Trial judges and lawyers shouldn't be allowed to dabble in scientific questions. Leave the deciding of risks to real scientists. [snip] This brings up an interesting point: who should be allowed to debate what scientific questions are "dabbled" in? This becomes even more important as scientists hand humanity ever-more powerful knowledge and technology. Remember that this knowledge is inert; it is what we do with it that makes it "good" or "bad". These types of debates must be held, and so the question, by whom?
Hmm, I don't think so. Certainly, since the Russians we're not able to get the same amount of practice (due to the automated docking system) they were possibly less proficient at docking than their American counterparts. That particular case you mention though is quite different from a normal docking operation by the shuttle. The "pilot" in the case of the Mir collision was on the station and not in the Progress craft, and was attempting to dock the craft using a system that had flaws in it.
That being said, the usual complaints of driver incompatibilities and third-party problems I place solely on the shoulders of those third-parties. MS puts their requirements out there and if they're improperly followed, of course you're going to have problems. ...
The Apple people love to point to Macs as being rock-solid, etc. But if they had to accommodate as many different third-parties as Microsoft does with PCs, guess what... MacOS would have the same problems. I mean, seriously, they've got what 10-12 specific models to keep tight control of? Oh yeah, they still have issues too. This comparison is wrong. Apple != Microsoft with respect to hardware support; they are equal more to Dell or HP in terms of hardware support, i.e. they are hardware integrators, and as such should be expected to select hardware that has proper driver support for their operating system of choice (OS X for Apple, Windows Vista for HP/Dell). This ofcourse means any incompatibilities are the INTEGRATOR's fault, and NOT the operating system builder's fault or the device manufacturer's fault (although crappy driver support won't win you more business all things being equal). You will notice that both Dell and HP also control the hardware they put into their machines. Microsoft "supports hardware" like Apple "supports hardware", i.e. as minimally as possible and they bundle some quantity of drivers with their operating system.
So please, we can argue whether or not Apple is a software or hardware company, but when it comes to the hardware they sell, they fall in the same class of business as Dell or HP (with the added "perk" of having end-to-end control over their platform).
This is true of technology in general. Government and industry debate global warming and peak oil but do very little to actually address the issue since it costs so much to implement solutions. --SNIP--
I have decided top refuse to believe this particular line of reasoning until I actually see/read something written by an economist providing a concrete argument (with data!) that the line "global warming costs too much too address" has any root in truth. I would urge that until one can provide such backing references, that we not perpetuate this argument since we as techies certainly are not qualified to endorse it.
Then you would be wrong with regards to Bit torrent clients, as they are 1) not "people" but programs that have fairly predicable network behavior, and 2) the protocol itself (which is easy to get a hold of of) can give you all the traffic analysis data you would need to build a filter capable of detecting bit torrent traffic. Mind you, if the bit torrent devs are smart, they would modify the protocol to allow for "no-op" messages, and send these message at random times, making it harder to detect handshaking/control segments of the protocol.
This is just silly; if entity A is willing to do something ethically "gray" (which is debatable in this case but assume for the sake of the argument), then they will do the same even if a piece of software is GPL'ed. The GPL isn't some magical spell that compels one to instantly release your modifications on distribution of the modified binaries. The GPL exists to LAY A LEGAL FRAMEWORK that can be used to make software better; it really has no power without the willingness to enforce it.
.. and MP3 is patent restricted and therefore rarely playable (legally) on Linux, FreeBSD and other systems. I was under the impression that only the encoder was patented; the decoding part is freely re-implementable (with the reference implementation being either patented or copyrighted I would imagine).
One I noted when I looked at the 3-fan design, is that if you have problems with any of th fans, you're in alot of trouble as there is no redundancy (especially for the front fan, but I'd bet it would be extremely unlikely that loss of a rear fan could be compensated for by the other rear fan). Very bad failure mode...
I don't know, I don't like this at all. It's obviously abuse of TCP/IP,... No reason it has to be implemented in TCP; coudl easily be implemented as UDP "knocks". Alternatively, if one wanted a more robust solution, you could implement a service that opens a range of ports, and you "knock" the ports in a certain order and send a certain set of data during each known via regular TCP. Incidently, the point behind port knocking is to NOT have your service (SSH in this case) actually listening on whatever port until you "knock" correctly.
Oh and a little hint, if you're playing hooky, and you take pictures DONT POST THEM ON FACEBOOK OR ANYTHING LINKED TO YOU! There's too many stories about this with people getting busted. Or again at the very least tamper with the date and time on your camera before you take your pictures. What if someone who was there posts them on Facebook and links it to you? If only the world was so obvious.
Just to put this line of argument to rest: what makes what you think so important that what I think is less important and why? Anyone can disagree with what another person finds important. The trick is that the reverse is also true. So, who's right?
The are only two answers: either let people give their resources to what they think is important (which is what you're advocating) or unify all of humanity into putting it's collective resources at a specific, ordered list of problems.
... Say you needed to review the new operating system, learn its quirks, its advantages, its differences before installing on live machines so you don't destroy the current and stable 10.4 systems. Say you need to be a step ahead. Now, add to that zero budget for a test box to experiment with.
There is a unused core duo in the garage and...humm... a Hackintosh might be the bridge box that would just fit... Bollocks. If you really want to test, you'll do it on the end hardware that you'll be running on, i.e. NOT a "hackintosh". The only use of this is for testing the "Mac OS X" water before backing off because you don't want to drop the cash, or buying into Apple.
No, Linus' point about schedulers is that to make a pluggable scheduler, you will need to sacrifice performance just to achieve the plug-ability. Linus believes that the most flexible scheduler (i.e. performance, tune-ability) can be discovered at development time with a set of metrics that are defined currently. In which case he feels that the kernel devs can make the "best" choice of scheduler up front. Yes there will be fringe cases, in which case, you have the code, replace/tune/massacre the scheduler to your particular needs.
The security realm however is completely different. For one, the performance requirement does not exist. So the performance penalty that modular architecture brings is largely irrelevant. And since there exist no metrics that can be used to determine whether one security model is better than another without the usage context, a plug-able architecture is the best road to go down to let something that users CAN and WILL want to implement completely differently from one use-case to the next.
I'd like to point out something about patents that I think people "misunderstand". This line of "obstructing the sciences/arts/progress" is all fine and dandy until you really look at it. What science is being obstructed? What scientist is not allowed to review the patent details (at least in the US)? The answer is none. They are, of course, not allowed to use the patented technology directly, but it sure can be used to generate new ideas, different/better implementations, etc of that tech. This is of course the whole point of patents: an incentive to publish ideas for others to see and read about while still being able to generate money with their ideas.
So yes, the patent system IS achieving what it was designed to do. The bit that is not working too well is the commercialization aspect of patents, as well as the enforcement of patents (submarine patents, vague patents, patent's covering prior art, etc).
Negative reinforcement? Stating that while not selling a game to a kid that was failing, he was also supposedly saying that if a kid walked in with a stack of A's, he'd buy them a game (using his personal funds). There are many things that this guy couldn't fix/solve/make better. In his view, trying to couple doing well at school with gaming was something he could do, and decided to try it. And he got suspended for it.
Er, well, what would be wrong with logging every single IP address and ever hit TorrentSpy's webserver? I mean, there need not be any other information, just the IP address. It would seem to me that several million IP addresses printed out would be pretty much what is being asked for here, no?
Ya know, something I've always found bizarre about this "everyone thinks java has poor loading times" comment... most everyone that uses a computer and is not a programmer seems to look at the slow loading of any app as a "problem with my computer, hang on a sec, it's just loading now". So most of the time I would argue that the average user of such applications care more about overall performance slowdowns and almost never associate the real causes of slowdown to any particular factor.
The big problem here isn't the legality of the press pulling this stunt; it's that there are presenters at this conference that have potentially broken laws (copy protection circumvention anyone?) in the course of discovering weakness in systems and products we use everyday. The content of this conference is very "touchy"; with very little alteration it would be easy to misrepresent what is said by people at DefCon. I believe if you want a conference like DefCon to succeed (where success is defined by people that find weakness in software and hardware agreeing to present at DefCon), then you need to enforce that the press identify themselves. The premise of the show that this reporter worked for also doesn't even try to have any journalistic "protection of sources"; if they did and people could trust that the press would always hide the identities of those at DefCon (and just report on the content), I think the whole press-pass thing might be less of an issue with the conference organizers.
So yeah, journalists should have the ability to report on hat they see; they should also NOT do this for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals. Ya know, reporters are somewhat protected in this respect in the US and Canada, and this is exactly why.
Mind you, in either case, the vender is helped, while the users of said venders are left with a hole in their system that someone can taken advantage of. Sounds like the only people getting screwed in this game are the "end users". And if that's the case, yes, I find that it's immoral to let someone get taken advantage of, regardless of who gets the free lunch by my actions, and therefor I would have to inform the vender about any such exploits I might find.
The missing component in all media (the 6 o'clock news on Fox or one of MM's films) seems to be critical thinking. You can't simply accept what is being said to you; you need to assume that truth lies between the extremes and be able to recognize when you're being shown either extreme (or some variant of them). Is Michael Moore putting out "real" journalism? Probably no (that's MY opinion). But is all of it crap? Again, probably no, but I need to think about that. Just like I need to think about what's shown on the mainstream news. Otherwise the only person at fault is me for assuming I'll ever be "given" information that is truthful.
Agreed. While searching for information on employees/employers via the internet is a boon to both sides, in a court of law this information must necessarily be backed up by verifyable sources (i.e. in this case his previous employers must be willing to make an official statement on the reasons for his dismissal). The same rules for regular research on the net apply: use it to broaden your awareness, but not to prove your point.
While I can see how this type of policy can aid in helping a small number of people maintain a larger group of users/machines, I can't help but think that hiding behind policy is a sign of a weakness to take responisbility and discover what the root problem/issue is. Perhaps that person that wants an MP3 player installed on their machine to listener to music purely to be happier. Does that make them more productive? Does it make them less? Does telling them thay can't because your job becomes harder (in effect) basically the same as saying that their comfort level is worth less than yours (or your departments)? In truth, perhaps the issue isn't so easy as right and wrong.
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This brings up an interesting point: who should be allowed to debate what scientific questions are "dabbled" in? This becomes even more important as scientists hand humanity ever-more powerful knowledge and technology. Remember that this knowledge is inert; it is what we do with it that makes it "good" or "bad". These types of debates must be held, and so the question, by whom?
Hmm, I don't think so. Certainly, since the Russians we're not able to get the same amount of practice (due to the automated docking system) they were possibly less proficient at docking than their American counterparts. That particular case you mention though is quite different from a normal docking operation by the shuttle. The "pilot" in the case of the Mir collision was on the station and not in the Progress craft, and was attempting to dock the craft using a system that had flaws in it.
So please, we can argue whether or not Apple is a software or hardware company, but when it comes to the hardware they sell, they fall in the same class of business as Dell or HP (with the added "perk" of having end-to-end control over their platform).
I have decided top refuse to believe this particular line of reasoning until I actually see/read something written by an economist providing a concrete argument (with data!) that the line "global warming costs too much too address" has any root in truth. I would urge that until one can provide such backing references, that we not perpetuate this argument since we as techies certainly are not qualified to endorse it.
Then you would be wrong with regards to Bit torrent clients, as they are 1) not "people" but programs that have fairly predicable network behavior, and 2) the protocol itself (which is easy to get a hold of of) can give you all the traffic analysis data you would need to build a filter capable of detecting bit torrent traffic. Mind you, if the bit torrent devs are smart, they would modify the protocol to allow for "no-op" messages, and send these message at random times, making it harder to detect handshaking/control segments of the protocol.
This is just silly; if entity A is willing to do something ethically "gray" (which is debatable in this case but assume for the sake of the argument), then they will do the same even if a piece of software is GPL'ed. The GPL isn't some magical spell that compels one to instantly release your modifications on distribution of the modified binaries. The GPL exists to LAY A LEGAL FRAMEWORK that can be used to make software better; it really has no power without the willingness to enforce it.
.. and MP3 is patent restricted and therefore rarely playable (legally) on Linux, FreeBSD and other systems. I was under the impression that only the encoder was patented; the decoding part is freely re-implementable (with the reference implementation being either patented or copyrighted I would imagine).One I noted when I looked at the 3-fan design, is that if you have problems with any of th fans, you're in alot of trouble as there is no redundancy (especially for the front fan, but I'd bet it would be extremely unlikely that loss of a rear fan could be compensated for by the other rear fan). Very bad failure mode...
Erm, 200 million x 5 = 1 billion or 1/1000th of what you said it would cost... did you get your units wrong?
Just to put this line of argument to rest: what makes what you think so important that what I think is less important and why? Anyone can disagree with what another person finds important. The trick is that the reverse is also true. So, who's right?
The are only two answers: either let people give their resources to what they think is important (which is what you're advocating) or unify all of humanity into putting it's collective resources at a specific, ordered list of problems.
Good luck with option 2.
http://finance.google.ca/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAAPL
Yup, these guys really don't know how to make money. You tell'em bro!
... Say you needed to review the new operating system, learn its quirks, its advantages, its differences before installing on live machines so you don't destroy the current and stable 10.4 systems. Say you need to be a step ahead. Now, add to that zero budget for a test box to experiment with.There is a unused core duo in the garage and...humm... a Hackintosh might be the bridge box that would just fit... Bollocks. If you really want to test, you'll do it on the end hardware that you'll be running on, i.e. NOT a "hackintosh". The only use of this is for testing the "Mac OS X" water before backing off because you don't want to drop the cash, or buying into Apple.
No, Linus' point about schedulers is that to make a pluggable scheduler, you will need to sacrifice performance just to achieve the plug-ability. Linus believes that the most flexible scheduler (i.e. performance, tune-ability) can be discovered at development time with a set of metrics that are defined currently. In which case he feels that the kernel devs can make the "best" choice of scheduler up front. Yes there will be fringe cases, in which case, you have the code, replace/tune/massacre the scheduler to your particular needs.
The security realm however is completely different. For one, the performance requirement does not exist. So the performance penalty that modular architecture brings is largely irrelevant. And since there exist no metrics that can be used to determine whether one security model is better than another without the usage context, a plug-able architecture is the best road to go down to let something that users CAN and WILL want to implement completely differently from one use-case to the next.
Someone forgot to enable QoS on /.
I'd like to point out something about patents that I think people "misunderstand". This line of "obstructing the sciences/arts/progress" is all fine and dandy until you really look at it. What science is being obstructed? What scientist is not allowed to review the patent details (at least in the US)? The answer is none. They are, of course, not allowed to use the patented technology directly, but it sure can be used to generate new ideas, different/better implementations, etc of that tech. This is of course the whole point of patents: an incentive to publish ideas for others to see and read about while still being able to generate money with their ideas.
So yes, the patent system IS achieving what it was designed to do. The bit that is not working too well is the commercialization aspect of patents, as well as the enforcement of patents (submarine patents, vague patents, patent's covering prior art, etc).
Negative reinforcement? Stating that while not selling a game to a kid that was failing, he was also supposedly saying that if a kid walked in with a stack of A's, he'd buy them a game (using his personal funds). There are many things that this guy couldn't fix/solve/make better. In his view, trying to couple doing well at school with gaming was something he could do, and decided to try it. And he got suspended for it.
Er, well, what would be wrong with logging every single IP address and ever hit TorrentSpy's webserver? I mean, there need not be any other information, just the IP address. It would seem to me that several million IP addresses printed out would be pretty much what is being asked for here, no?
Ya know, something I've always found bizarre about this "everyone thinks java has poor loading times" comment... most everyone that uses a computer and is not a programmer seems to look at the slow loading of any app as a "problem with my computer, hang on a sec, it's just loading now". So most of the time I would argue that the average user of such applications care more about overall performance slowdowns and almost never associate the real causes of slowdown to any particular factor.
The big problem here isn't the legality of the press pulling this stunt; it's that there are presenters at this conference that have potentially broken laws (copy protection circumvention anyone?) in the course of discovering weakness in systems and products we use everyday. The content of this conference is very "touchy"; with very little alteration it would be easy to misrepresent what is said by people at DefCon. I believe if you want a conference like DefCon to succeed (where success is defined by people that find weakness in software and hardware agreeing to present at DefCon), then you need to enforce that the press identify themselves. The premise of the show that this reporter worked for also doesn't even try to have any journalistic "protection of sources"; if they did and people could trust that the press would always hide the identities of those at DefCon (and just report on the content), I think the whole press-pass thing might be less of an issue with the conference organizers.
So yeah, journalists should have the ability to report on hat they see; they should also NOT do this for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals. Ya know, reporters are somewhat protected in this respect in the US and Canada, and this is exactly why.
Mind you, in either case, the vender is helped, while the users of said venders are left with a hole in their system that someone can taken advantage of. Sounds like the only people getting screwed in this game are the "end users". And if that's the case, yes, I find that it's immoral to let someone get taken advantage of, regardless of who gets the free lunch by my actions, and therefor I would have to inform the vender about any such exploits I might find.
The missing component in all media (the 6 o'clock news on Fox or one of MM's films) seems to be critical thinking. You can't simply accept what is being said to you; you need to assume that truth lies between the extremes and be able to recognize when you're being shown either extreme (or some variant of them). Is Michael Moore putting out "real" journalism? Probably no (that's MY opinion). But is all of it crap? Again, probably no, but I need to think about that. Just like I need to think about what's shown on the mainstream news. Otherwise the only person at fault is me for assuming I'll ever be "given" information that is truthful.
Agreed. While searching for information on employees/employers via the internet is a boon to both sides, in a court of law this information must necessarily be backed up by verifyable sources (i.e. in this case his previous employers must be willing to make an official statement on the reasons for his dismissal). The same rules for regular research on the net apply: use it to broaden your awareness, but not to prove your point.
While I can see how this type of policy can aid in helping a small number of people maintain a larger group of users/machines, I can't help but think that hiding behind policy is a sign of a weakness to take responisbility and discover what the root problem/issue is. Perhaps that person that wants an MP3 player installed on their machine to listener to music purely to be happier. Does that make them more productive? Does it make them less? Does telling them thay can't because your job becomes harder (in effect) basically the same as saying that their comfort level is worth less than yours (or your departments)? In truth, perhaps the issue isn't so easy as right and wrong.