You want to support the Constitution? Start with supporting 2nd Ammendment.
Oh please. I'll acknowledge that you have the right to own guns for self protection and for hunting. But I'm tired of hearing the claim that private guns somehow safeguard our civil rights. Quite the opposite. As any Iraqi will tell you, rights that are enforced by private thuggery only deliver rights to those with the most thugs.
Especially absurd is the recurring theory that private guns prevent the national government from becoming dictatorship. Unless you're one of those fringe idiots who advocates private ownership of nukes and other WMDs, the idea of a some plucky band of guerillas restoring democracy is pure fantasy.
As long as you're getting all usage Nazi, it's "assembly language", 'cause "assembly" is an adjective. But in informal usage, it's OK to leave off the noun and use the adjective as a noun. (I prefer to say "noun the adjective" just to piss off POS Nazis.) And as for confusing the language with the tool: WTFC? This is Slashdot, where lose lips sink looser ships!
Unless you have a law degree, or at least have cracked a lot of law books (I'm guessing not), any statement that begins that way is pretty meaningless. Anyway, you don't need legal training to note that thousands of people have been forced to take down signs, withdraw comic books, edit movies, and otherwise be censored because they were using a trademark that they didn't have the right to use. I've never heard of jackets being confiscated right off somebodies back, but it's not fundamentally different.
Of course, people use trademarks as their personal decorations all the time. (Once saw a guy with a Nike swoosh shaved into his do!) And the IP lawyers don't have time to go after them all. But that doesn't make it legal.
We also need to note that confiscating a trademark is not unprecedented. The earliest example I know of is Bayer Pharmaceuticals, which lost the right to use its own name and its cross trademark in the U.S. and Canada. Bayer, being a German company, had its IP seized as "enemy property" during WW I. Sterling bought the rights, and used the Bayer brand until it was sold back to the German company in 1978.
Yes, and those laws are thoroughly stupid. Banning a symbol doesn't work against the idea. In the case of fascist ideologies, it actually supports the idea, since its follows love to feel oppressed.
Any comparison with certain U.S. politicians is strictly intentional.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy the line that with all the technology and spying the phone companies are doing, that they can't find these people within a matter of minutes.
So why is it that caller ID spoofing services are so easy to get? I just did a Google search, and there were 10 different adword links to spoofing providers.
Oops. Just noticed that the banner ad that's at the top of my Slashdot page is for something called SpoofCard!
You're right to be outraged. But your outrage is obviously not news.
So fine, you get 3 minutes on CNN. So you get a lot of pressure to Do Something. But do what? As far as I know, there's no way to figure out who's making a spoofed call. All you'll get is more Qumiby's Bear Patrol theater. Tell the lady to change her phone number. It's not fair that she should have to, but so what?
You're oversimplifying. His point is not just that they have a vested interest (duh!). It's that because they have a vested interest, we can ignore everything they have to say. My point is his point is wrong. It's rejecting an argument without listening to it, because you question the objectivity of the arguer. But the arguer's objectivity is irrelevant: an argument should stand or fall on its own merits.
Educating gatekeepers and end-users is vastly harder and much more expensive, because it not only costs money, it costs time..
Well, time is money, so really it's all about money.
Except it's not. Deploying thousands of security drones and tons of expensive machinery costs a lot more than a few classes. It's not about money. It's about convincing people that you're Doing Something. All that effort against mentally retarded terrorist serves the same purpose as Mayor Quimby's Bear Patrol: it's a conspicuous and easy-to-understand effort that everybody can relate to. Educating airline personnel on good security practices might be more effective, but does little to make people feel safer.
Suppose you could go back in time to 9/12/2001, and persuade SOT Mineta to forget about the security theater and concentrate on the more subtle security enhancements Schneier likes. He would have been fired within days. Everybody would have sneered at the retraining as touchy-feely crap. And frankly, I think most Slashdotters would have joined in.
So why is that a bad study? Because the person doing the study cherry-picked the data. The fact that he had a bias towards over-pricing the jeep gives him motive for fiddling the results, but it doesn't prove he fiddled the results. Only a careful examination of the data can do that.
Usually, I share your cynicism about these breathless, fact-free "open source is gaining ground!" stories. But here your logic is way off. If this were just some pundit working for the Linux foundation making the usual "expert" assertions, your criticism would be valid. But this is a report based on real-world figures, and these figures deserve to be evaluated on their own merit. The fact that the people who wrote the report have a bias should make you look out for selective use of data, but doesn't automatically destroy the report's credibility.
"Miserable excuse"? Why? Because key decisions are being made by someone who isn't qualified to make them? Welcome to the workplace. Most organizations have somebody like that. No, I take that back. If the ten or so organizations (both private and public) that I've worked for are representative, they all do!
Sometimes you have no choice but to give up and move on. But that better be your last choice, because your new job will have its own set of underqualified bozos. And sometimes you have to live with situations that make it impossible to do your job well. But that better be your second-to-last choice if you take any pride in your work.
As for Piranhaa, he's asking the wrong question. Obviously the decision maker who's vetoing all OS requests knows knows jack about software. So presenting ideas about the advantages of OS (which include security from the very "code pollution" this guy is worried about!) is a waste of time.
Here's the question you should be asking: why is a major corporation giving veto power over software acquisitions to somebody who doesn't know anything about software? That's a major problem all in itself, never mind the OS issue.
Slashdot seems to have more and more people spouting off on issues they not only know nothing about, but have no excuse for knowing nothing about. If you'd followed the news at all (and reading rant-blogs does not count) you'd know that thousands of companies are hurting because of the credit crunch, with a lot of projects being canceled and postponed. Even government entities (usually considered no-risk debtors) are finding it hard to sell the bonds they need to do things like build sewers. Tesla is just one data point in a huge trend.
And the economic crisis effects Tesla in another way: their products will be expensive. The Roadster will go for $100K, the Model S for $60K. These are luxury items, and creditors must be painfully aware that the pool of people who can afford to spend that kind of money is dwindling by the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
You want to support the Constitution? Start with supporting 2nd Ammendment.
Oh please. I'll acknowledge that you have the right to own guns for self protection and for hunting. But I'm tired of hearing the claim that private guns somehow safeguard our civil rights. Quite the opposite. As any Iraqi will tell you, rights that are enforced by private thuggery only deliver rights to those with the most thugs.
Especially absurd is the recurring theory that private guns prevent the national government from becoming dictatorship. Unless you're one of those fringe idiots who advocates private ownership of nukes and other WMDs, the idea of a some plucky band of guerillas restoring democracy is pure fantasy.
You deserved the upmods, but the fact that most of them were "funny" says something about the current moderator pool.
If the people who wrote Wikipedia were taught critical thinking, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
As long as you're getting all usage Nazi, it's "assembly language", 'cause "assembly" is an adjective. But in informal usage, it's OK to leave off the noun and use the adjective as a noun. (I prefer to say "noun the adjective" just to piss off POS Nazis.) And as for confusing the language with the tool: WTFC? This is Slashdot, where lose lips sink looser ships!
Actually, it's the people who consider themselves English wonks that get all bent out of shape when you verb nouns and noun verbs.
I'm not aware of any law...
Unless you have a law degree, or at least have cracked a lot of law books (I'm guessing not), any statement that begins that way is pretty meaningless. Anyway, you don't need legal training to note that thousands of people have been forced to take down signs, withdraw comic books, edit movies, and otherwise be censored because they were using a trademark that they didn't have the right to use. I've never heard of jackets being confiscated right off somebodies back, but it's not fundamentally different.
Of course, people use trademarks as their personal decorations all the time. (Once saw a guy with a Nike swoosh shaved into his do!) And the IP lawyers don't have time to go after them all. But that doesn't make it legal.
We also need to note that confiscating a trademark is not unprecedented. The earliest example I know of is Bayer Pharmaceuticals, which lost the right to use its own name and its cross trademark in the U.S. and Canada. Bayer, being a German company, had its IP seized as "enemy property" during WW I. Sterling bought the rights, and used the Bayer brand until it was sold back to the German company in 1978.
Yes, and those laws are thoroughly stupid. Banning a symbol doesn't work against the idea. In the case of fascist ideologies, it actually supports the idea, since its follows love to feel oppressed.
Any comparison with certain U.S. politicians is strictly intentional.
What about the auto insurance scammers that hit me 10x/week?
You'd think they'd get a clue after you'd told them to FO 100 times. I found devices like this to be very effective.
What about eSATA? Fast, places less strain on the host CPU, and is available now.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy the line that with all the technology and spying the phone companies are doing, that they can't find these people within a matter of minutes.
So why is it that caller ID spoofing services are so easy to get? I just did a Google search, and there were 10 different adword links to spoofing providers.
Oops. Just noticed that the banner ad that's at the top of my Slashdot page is for something called SpoofCard!
You're right to be outraged. But your outrage is obviously not news.
Yes, and the logs can be spoofed. See above.
We're talking about helping an old lady, not implementing a change that would require every phone in the country to be replaced (good luck with that).
So fine, you get 3 minutes on CNN. So you get a lot of pressure to Do Something. But do what? As far as I know, there's no way to figure out who's making a spoofed call. All you'll get is more Qumiby's Bear Patrol theater. Tell the lady to change her phone number. It's not fair that she should have to, but so what?
Everybody has assumptions. Research is about data, not about hypothetical biases.
If you're right, then the human race's biggest worry is not killer cyborgs. It's erectile dysfunction remedies...
You're oversimplifying. His point is not just that they have a vested interest (duh!). It's that because they have a vested interest, we can ignore everything they have to say. My point is his point is wrong. It's rejecting an argument without listening to it, because you question the objectivity of the arguer. But the arguer's objectivity is irrelevant: an argument should stand or fall on its own merits.
Educating gatekeepers and end-users is vastly harder and much more expensive, because it not only costs money, it costs time..
Well, time is money, so really it's all about money.
Except it's not. Deploying thousands of security drones and tons of expensive machinery costs a lot more than a few classes. It's not about money. It's about convincing people that you're Doing Something. All that effort against mentally retarded terrorist serves the same purpose as Mayor Quimby's Bear Patrol: it's a conspicuous and easy-to-understand effort that everybody can relate to. Educating airline personnel on good security practices might be more effective, but does little to make people feel safer.
Suppose you could go back in time to 9/12/2001, and persuade SOT Mineta to forget about the security theater and concentrate on the more subtle security enhancements Schneier likes. He would have been fired within days. Everybody would have sneered at the retraining as touchy-feely crap. And frankly, I think most Slashdotters would have joined in.
So why is that a bad study? Because the person doing the study cherry-picked the data. The fact that he had a bias towards over-pricing the jeep gives him motive for fiddling the results, but it doesn't prove he fiddled the results. Only a careful examination of the data can do that.
Usually, I share your cynicism about these breathless, fact-free "open source is gaining ground!" stories. But here your logic is way off. If this were just some pundit working for the Linux foundation making the usual "expert" assertions, your criticism would be valid. But this is a report based on real-world figures, and these figures deserve to be evaluated on their own merit. The fact that the people who wrote the report have a bias should make you look out for selective use of data, but doesn't automatically destroy the report's credibility.
"Miserable excuse"? Why? Because key decisions are being made by someone who isn't qualified to make them? Welcome to the workplace. Most organizations have somebody like that. No, I take that back. If the ten or so organizations (both private and public) that I've worked for are representative, they all do!
Sometimes you have no choice but to give up and move on. But that better be your last choice, because your new job will have its own set of underqualified bozos. And sometimes you have to live with situations that make it impossible to do your job well. But that better be your second-to-last choice if you take any pride in your work.
As for Piranhaa, he's asking the wrong question. Obviously the decision maker who's vetoing all OS requests knows knows jack about software. So presenting ideas about the advantages of OS (which include security from the very "code pollution" this guy is worried about!) is a waste of time.
Here's the question you should be asking: why is a major corporation giving veto power over software acquisitions to somebody who doesn't know anything about software? That's a major problem all in itself, never mind the OS issue.
Shut up, Abdul.
I think this confirms it: Netcraft is dying!
All spelling and grammar errors are intentional. Grammar Nazis' need entertainment.
That should be "grammatical" and "Nazis" (no apostrophe).
Thank you for the entertainment.
As I recall, Z80 systems weren't all that big.
Slashdot seems to have more and more people spouting off on issues they not only know nothing about, but have no excuse for knowing nothing about. If you'd followed the news at all (and reading rant-blogs does not count) you'd know that thousands of companies are hurting because of the credit crunch, with a lot of projects being canceled and postponed. Even government entities (usually considered no-risk debtors) are finding it hard to sell the bonds they need to do things like build sewers. Tesla is just one data point in a huge trend.
And the economic crisis effects Tesla in another way: their products will be expensive. The Roadster will go for $100K, the Model S for $60K. These are luxury items, and creditors must be painfully aware that the pool of people who can afford to spend that kind of money is dwindling by the moment.