if a measurement can't be taken, then the result is intrinsically undecided. It's not at all clear to me what this implies. One thing, however, is (relatively) certain: Certainty is an oversimplification.
Then there's the question: How do you know you're not living in a simulation? That would explain the limited degree of precision, the lazy evaluation of truth, etc. And the loss of information about what history really was as it fades into the past. Storage conservation and cpu cycle conservation.
But other physicists are now asserting that the universe *IS* a computer. I think I may be experiencing a bit of stress trying to understand what that means. I tend to consider the computer and the program to be separable, but I'm not sure whether they do or not. I *suspect* that this is just an extravagant phrasing for "we can establish an isomorphic mapping between portions of how the universe works and portions of how a computer works, but that's just a guess.
I did not think that the conclusion he came to was that odd actually. I personally would rather think that governments do some things deliberately rather than think they are incompetent.
Try it both ways. I'm sure that's the correct answer, the problem is trying to deduce the proportions.
The way I've always thought of it is that the Democrats are more interested in having people like them, and the Republicans are more focused on **POWER**!!!. This is purely a matter of emphasis, except for occasional Republicans who believe "Nobody would ever like me no matter what I do, so screw everyone!". And occasional Democrats who aren't really THAT interested in power, but want the public adulation. (Kennedy? Carter? FDR?) (FWIW: Kennedy got pushed into running for president by his father. Carter really does seem to be religious of the "do good works!" school. And FDR is a bit of an enigma. I wasn't around when he was active, so all information is what got recorded by the hagiographers and the vilifiers. Maybe he was just desperate. Maybe he didn't want to live in Teddy's shadow.)
By and large, though, it's all about power. You don't see the Democrats repealing the autocratic measures taken by the Republicans. Not without **TREMENDOUS** pressure, anyway. (Check how the restoration of habeas corpus is going.)
And that explains why they held my sister up in Las Vegas for over six hours. Without explanation or apology other than "Somebody must have filled out a form incorrectly."
Due to the timing of various things, this caused her a tremendous amount of stress and nearly cost her her degree. It's something I find a bit hard to forgive, especially since I'm rather convinced that the program is mainly PR anyway.
Now I'll grant that this was a separate sub-agency than the FBI, but these days they're both Homeland Security, so they both get charged with what the other guys did. And deservedly. They appear to be in the job of letting politically connected criminals go free without investigation, and making a lot of noise about how much work they're doing harassing people without power who aren't doing anything very bad. More politically connected crimes appear to have been discovered by news reporters than by FBI agents, so one wonders what their excuse is for being allowed more investigative rights than journalists.
I *really* doubt that saber-tooth tigers were tasty. That's not the reputation that cats have.
I suspect that people contributed to the extinction of those animals (and of other less spectacular species) not only by eating them, but also by carrying diseases that they had not co-evolved with. Also, in the case of the saber-tooth, e.g., by competing for the same food supply. (Mammoths, perhaps. One of the recorded ways of hunting mammoths is to set a grass-fire and stampede a herd over a cliff.)
3) My thought on this is that code with lots of small instructions could swell in size if you switched to a 64-bit instruction set. I don't know modern assembler, so this may not be true. But it could. If a no-op now takes 64-bits instead of 32-bits, that code had just doubled in size. The, presumably excellent, new instructions don't do you any good if you aren't doing the kinds of things that require them. If each instruction doubles in size at the same time, you're paying a hefty price for changes that you usually aren't using.
I can think of several reasons to prefer a default install of 32 bit Linux. Not sure if any of them are correct, though:
1) That was what they negotiated last year
2) The 64-bit drivers weren't available in time to test
3) Most people don't get any advantage from the 64-bit system
4) etc.
Any, or several, of these could be correct. Can't think of a way to check that's easy enough to bother with.
For me, the primary advantage of Dell selling a computer with Linux pre-installed is that it's guaranteed to have Linux compatible hardware. Now if only I could depend on the hardware drivers being available if I switch to another distro... well, the chances are pretty good. I'll certainly be considering Dell seriously the next time I'm in the market. (OTOH, Lenovo's new ThinkPad looks interesting...)
ALL girls are a PITA to have a relationship with. And so are all guys, ask any girl.
Also, FWIW, beauty isn't all it's cracked up to be. Beautiful girls are usually the vain ones, because you don't get to be beautiful without devoting as much effort to beauty as a jock devotes to being a jock.
Also, you don't want one with the same interests. Merely compatible ideals. If you get married, you want to have a complementary relationship, where the strengths of one covers the weaknesses of the other. (I really lucked out...eventually. But it took me long enough. [I.e., a great deal longer than I wanted it to. And a few mistakes along the way that, fortunately, weren't disastrous. Only wasted a few years and a bit of money.])
Beauty. Here's a secret, that shouldn't be one. When you look at something after awhile you stop seeing it, except when you look again on purpose. Pick someone that you enjoy looking at, but don't worry much about more than that. The three of the four most beautiful girls I ever met were all borderline psycho (though not blatantly). And they all believed that because they were beautiful the world owed them not merely a living, but also most of their whims. OTOH, the absolute most beautiful girl I ever met was charming, personable, and warm as well as beautiful. (She went for someone else, the lucky dog.) Personality should rule your preferences...right after ideals. Unfortunately, both personality and ideals can't be told at a glance, so you've got to spend a bit of time. But you can enjoy the research...or at least try to. (If you don't, you're likely to miss out.)
Hint: Compliment her. Often. And don't stop when you get married.
Hint: Be affectionate, indirectly. Pet dogs sensually. People put themselves in the place of others, and imagine how they are feeling. Women like to be petted...as long as they feel safe. If you're petting a dog and she's watching, she may empathize with the dog, and imagine you petting her. (Check out mirror neurons for why this works.)
Hint: Always resolve arguments. This can be a lot of work, and you can need to force yourself to continue, but it can be crucial to your staying together. If you get into an argument with her, SOLVE IT!!. Sometimes this takes awhile, but try to resolve it before you go to sleep. Stop occasionally for a timed five minutes to cool off. (Use a timer with a bell. During that five minutes, try not to talk to each other...it's too likely to drift back into the argument.)
N.B.: Apologizing doesn't work, but it's a necessary step. But be sincere. "I'm sorry I made you mad." is often good, as it's usually easy to say this honestly.
Hint: Avoid lying to yourself. Just don't. Give yourself permission to avoid justifying, to yourself, things that you do which you consider immoral or unethical. (This isn't the same as giving yourself permission to do them. The point is to encourage honesty, so don't lie to yourself to justify it.) Try to avoid lying to others, but the crucial thing is to be honest with yourself. This can take practice, so start now.
Hint: When you are resolving an argument with your S.O., and you don't know why you did something...admit it. Then try to invent a reason...but explain that it's a guess or invention.
N.B.: These are things that have worked for me. I hope they help someone else, but no guarantees.
It's been said before, and there are prominent scientists that agree with you.
But I believe that you are wrong. I believe that science must pre-exist before you can merge math with it (unless you are counting primitive concepts such as intuitive geometry as math). Chess players don't need to even know the existence of game theory, even though game theory can, in theory, predict the proper move in any position. Note that in practice game theory is too unwieldy for a human to use in such a way, and I suspect that it's too unwieldy for a computer to use it for such a task, also. That's why all good chess-playing programs come with a library of openings. And they have specialized rules that can be mapped to pieces of game theory that they invoke at characteristic places in the game. E.g., knight forks are generally worth avoiding...except when they aren't.
Tennis players don't need to know physics, certainly not mathematical physics, except at an intuitive level.
Similarly, science and scientists existed before math was mapped onto science...except at an intuitive level. Currently that's about the only kind of science that's taught and recognized, but it was not always so. There are many reasons why the mathematical versions of the various sciences came to dominate. One in particular is that mathematics represents generalized knowledge of how patterns interact without needing any substance. This means that when you can map some part of knowledge or action onto math, you can easily make a large number of predictions that would not have been easy to create. You must then CHECK those predictions, to discover whether your mapping has been valid. This interplay between separated theory and experiment has largely replaced an older and less powerful interplay between theory and experiment. The older theory was based around physical models rather than mathematical models (and is, I believe, still the dominant informal mode). The benefit of the older theoretical models are that our brains are adapted to manipulating physical models, and are at best clumsy at manipulating mathematical models, so if you want to be at all creative you first generate your models in the older framework, and only then translate them into math. As I recall Einstein spent YEARS searching for the right mathematical model for his mental pictures before he was introduced to tensor calculus. But he was already making predictions for how the experiments would turn out before he could make them sufficiently precise to show that the new model was an improvement on the old. (I read the book that contained that information decades ago, and I no longer recall it's title. The same information is probably elsewhere if you go searching.)
I assert that it is the interplay between theory and experiment that determine science. The mathematics is an add-on, and one that is un-natural to the human thought process. It is, however, an add-on of such power that once it occurs it quickly dominates...IF enough of the people you are trying to communicate to have the appropriate background knowledge of math.
You need to read Michael Faraday, or some of his predecessors.
Math is a relatively late addition to science. Yes, it's proved very useful. But science happened long before they introduced math.
Well, thinking again, this depends on what you mean by math. Leonardo used math to figure out perspective. Does this means that art depends on math? If so, then science depends on math, and so does walking across the room. And I can see a valid argument to be made along those lines, but that's not what people normally mean. If we look at what people normally mean, then science didn't depend on math until around the time of Kepler. Perhaps you want to call everything earlier engineering rather than science, but engineering depends on math just as heavily as science.
What actually happened was that after algebra was invented, and arabic numerals, it became a lot easier to describe things in math, so people gradually switched away from describing things in ordinary language and to describing them in math. This has had both advantages and disadvantages. Certainly precision has improved. But comprehension by "ordinary folk" has declined, and not entirely because of the arcane subject matter, but also because they needed to learn a new language in order to understand what was being talked about.
OTOH, can you imagine talking about computer programming without using "jargon"?
I think you aren't understanding the situation.
If Novell is guilty of copyright violation in the distribution of GPL3 software, it will be because they software was covered by patents that they knew about, and didn't have the right to allow others to redistribute. If this is the case, then they knowingly exposed other people to legal danger, and therefore deserve to be punished.
If Novell is not guilty, then either they didn't know about the patents, or they had the right to distribute. Novell's claim is that they don't know of any valid MS patents that cover the GPL software that they distribute.
If MS is endangered by the GPL3, it will be because of some part of the MS-Novell agreement that isn't public knowledge. As such, they will deserve to lose any benefit from hidden patents.
My suspicion is that Novell is being honest, and that MS is engaged in a massive FUD project. Nevertheless, to protect myself I do not intend to purchase from Novell or MS, or to use any recent Novell software, including mono, until this is resolved. I hope that Novell got LOTS of money from MS, but I don't care enough to re-examine the public parts of the deal.