Then how exactly you want to control it? Artificial heart won't speed up/slow down automatically in response to oxygen needs of your body because it is not controlled by nervous system. Maybe you want wired connection with plug embedded between your ribs? I don't understand why 'wifi' means 'unsecured/unauthenticated wifi' to you.
WiFi is inherently insecure means of communication. Since anyone can eavesdrop and impersonate both sides of comm link, you can never be 100% sure that those commands to slow down your heart comes from your own smartphone or from somebody else's little device. At least with something that needs to be physically plugged in you can be sure who is the one plugging the controller in your socket.
You don't adopt the position because it's logical. You adopt it because it lets you have a little smug sense of moral superiority.
Really? I could have sworn that it's for logical reasons. You just don't know them because your mindset it so ingrain in thinking such survivalistic ways. Besides, I don't feel morally superiority. I'm the way I am simply because I believe it's the right thing to do for both myself and others. I don't believe in superiority -- that is egotistical.
And what, pray tell, are these logical reasons? Can you explain them, in simple words, to us, survivalist idiots?
Meanwhile, I'll try to explain my logic to you:
another species attacked; by the size of this attack we are likely to conclude that this is a carefully planned and thus premeditated action
the actions of the enemy brought the human kind at 0.0004 percent of its former size. Conclusion: the goal of the enemy is to annihilate the whole of the human kind
the remaining population does not represent any sort of threat to the enemy, yet they had been constantly being attacked in order to be destroyed. Conclusion: this is a further evidence on enemy's intentions
we don't know (at the outburst of hostilities) whether this attack was provoked or not, but we know that it if by very, very far beyond the level of possible provocation. Conclusion: another evidence of enemy's intentions to annihilate human kind.
this is a known enemy - we fought them before, and the war ended with our victory and a treaty which aimed to restore peace by separating two species to prevent further collision. Conclusion: the treaty was held by a threat of retaliation from our side; as soon as enemy concluded that it can achieve military supremacy and fend off the threat of retaliation it broke the treaty and restored hostilities
the remains of human kind are not in possession of any argument that could force the enemy to stop its activities to completely destroy our species. Furthermore, we cannot be sure that any kind of deal with the enemy which could achieve the peace would stand, based on previous experience. Conclusion: the enemy cannot be trusted to cease its activities to destroy us, therefore the only logical action is to continue to fight until the enemy's ability to fight is completely destroyed and we could be assured it will not regain this ability before remains of human kind establish their military might that could match the enemy's. What that actually means is that the enemy must be practically annihilated.
It's pathetic. Next time you're in a fight, when the other guy is beating the crap out of you, be sure to take time to 'understand' him.
If someone got into a fight with me, I'd try to defend myself, but I wouldn't hold it against them, as they must be a troubled person in need of help to do such a thing.
Or if a guy breaks into your house, try to get to the bottom of his motivation for doing so while he murders your family.
Luckily, these things are unlikely to even happen. And what is wrong with using just enough force to prevent your family from harm? Do you honestly believe that criminals have no feelings? Do you really think that are all inhuman, and that they aren't just like you at their core? Don't you think these people need help, rather than punishment? Do you not believe that helping these people will help prevent these things from happening? Or perhaps you would be too caught up with trying to get revenge?
The main problem with your reasoning is that you are taking the very extreme situation (total annihilation war, that actually never happened) and trying to deduce from it a general behavioral pattern robocop and myself presented regarding any physical threat to one individual. These are totally different situations: it's not that somebody broke in your apartment and killed your family - it's much more drastic than that:
I don't know whether they are hippies or not, but they did display something that could even be seen as borderline stupidity or naivety regarding such a strong theme of bare survival of the last remains of a human kind.
Nobody seems to notice a simple fact: there were 12bn people at the beginning of the show, and in couple of minutes after that they were down to mere 40+ thousand. It's about 0.0004 percent - it's not even a statistical error, it's a rounding error! And it's the second war with Cylons who very effectively showed to all that they are into exterminating the human species. You cannot make peace treaties with somebody who annihilated your entire species - you fight until one side does not exist anymore. Period.
The normal thing any government would do in situations far, far, far, far, far... better than that is to implement marshal law through and through. And here we have some idiots who are trying to still stick to the 'ole democracy principles' like it's some scholarly issue?! The workers' strike? At the only facility that produces fuel for all the ships, including fighters (in other words, the most important element in human survival there)? Facilities like this are part of the military in such conditions - the workers there are effectively soldiers under command in war - disobeying orders in wartime situations by the soldiers usually ends up by putting ringleaders against the wall in front of the firing squad, if not all of them. And soldier ('Halo' Agathon) who intentionally sabotages the activity that would bring the ultimate victory in this war of annihilation, even it could be seen as genocidal by some, is not a brave and moral individual - he is a traitor of his own species, and should be punished as any traitor in war was before him! Human rights and morals in situations like that are voluntarily resigned because they can (and usually do) prevent the system to function optimally! It's not about way of life, or this or that religion or political idea prevailing, it's about bare survival of an entire species!
After all, there's an old saying: if democracy works, why doesn't military implement it within its own ranks...
That's real life. BSG isn't even a good description of reality in fictional universe. I don't dispute that authors of the show wanted to raise some genuine questions, but they did it in a totally wrong setup, which only made these questions less genuine and more artificial, and whole show barely watchable.
"Only religious fanatics and totalitarian states equate 'morality' with 'legality,' "
Every legal system enforces ideas of morality. Why is murder wrong? Why do countries restrict hate speech? Why can't you have sex with your sister? These are all moral concepts enforced through legality.
You're right, but these examples actually refer to moral consensus, a set of moral principles shared by majority. What Linus referred to was moral principles of the individual, enforced to the majority in the form of a law by that same powerful individual.
Maybe Linus is having a bad day. And what exactly does he mean by:
"I think it is okay to control people's hardware, I do it myself"
Does Linus sell have a sideline selling PCs? And he uses some DRM to stop users modifying the software he supplies? What?
The article is bad for not referring to the actual Linus' post on LKML. In that post Linus was talking about putting Linux on his kids computers and prohibiting them (the kids, a.k.a users) to update the software on their own. He says that, as a legal guardian of his kids, he has the right to do so, and that he effectively controls the hardware.
Linux based smartphone OS from Trolltech?
on
TrollTech to IPO?
·
· Score: 1
If you look at the previous jobs of Juha Christensen (Microsoft's Mobile Devices division and Symbian before that), and Tod Nielsen (senior VP of technology marketing at Oracle, Microsoft), it is obvious that Trolltech is strongly going into the smartphone OS market. They could bundle some Linux based embedded OS and add QTopia onto that and sell it as a complete solution + some good tools for developing apps for this mobile platform.
If they make some success on this market, Qt/{X11,Windows,MacOSX} would lessen its importance as a revenue source for Trolltech and subsequently end up fully open and relicensed under LGPL/BSD. I think it could be a good move for all of us.
They are without a doubt the worst company in the world.
Oh, yeah? Well, check this out, then:
The company in charge is Telekom Srbija, state monopolist in telecommunications in Serbia, 80% owned by Serbian Post (which is, in turn, 100% state owned), 20% by OTE, a Greek telecomm company. Italian company STET owned some 28-29% but sold it to the Serbian Post (effectively, the state)
Getting a plain phone line here is an enterprise of biblical proportions - if you're lucky enough to meet technical conditions (there is a wire from LLE to your building and there are free slots at the LLE) you'll need to pay about 100 EUR and to wait for up to several months. If you are in rural areas, you probably have to shell out some 1000-1500 EUR for a line. Even if you buy and put the wire yourself (areal or underground), you have to pay a lot and the wire becomes the property of Telekom Srbija (according to the Telecommunications law)!
Recently, Telekom Serbia started offering ADSL service thru ISPs. Lots of people applied for it at their ISP of choice only to find out that only a handfull of local loop exchange points are equiped with DSLAMs and only in the state capital, Belgrade - out of 20 or so LLEs only 8 were equiped with DSLAMs, others are in process of being upgraded. The test project lasted for over a year, and at the beginning even Telekom Srbija didn't know which LLE's had DSLAMs!!! The process of getting an ADSL service here is that you contact your ISP who will in your name check with the Telekom's technicall support do you meet technical conditions, and if you do you can sign a contract with your ISP for the ADSL service - there is a setup fee (some 50+ EUR) and you'll have to wait up to two weeks before ISP's technician comes and installs the splitter and ADSL modem. However, when the service first started a couple of months ago, Telekom Srbija responded positively to most inquieries for tecnical conditions and people signed contracts and payed for the setup fees only to be informed two week after that there was a misunderstanding in Telekom's technical service and that unfortunately you do not meet technical conditions for ADSL service, could you, please, come to the ISP HQ to terminate the contract and be refunded?
Current price range for ADSL for the few lucky ones are in range of 20 - 60 EUR for 256-768Kbps.
Internet link (for ISPs) can only be licenced from Telekom Srbija and price range is 2.000 - 100.000 EUR/month (2 - 155 Mbps).
Since Telekom is officialy monopolistic in the area of fixed telephony (that is, excluding mobile telephony), each and every company that sells VoIP to customers violates the Telecomunnications law (Telekom's monopoly expires in June 2005 but noone knows will it will be terminated or prolonged for some time).
If I'm not mistaken, according to this officialOpenLDAP Admin Guide, OpenLDAP supports SASL framework, which, in turn, supports Kerberos V authentication via GSSAPI. It took me some time to put all the pieces in the right places on my Gentoo server installation, but after some Google searching, I finally had OpenLDAP over Kerberos authentication, and on top of all that, an AFS cell (using OpenAFS, of course).
I'd be highly surprised if DBFS was any different: people who want to use it will use it, and people who want to use Reiser4 will use that, and people who want to ext2 will use that.
Actually, DBFS is just an abstraction layer over existing file systems. So people who want to use DBFS are still using reiserfs/ext3/xfs or whatever is the filesystem du jour. Very roughly, DBFS could be implemented like this: there is a daemon and its underlying backend storage in the form of bunch of data files (ie. gdbm files) somewhere on the file system. Whenever there is a request for opening a file, the file selector, instead of presenting the current directory and all the files in it, contacts the DBFS daemon and gets a list of keywords. Then the user picks some keywords and file selector queries the DBFS daemon with the selected keywords and, at the end, gets one or more filenames of the real files to open. Same is with the file-close: file selector present the user with some keywords and the posibility for the user to enter some new ones, as well as the filename for the document. Then, user associates the file with selected keywords. File selector then prepares the query (something like SQL INSERT or UPDATE) and queries the DBFS daemon. If everything is OK and because of the posibility that document could be comprised of several files, the DBFS daemon should reply to the file selector with the possibly altered names for the files. The file selector then saves the files to the underlying file system, with the names obtained from the DBFS daemon. This way, all the files are accessable even when DBFS is turned off and the implementation is platform-independent. The open() and close() system calls are unaffected with this, so no penalties on performance.
That is, as I've said before, just a very rough proposition of the DBFS implementation.
Bingo. It seems like there are always people who whine every time the subject of immortality comes up -- overpopulation, interfering with the divine plan, or just, "I wouldn't want to live forever. I'd get bored." To which the proper answer is: you can always die. If you feel that you're selfishly using up too much of the planet's resources, or that God doesn't want you to live past a certain age, or the ennui of your endless existence is too much to bear (oh, the angst!), fine -- please kill yourself now.
But of course people don't do this, because it is inherent in the nature of life to want to live. People who think a 200- or 1000- or 50000-year lifespan is nightmarish will still struggle, at the end of their lives, to hold on to whatever years or months or even days of life they have left. We rage against the dying of the light because the urge to live is part of our every cell.
So, what happens if the Earth do becomes overpopulated and our natural resources do get depleted because so few people decide they should quietly go off into the night?
Should there be some global lottery where winners get to live on and losers get the bullet in the head? Or, perhaps, someone should decide that this or that race or ethnic group or religion or whatever is less worthy and should be removed from this earth, to provide 'lebensraum' for those that are more worthy?
I don't think so. Everything in this world has it's beginning and it's end. Our lives must have that, too. Otherwise, the nature will decide that it just had enough with us and wipe us all as a human race...
Actually, I think it's is mostly about On Demand Computing that IBM is trying to promote. If I understood it correctly, it is basicaly a one grid system consisting of all (or nearly all) servers in a corporation, but also of all the workstations that join and leave this big grid as people are coming and going. For that to work IBM is putting a lot of new software bits for automated management (a lot of it at the firmware level), at least on the server line, and I suppose that they need something on the client side as well to complete the system.
My knowledge of grids is very superficial but I think that most of the software running on top of grids is web or java-based. IBM is very strong there with its WebSphere and DB2 and one should expect their Linux Desktop solution to be web-based as well - more like OEone then Gnome/KDE stuff - it is a corporate productivity desktop environment after all!
I maintain a small number of servers, for a research project. All of these run the minimum of services for our purposes, have their own firewalls (in addition to the main organisational firewall), and once I apply the new packages for RHSA-2003:001, they will be up to date with all available patches.
This does not mean that they are unhackable. While it may be unlikely that someone will write a worm that uses a previously unknown bug, it could happen. By what you're saying, I'd still be liable. Should I have checked every single line of code my box runs?
In the case you presented, you should not be held responsible.
IMHO, several parties can be held responsible for the machine that is misbehaving on the network and endangering other systems:
first of all, the attacker --- he must always be held responsible because he (or she) has instigated the attack in the first place!
the owner of the compromised system --- the owner can be held responsible if he didn't applied all the reasonable measures to prevent the attack. This means tight security policy and applying all the security bugfixes and patches issued by the vendor. The owner cannot be responsible for security breaches on his system caused by exploiting previously unknown bugs (or bugs that have not been fixed by the vendor or some third party).
the vendor of the software containing the bug that has been exploited --- vendor can be held responsible if the offending bug in its software has been publically uncovered some reasonable time before the attack happened (publically means that someone has posted an information regarding the bug in question on some publically accessable mean of information (mailing list, website, etc.)). The reasonable time must be defined in such a way that the vendor has enough time to fix the bug and issue the security patch, or to publically proclaims that the bug cannot be fixed. However, the vendor cannot be held responsible if it publically posted the security patch for the incriminated bug.
Disconnecting the misbehaving system by the owner's ISP should also be taken seriously and incorporated in the service agreements between ISPs and their clients.
This discussion seem to be instigated by the DSS Act proposed to the Californian federal entity, but I think that this issue is far beyond US govt. policy and is applicable to the general. For that reason I'm feeling free to join this discussion although I'm not American nor I have any interest in California and/or USA.
My opinion on this is that the goverment must enforce open standards and protocols and not to choose the licencing type of the software. The aims are those: to do the job in the most efficient way (this includes the TCO as well!), and to enable the public view of all the relevant documents regardless of the systems used. This boils down to usage of publicaly available standards on document formats and protocols and doesn't pose any restrictions on the license type of the software that use these document formats. However, in the cases where it is necessary to disclose the way some data has been processed, I think it should be mandatory for the government bodies to open the source of the application in question (since it is almost allways some sort of a customized application, this should be no problem). This could be extended to all custom-written software in use by the government.
The other reason for the use of open standards in document formats is the prevention of vendor-locking. Governments should not be put in position that their job depends on the availability of some specialized apps that use closed document format.
Slashdot Mirror
Then how exactly you want to control it? Artificial heart won't speed up/slow down automatically in response to oxygen needs of your body because it is not controlled by nervous system. Maybe you want wired connection with plug embedded between your ribs? I don't understand why 'wifi' means 'unsecured/unauthenticated wifi' to you.
WiFi is inherently insecure means of communication. Since anyone can eavesdrop and impersonate both sides of comm link, you can never be 100% sure that those commands to slow down your heart comes from your own smartphone or from somebody else's little device. At least with something that needs to be physically plugged in you can be sure who is the one plugging the controller in your socket.
You don't adopt the position because it's logical. You adopt it because it lets you have a little smug sense of moral superiority.
Really? I could have sworn that it's for logical reasons. You just don't know them because your mindset it so ingrain in thinking such survivalistic ways. Besides, I don't feel morally superiority. I'm the way I am simply because I believe it's the right thing to do for both myself and others. I don't believe in superiority -- that is egotistical.
And what, pray tell, are these logical reasons? Can you explain them, in simple words, to us, survivalist idiots?
Meanwhile, I'll try to explain my logic to you:
It's pathetic. Next time you're in a fight, when the other guy is beating the crap out of you, be sure to take time to 'understand' him.
If someone got into a fight with me, I'd try to defend myself, but I wouldn't hold it against them, as they must be a troubled person in need of help to do such a thing.
Or if a guy breaks into your house, try to get to the bottom of his motivation for doing so while he murders your family.
Luckily, these things are unlikely to even happen. And what is wrong with using just enough force to prevent your family from harm? Do you honestly believe that criminals have no feelings? Do you really think that are all inhuman, and that they aren't just like you at their core? Don't you think these people need help, rather than punishment? Do you not believe that helping these people will help prevent these things from happening? Or perhaps you would be too caught up with trying to get revenge?
The main problem with your reasoning is that you are taking the very extreme situation (total annihilation war, that actually never happened) and trying to deduce from it a general behavioral pattern robocop and myself presented regarding any physical threat to one individual. These are totally different situations: it's not that somebody broke in your apartment and killed your family - it's much more drastic than that:
I don't know whether they are hippies or not, but they did display something that could even be seen as borderline stupidity or naivety regarding such a strong theme of bare survival of the last remains of a human kind.
Nobody seems to notice a simple fact: there were 12bn people at the beginning of the show, and in couple of minutes after that they were down to mere 40+ thousand. It's about 0.0004 percent - it's not even a statistical error, it's a rounding error! And it's the second war with Cylons who very effectively showed to all that they are into exterminating the human species. You cannot make peace treaties with somebody who annihilated your entire species - you fight until one side does not exist anymore. Period.
The normal thing any government would do in situations far, far, far, far, far... better than that is to implement marshal law through and through. And here we have some idiots who are trying to still stick to the 'ole democracy principles' like it's some scholarly issue?! The workers' strike? At the only facility that produces fuel for all the ships, including fighters (in other words, the most important element in human survival there)? Facilities like this are part of the military in such conditions - the workers there are effectively soldiers under command in war - disobeying orders in wartime situations by the soldiers usually ends up by putting ringleaders against the wall in front of the firing squad, if not all of them. And soldier ('Halo' Agathon) who intentionally sabotages the activity that would bring the ultimate victory in this war of annihilation, even it could be seen as genocidal by some, is not a brave and moral individual - he is a traitor of his own species, and should be punished as any traitor in war was before him! Human rights and morals in situations like that are voluntarily resigned because they can (and usually do) prevent the system to function optimally! It's not about way of life, or this or that religion or political idea prevailing, it's about bare survival of an entire species!
After all, there's an old saying: if democracy works, why doesn't military implement it within its own ranks...
That's real life. BSG isn't even a good description of reality in fictional universe. I don't dispute that authors of the show wanted to raise some genuine questions, but they did it in a totally wrong setup, which only made these questions less genuine and more artificial, and whole show barely watchable.
Especially because Glen Matlock was the original bass player on Anarchy in the UK, and the man is still alive and kicking...
Oh, wait... he is in this Sex Pistols 2007 lineup...
Every legal system enforces ideas of morality. Why is murder wrong? Why do countries restrict hate speech? Why can't you have sex with your sister? These are all moral concepts enforced through legality.
You're right, but these examples actually refer to moral consensus, a set of moral principles shared by majority. What Linus referred to was moral principles of the individual, enforced to the majority in the form of a law by that same powerful individual.
Maybe Linus is having a bad day. And what exactly does he mean by:
"I think it is okay to control people's hardware, I do it myself"Does Linus sell have a sideline selling PCs? And he uses some DRM to stop users modifying the software he supplies? What?
The article is bad for not referring to the actual Linus' post on LKML. In that post Linus was talking about putting Linux on his kids computers and prohibiting them (the kids, a.k.a users) to update the software on their own. He says that, as a legal guardian of his kids, he has the right to do so, and that he effectively controls the hardware.
If you look at the previous jobs of Juha Christensen (Microsoft's Mobile Devices division and Symbian before that), and Tod Nielsen (senior VP of technology marketing at Oracle, Microsoft), it is obvious that Trolltech is strongly going into the smartphone OS market. They could bundle some Linux based embedded OS and add QTopia onto that and sell it as a complete solution + some good tools for developing apps for this mobile platform.
If they make some success on this market, Qt/{X11,Windows,MacOSX} would lessen its importance as a revenue source for Trolltech and subsequently end up fully open and relicensed under LGPL/BSD. I think it could be a good move for all of us.
Oh, yeah? Well, check this out, then:
If I'm not mistaken, according to this official OpenLDAP Admin Guide, OpenLDAP supports SASL framework, which, in turn, supports Kerberos V authentication via GSSAPI. It took me some time to put all the pieces in the right places on my Gentoo server installation, but after some Google searching, I finally had OpenLDAP over Kerberos authentication, and on top of all that, an AFS cell (using OpenAFS, of course).
Actually, DBFS is just an abstraction layer over existing file systems. So people who want to use DBFS are still using reiserfs/ext3/xfs or whatever is the filesystem du jour. Very roughly, DBFS could be implemented like this: there is a daemon and its underlying backend storage in the form of bunch of data files (ie. gdbm files) somewhere on the file system. Whenever there is a request for opening a file, the file selector, instead of presenting the current directory and all the files in it, contacts the DBFS daemon and gets a list of keywords. Then the user picks some keywords and file selector queries the DBFS daemon with the selected keywords and, at the end, gets one or more filenames of the real files to open. Same is with the file-close: file selector present the user with some keywords and the posibility for the user to enter some new ones, as well as the filename for the document. Then, user associates the file with selected keywords. File selector then prepares the query (something like SQL INSERT or UPDATE) and queries the DBFS daemon. If everything is OK and because of the posibility that document could be comprised of several files, the DBFS daemon should reply to the file selector with the possibly altered names for the files. The file selector then saves the files to the underlying file system, with the names obtained from the DBFS daemon. This way, all the files are accessable even when DBFS is turned off and the implementation is platform-independent. The open() and close() system calls are unaffected with this, so no penalties on performance.
That is, as I've said before, just a very rough proposition of the DBFS implementation.
So, what happens if the Earth do becomes overpopulated and our natural resources do get depleted because so few people decide they should quietly go off into the night?
Should there be some global lottery where winners get to live on and losers get the bullet in the head? Or, perhaps, someone should decide that this or that race or ethnic group or religion or whatever is less worthy and should be removed from this earth, to provide 'lebensraum' for those that are more worthy?
I don't think so. Everything in this world has it's beginning and it's end. Our lives must have that, too. Otherwise, the nature will decide that it just had enough with us and wipe us all as a human race...
Actually, I think it's is mostly about On Demand Computing that IBM is trying to promote. If I understood it correctly, it is basicaly a one grid system consisting of all (or nearly all) servers in a corporation, but also of all the workstations that join and leave this big grid as people are coming and going. For that to work IBM is putting a lot of new software bits for automated management (a lot of it at the firmware level), at least on the server line, and I suppose that they need something on the client side as well to complete the system.
My knowledge of grids is very superficial but I think that most of the software running on top of grids is web or java-based. IBM is very strong there with its WebSphere and DB2 and one should expect their Linux Desktop solution to be web-based as well - more like OEone then Gnome/KDE stuff - it is a corporate productivity desktop environment after all!
In the case you presented, you should not be held responsible.
IMHO, several parties can be held responsible for the machine that is misbehaving on the network and endangering other systems:
Disconnecting the misbehaving system by the owner's ISP should also be taken seriously and incorporated in the service agreements between ISPs and their clients.
Too stupid to think the sig.
This discussion seem to be instigated by the DSS Act proposed to the Californian federal entity, but I think that this issue is far beyond US govt. policy and is applicable to the general. For that reason I'm feeling free to join this discussion although I'm not American nor I have any interest in California and/or USA.
My opinion on this is that the goverment must enforce open standards and protocols and not to choose the licencing type of the software. The aims are those: to do the job in the most efficient way (this includes the TCO as well!), and to enable the public view of all the relevant documents regardless of the systems used. This boils down to usage of publicaly available standards on document formats and protocols and doesn't pose any restrictions on the license type of the software that use these document formats.
However, in the cases where it is necessary to disclose the way some data has been processed, I think it should be mandatory for the government bodies to open the source of the application in question (since it is almost allways some sort of a customized application, this should be no problem). This could be extended to all custom-written software in use by the government.
The other reason for the use of open standards in document formats is the prevention of vendor-locking. Governments should not be put in position that their job depends on the availability of some specialized apps that use closed document format.