Foreclosed is when the bailiffs show up at your door and throw you out, padlock the place and start taking inventory. Followed by a sale of the seized assets, reimbursement of the creditor(s) involved, and that's all there is.
if Microsoft's political engineering team has their way, you'll need one to run an "untrusted" OS on any machine!
In the USA.
I suspect that much of the American tech industry and technical educational institutions will move if such a draconian measure actually comes to pass. It's a big world out there, and once the "cream of the crop" has set up shop in Canada, Mexico, France and the UK, then American politicians will notice. But it may be too late..
after the traffic control systems are "upgraded" by Microsoft, a BSoD graces the monitor and every traffic light in the city turns green.
I used to work on traffic light programming. (There is more to it than you might think - variable delays depending on time of day/traffic volumes, under-the-street detector loops, transponders for emergency vehicles, you-name-it.)
It is physically impossible to get a four-way green on a traffic light. As a completely separate unit in each traffic controller is a conflict monitor that is hooked up to the physical power outputs to the green lights on the poles. If a conflict is detected, the watchdog trips an emergency override and the lights automatically go to four-way red or red/yellow flash at the programmer's option. It is a safety regulation that these watchdog timers must be physically tested every so often too, using a simple insulated wire with probes on the end. Touch the probes to the opposing green contacts, *click*.
Well, anyone who wasn't familiar with that web site before will be now.
I think the record labels will find that this backfired rather badly, at least for the short term.
Re:All OSS no better than all CSS
on
Mega-Geek March?
·
· Score: 1
It would be more practical to simply insist that all file formats and communication protocols, encryption and so on be both freely available and free for implementation. That would allow more freedom of choice in the user/developer negotiation arena (and provide one more point to haggle over) but still allow for competition where a mound of established data already exists.
Of course, all else being equal "free software" should always be chosen because its very freedom is a strong selling point and it would take a damn good argumet to override the advantage of free software. But since free software is all about choice, then free software should not be used to stamp out choice either.
Let me re-state clearly, though, that all file formats and so on must always be open and freely available so any software can be written to inter-operate with or replace all existing applications whenever needed.
Actually, I vaguely recall reading a novel several years ago where one of the minor characters (an IRA agent) was captured in England based on the fact that the police knew that he always shopped at the Coop. So when he came from Ireland to London, they started watching the Coop and sure enough, they nabbed him.
This system could make something like that more practical in real life. If you are "wanted" and it is known that you drink exactly 4 gallons of milk each week, then "they" could check milk suppliers and see who purchased 4 gallons last week. Or whatever.
It sounds like this database contains or will contain enough information to create a fairly extensive profile of someone and that profile could be used for many different purposed. Good or bad depending on which pair of shoes you are standing in.
Hmmm.... The congressman's aide says in so many words that this guy knows absolutely nothing about computers and the Internet. Then in the next breath, we are admonished to be "respectful" with any response that we email to them.
Excuse me? Respect has to be earned, the same way as trust is earned.
It is extremely presumptuous, not to mention ignorant, for a fellow who knows absolutely nothing about a subject to pompously horn his way into a debate or an issue and say, "Ok boys, I'll settle this right now. Here is how it is going to be."
It would be like me somehow being in a position to dictate regulations regarding how doctors perform surgery and then proceeding to draft the legislation without taking any steps to find out anything about surgical methods beforehand.
Respect my foot! This jumped-up fool presumes to trespass into an area that he knows nothing about, and then has the unmitigated nerve to demand respect?
when the government pays developers to create code
That code should then be the property of the government, just like when I hire someone to build a fence for me that fence is my property on completion.
everybody can learn from it and reuse it Indeed. We have paid for it through our taxes
(just pay royalties upon using certain parts)
No, it's already paid for and is public property
so everybody can profit and development will be cheaper in the end
Do I get to charge you for the stronger glasses prescription I'll need after reading the tiny tiny font on your web page?
That's one of the reasons why you should be using the Opera web browser. It has a little bar in the top right corner to turn up and down the magnification of the web page that you're viewing, from 20% to 1000%.
I'm certainly nobody's idea of an accountant, but the way that I understand this to work (and why this is worthwhile for people to do) is this:
Say for the sake of example that people who make $100 or less pay 10% in taxes and people who make over $100 pay 20% in taxes. If I earn $101 then I would be on the hook for $20.02 in taxes. If I give a $2 donation to Worthy Cause, then my taxable income is $99 and I pay $9.90 in taxes. In the first case, without the charitable deduction I end up with $80.98 in my pocket after paying the tax on my money. In the second case I end up with $89.10 in my pocket after paying the tax on my money.
In real life the situations are a lot more complex than this example, of course, but this should illustrate the way that this works and how you really can, after all is said and done, end up with more money in your pocket by using "charitable deductions" and so on.
If you don't mind doing filtering on your own email address, most email programs accept a + in the mailto: field. That way, if your real email address is jblow@example.com, you can have as much email sent to that account as you like using a + and a suffix.
All of the above addresses will actually put mail into the jblow@example.com account.
Then you can filter any way that you wish using the "to:" field in your received email.
Re:This is *why* we need laws!
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
community service is way underused as a punishment
For good reason.
You can't make someone work who simply doesn't want to or doesn't care.
I used to administer community service orders for a municipal government. Take it from me - it ain't easy.
Some people honestly don't know how to work. I assigned one fellow in his early 20's to paint the traffic markers at the fire hall. I handed him the paint and the brush and told him what to do and he just looked at me. He honestly didn't know how to paint - he had never done it before.
Other people have never actually worked at anything at all, so just try to get them to do something. It can take all day to pick up one-half bag of trash in the park. I assigned a half-dozen people together to pick up trash one day. I saw the work started and then left to do other things. When I returned in a couple of hours, they whole bunch of them were sleeping under a tree.
Finding a job for people that is within their abilities can also be a true challenge. Can't put some into an office because they haven't' got enough education to understand what needs to be done and you can't trust them enough to leave them alone in a room anyway. Can't put them on a roadside work crew because they haven't got the physical strength or stamina to do the work. Can't put them to work painting because there is nothing that needs to be painted at the moment that is not already assigned, plus the painters union is up in arms because all municipal painting is their job! Convince the union that they are not supposed to be painting X, then when X next needs to be painted suddenly you have no community service clients to do the work for some reason.
The basic problem, though, is motivation. In most cases, community service clients drag their way through any job in the slowest, least-enthusiastic manner possible. This is disheartening to anyone else around them, for one, and in some cases I could literally have done a community service job personally in less time and with less hassle to me(!) than what I had to go through to get some community service clients to accomplsih anything that required more effort than sleeping under a tree or giving me a blank look -- "You expect me to do that? Riiiight..."
so long as they don't discriminate based on race, gender, religion, disability, etc
This is not intended to be inflammatory, but why shouldn't a private business owner be permitted to "discriminate" based on any criteria or capriciousness that they choose?
A governmental or publicly-owned institution or business should indeed be required to provide services to all comers, but a private business should not be held to the same standard simply because it is a private business.
If I hear through the grapevine that you are having a party, I can't just show up at your door and demand to be allowed into your living room so I can drink your liquor along with your friends. And if you invite me to your party and I show up and for some reason you decide that I am no longer welcome I can't simply say, "F-U" and stay in your house until I am damn good and ready to leave regardless of whether I (or anyone else at the party) think you're "discriminating against me" or not. You could call the police and have me thrown out in either situation.
How is this different from a private business? You are "invited" onto the property to conduct a transation or whatever. If the owner of that property decides that he doesn't wish to do business with you for any reason or for no reason at all, how or why is it open to anyone else to question him as to his motives? A private business by definition is private, and as such the owner should be able to run it on any terms that he chooses (short of fraudulent business practices and the like, of course), just as the owner of a house gets to decide who he wishes to invite to a party and gets to decide when he wants someone to leave as well.
Similar to "legally blind". If you're legally blind that doesn't mean that you can't see anything at all, just that you meet a (somewhat arbitrary) definition of "blindness". "Can't see X at a distance of more than Y" or something like that, I suppose.
Legally retarded people probably meet a similar definition. You have to draw the line somewhere and once again, it ends up being somewhat arbitrary. Else you would not be considered retarded unless you were a comatose vegetable and I think everyone agrees that the definiton of retarded should include at least a little more than that.
Um, right. 80% of internet users have good email blocking applications on their boxes and know how to write good filters
I suspect that a large number of "harvested" email addresses are @hotmail, @yahoo, etc. And since those guys apparently have at least slightly effective spam filters....
Well, it's possible.
Note that I am trying to distinguish between addresses that receive lots of spam and addresses that don't. For example, you stand a much better chance of getting a "hit" on a real address if you send something to john3@hotmail.com than if you send something to john3@yourlocalisp.com, simply due to the volume of email accounts being hosted. Therefore, I suspect (based on no evidence, though) that a majority of addresses that are sold on those "millions of eager customers" CD's are @yahoo and @hotmail addresses.
I don't know about that. That particular page has been up for a substantial period of time (I remember reading it quite a while back) and it appears that nothing "bad" has happened yet.
Not that that means something isn't going to happen tomorrow, I suppose...
Well, OEMs could be forced to offer the MS distribution
OEM's (or anyone else) should not be "forced" to sell anything at all.
Because I sell Pepsi and can purchase it cheaper than Coke, does that mean that I should be forced to sell Coke as well? As a business owner I will buy the product I choose based on what I think I will be able to sell and the price that the wholesalers will try to charge me for it.
>If the customer wants what I'm selling then I'll do well and my business will survive.
If the customer doesn't want what I'm selling then he has the option of going "across the street" and buying the product that he does want; if I want to stay in business I had better start selling a product that the customers want.
That's how it's supposed to work.
If OEM's want to sell a stripped-down MS Windows or a full-version Linux, or even throw in a used tractor tire "free with every purchase" then that is up to them and that's not for you or me to decide. However, the problem here is that Windows has become such an entrenched monopoly that you simply can't sell computers into a mainstream market without also selling MS Windows. And that is the problem that the states and DOJ are supposed to be solving.
Get an emulator here and almost everything that was ever written for a C-64 from arnold.c64.org (ftp site). You can fit damn near everything on a single CD-R, in fact. Amazing how much wonderful stuff was available on the 64.
The point that everyone seems to be missing is this:
I don't care how many "good guys" know about a vulnerability. I do care if the "bad guys" know about it!
By sitting on the information for any time longer than the length of time that it takes to post an alert message, I believe that "security researchers" are unnecesarily putting our systems in danger.
It seems that the good guys are the last to know in these situations, and the good guys here are the guys who are actually managing the affected systems and trying to get some real work done. If I have a vulnerable system and I don't know it, my data is in danger. Tell me about the problem NOW! Then I can assess the risk to my systems based on accurate information and take action to mitigate the problem if I see fit. If a patch is not yet available to fix the problem, I can change my setup or even yank it offline. But not telling me that I'm vulnerable for X period of time takes all of my options away from me and it's "be quiet and we'll tell you what you need to know when we think you should know it." Sorry, that's not good enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Foreclosed is when the bailiffs show up at your door and throw you out, padlock the place and start taking inventory. Followed by a sale of the seized assets, reimbursement of the creditor(s) involved, and that's all there is.
"Lifetime warranty"? When it breaks they send someone around to kill you!
if Microsoft's political engineering team has their way, you'll need one to run an "untrusted" OS on any machine!
In the USA.
I suspect that much of the American tech industry and technical educational institutions will move if such a draconian measure actually comes to pass. It's a big world out there, and once the "cream of the crop" has set up shop in Canada, Mexico, France and the UK, then American politicians will notice. But it may be too late..
after the traffic control systems are "upgraded" by Microsoft, a BSoD graces the monitor and every traffic light in the city turns green.
I used to work on traffic light programming. (There is more to it than you might think - variable delays depending on time of day/traffic volumes, under-the-street detector loops, transponders for emergency vehicles, you-name-it.)
It is physically impossible to get a four-way green on a traffic light. As a completely separate unit in each traffic controller is a conflict monitor that is hooked up to the physical power outputs to the green lights on the poles. If a conflict is detected, the watchdog trips an emergency override and the lights automatically go to four-way red or red/yellow flash at the programmer's option. It is a safety regulation that these watchdog timers must be physically tested every so often too, using a simple insulated wire with probes on the end. Touch the probes to the opposing green contacts, *click*.
Well, anyone who wasn't familiar with that web site before will be now.
I think the record labels will find that this backfired rather badly, at least for the short term.
It would be more practical to simply insist that all file formats and communication protocols, encryption and so on be both freely available and free for implementation. That would allow more freedom of choice in the user/developer negotiation arena (and provide one more point to haggle over) but still allow for competition where a mound of established data already exists.
Of course, all else being equal "free software" should always be chosen because its very freedom is a strong selling point and it would take a damn good argumet to override the advantage of free software. But since free software is all about choice, then free software should not be used to stamp out choice either.
Let me re-state clearly, though, that all file formats and so on must always be open and freely available so any software can be written to inter-operate with or replace all existing applications whenever needed.
Actually, I vaguely recall reading a novel several years ago where one of the minor characters (an IRA agent) was captured in England based on the fact that the police knew that he always shopped at the Coop. So when he came from Ireland to London, they started watching the Coop and sure enough, they nabbed him.
This system could make something like that more practical in real life. If you are "wanted" and it is known that you drink exactly 4 gallons of milk each week, then "they" could check milk suppliers and see who purchased 4 gallons last week. Or whatever.
It sounds like this database contains or will contain enough information to create a fairly extensive profile of someone and that profile could be used for many different purposed. Good or bad depending on which pair of shoes you are standing in.
Hmmm.... The congressman's aide says in so many words that this guy knows absolutely nothing about computers and the Internet. Then in the next breath, we are admonished to be "respectful" with any response that we email to them.
Excuse me? Respect has to be earned, the same way as trust is earned.
It is extremely presumptuous, not to mention ignorant, for a fellow who knows absolutely nothing about a subject to pompously horn his way into a debate or an issue and say, "Ok boys, I'll settle this right now. Here is how it is going to be."
It would be like me somehow being in a position to dictate regulations regarding how doctors perform surgery and then proceeding to draft the legislation without taking any steps to find out anything about surgical methods beforehand.
Respect my foot! This jumped-up fool presumes to trespass into an area that he knows nothing about, and then has the unmitigated nerve to demand respect?
I don't think so.
when the government pays developers to create code
That code should then be the property of the government, just like when I hire someone to build a fence for me that fence is my property on completion.
everybody can learn from it and reuse it
Indeed. We have paid for it through our taxes
(just pay royalties upon using certain parts)
No, it's already paid for and is public property
so everybody can profit and development will be cheaper in the end
That's the idea.
Do I get to charge you for the stronger glasses prescription I'll need after reading the tiny tiny font on your web page?
That's one of the reasons why you should be using the Opera web browser. It has a little bar in the top right corner to turn up and down the magnification of the web page that you're viewing, from 20% to 1000%.
I don't make a magical profit off of it.
I'm certainly nobody's idea of an accountant, but the way that I understand this to work (and why this is worthwhile for people to do) is this:
Say for the sake of example that people who make $100 or less pay 10% in taxes and people who make over $100 pay 20% in taxes. If I earn $101 then I would be on the hook for $20.02 in taxes. If I give a $2 donation to Worthy Cause, then my taxable income is $99 and I pay $9.90 in taxes. In the first case, without the charitable deduction I end up with $80.98 in my pocket after paying the tax on my money. In the second case I end up with $89.10 in my pocket after paying the tax on my money.
In real life the situations are a lot more complex than this example, of course, but this should illustrate the way that this works and how you really can, after all is said and done, end up with more money in your pocket by using "charitable deductions" and so on.
Can you say "tax planning", "estate planning" and "tax deduction"?
I knew you could!
I'm sorry, but anyone who falls for this is either young and stupid, or just a plain moron.
or just plain lonely.
There are a lot of extremely lonely people around who figure "what have I got to lose; it's worth a try" and there you go.
You don't have to be stupid to be lonely.
Handy household hint:
p le.com
If you don't mind doing filtering on your own email address, most email programs accept a + in the mailto: field. That way, if your real email address is jblow@example.com, you can have as much email sent to that account as you like using a + and a suffix.
jblow+spamtrap@example.com
jblow+whatever@exam
jblow+abcd@example.com
All of the above addresses will actually put mail into the jblow@example.com account.
Then you can filter any way that you wish using the "to:" field in your received email.
community service is way underused as a punishment
For good reason.
You can't make someone work who simply doesn't want to or doesn't care.
I used to administer community service orders for a municipal government. Take it from me - it ain't easy.
Some people honestly don't know how to work. I assigned one fellow in his early 20's to paint the traffic markers at the fire hall. I handed him the paint and the brush and told him what to do and he just looked at me. He honestly didn't know how to paint - he had never done it before.
Other people have never actually worked at anything at all, so just try to get them to do something. It can take all day to pick up one-half bag of trash in the park. I assigned a half-dozen people together to pick up trash one day. I saw the work started and then left to do other things. When I returned in a couple of hours, they whole bunch of them were sleeping under a tree.
Finding a job for people that is within their abilities can also be a true challenge. Can't put some into an office because they haven't' got enough education to understand what needs to be done and you can't trust them enough to leave them alone in a room anyway. Can't put them on a roadside work crew because they haven't got the physical strength or stamina to do the work. Can't put them to work painting because there is nothing that needs to be painted at the moment that is not already assigned, plus the painters union is up in arms because all municipal painting is their job! Convince the union that they are not supposed to be painting X, then when X next needs to be painted suddenly you have no community service clients to do the work for some reason.
The basic problem, though, is motivation. In most cases, community service clients drag their way through any job in the slowest, least-enthusiastic manner possible. This is disheartening to anyone else around them, for one, and in some cases I could literally have done a community service job personally in less time and with less hassle to me(!) than what I had to go through to get some community service clients to accomplsih anything that required more effort than sleeping under a tree or giving me a blank look -- "You expect me to do that? Riiiight..."
so long as they don't discriminate based on race, gender, religion, disability, etc
This is not intended to be inflammatory, but why shouldn't a private business owner be permitted to "discriminate" based on any criteria or capriciousness that they choose?
A governmental or publicly-owned institution or business should indeed be required to provide services to all comers, but a private business should not be held to the same standard simply because it is a private business.
If I hear through the grapevine that you are having a party, I can't just show up at your door and demand to be allowed into your living room so I can drink your liquor along with your friends. And if you invite me to your party and I show up and for some reason you decide that I am no longer welcome I can't simply say, "F-U" and stay in your house until I am damn good and ready to leave regardless of whether I (or anyone else at the party) think you're "discriminating against me" or not. You could call the police and have me thrown out in either situation.
How is this different from a private business? You are "invited" onto the property to conduct a transation or whatever. If the owner of that property decides that he doesn't wish to do business with you for any reason or for no reason at all, how or why is it open to anyone else to question him as to his motives? A private business by definition is private, and as such the owner should be able to run it on any terms that he chooses (short of fraudulent business practices and the like, of course), just as the owner of a house gets to decide who he wishes to invite to a party and gets to decide when he wants someone to leave as well.
international spam is a lot easier to filter out.
It is?
Most spam seems to be "international" now, coming through (if not from) servers in Taiwan and China and Korea and whatnot.
An argument can be made that the spam has already moved, whether the spammer himself has moved or not.
Uh, is it possible to be illegally retarded?
Similar to "legally blind". If you're legally blind that doesn't mean that you can't see anything at all, just that you meet a (somewhat arbitrary) definition of "blindness". "Can't see X at a distance of more than Y" or something like that, I suppose.
Legally retarded people probably meet a similar definition. You have to draw the line somewhere and once again, it ends up being somewhat arbitrary. Else you would not be considered retarded unless you were a comatose vegetable and I think everyone agrees that the definiton of retarded should include at least a little more than that.
Um, right. 80% of internet users have good email blocking applications on their boxes and know how to write good filters
I suspect that a large number of "harvested" email addresses are @hotmail, @yahoo, etc. And since those guys apparently have at least slightly effective spam filters....
Well, it's possible.
Note that I am trying to distinguish between addresses that receive lots of spam and addresses that don't. For example, you stand a much better chance of getting a "hit" on a real address if you send something to john3@hotmail.com than if you send something to john3@yourlocalisp.com, simply due to the volume of email accounts being hosted. Therefore, I suspect (based on no evidence, though) that a majority of addresses that are sold on those "millions of eager customers" CD's are @yahoo and @hotmail addresses.
I can get the program into my home directory by emailing it to myself. Save attachment and run it from there.
There are lots of ways to get information from there-to-here.
cuz it's gonna get warm.
I don't know about that. That particular page has been up for a substantial period of time (I remember reading it quite a while back) and it appears that nothing "bad" has happened yet.
Not that that means something isn't going to happen tomorrow, I suppose...
Well, OEMs could be forced to offer the MS distribution
OEM's (or anyone else) should not be "forced" to sell anything at all.
Because I sell Pepsi and can purchase it cheaper than Coke, does that mean that I should be forced to sell Coke as well? As a business owner I will buy the product I choose based on what I think I will be able to sell and the price that the wholesalers will try to charge me for it.
>If the customer wants what I'm selling then I'll do well and my business will survive.
If the customer doesn't want what I'm selling then he has the option of going "across the street" and buying the product that he does want; if I want to stay in business I had better start selling a product that the customers want.
That's how it's supposed to work.
If OEM's want to sell a stripped-down MS Windows or a full-version Linux, or even throw in a used tractor tire "free with every purchase" then that is up to them and that's not for you or me to decide. However, the problem here is that Windows has become such an entrenched monopoly that you simply can't sell computers into a mainstream market without also selling MS Windows. And that is the problem that the states and DOJ are supposed to be solving.
Get an emulator here and almost everything that was ever written for a C-64 from arnold.c64.org (ftp site). You can fit damn near everything on a single CD-R, in fact. Amazing how much wonderful stuff was available on the 64.
"I adore my 64, my Commodore 64!"
I have yet to run into a situation where I'm informed that they don't offer it.
Try picking up a "signature required" package or registerd mail at a Canada Post Office.
photocopying your driver's license whenever you attempt to write a check. Isn't that illegal?
I don't know about photocopying, but I've always seen clerks writing your drivers license NUMBER down on the back of cheques.
The point that everyone seems to be missing is this:
I don't care how many "good guys" know about a vulnerability. I do care if the "bad guys" know about it!
By sitting on the information for any time longer than the length of time that it takes to post an alert message, I believe that "security researchers" are unnecesarily putting our systems in danger.
It seems that the good guys are the last to know in these situations, and the good guys here are the guys who are actually managing the affected systems and trying to get some real work done. If I have a vulnerable system and I don't know it, my data is in danger. Tell me about the problem NOW! Then I can assess the risk to my systems based on accurate information and take action to mitigate the problem if I see fit. If a patch is not yet available to fix the problem, I can change my setup or even yank it offline. But not telling me that I'm vulnerable for X period of time takes all of my options away from me and it's "be quiet and we'll tell you what you need to know when we think you should know it." Sorry, that's not good enough.