I fear that this is above Bush's head. The man just does as he's told by whoever is really pulling the strings. Also, whether Bush or Kerry wins the election, nothing is going to change. It's all smoke and mirrors. We will lose our rights and there's nothing we can really do about it, short of revolution.
That would not be such a wrong thing to do. What America needs, is a multi party system, with parties having public balance books and vastly reduced and law-enforced budgets, that come from the government, and are based on the number of voters for that party. Dompanies helping or donnating to the party would be considered highly illegal, and all campaign spending should be officially declared.
This means parties can monitor their adversaries on a financial basis, and protest in the event of fraud. It also means more parties will be founded, since every vote brings money. And it also means the big Enron's and all the other corporate mob consortia can no longer manipulate the world's most powerfull office decisions. And to top it off, you get a truely complex political debate.
It's not a good idea to replace an API when that API is one of the major libraries people use to display fast graphics.
It is however a good idea to force people to use a new standard when the old one has limitations that start to pop up. Sometimes it's necessary to cut the cables and start over.
Personally I think Dx9 is still all valid and good, it has no issues concerning shader support or other. I would not have replaced this API at this point, because I would consider the WGF as a surplus, something extra alongside DX. I guess doubling up the internal library is too cumbersome for the ones writing the video card drivers, which is why they replaced everything at once.
In our case, we chose to manufacture disks and not use ftp, so we know which person has gotten into contact with the physical media in case of a leak. The disks are just simple writeables, nothing goldish:)
Re:Nuclear energy works!
on
China Goes Nuclear
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You people lack some imagination. Really.
For starters "burrying nuked waste is perfectly safe" sounds great but is a lie, because *you* deny future generations (and I'm talking millions of years) to use that part of earthy soil, because *you* need your energy to be cheap. Of course you have to think for 2 seconds longer, and about consequences which are in the future.
Reprocessing means a lot of traffic, a lot of vulnerability to criminal activity, a potential risk of dissipation. It also means more waste, and the merrits of reprocessing are really not that big compared to other sources of energy.
Re-ignition of the whole atomic powersource industry would be harmfull for our industries (and our planet, mankind, yadeyade..) which are trying to innovate with fuelcells, engines that consume less, vehciles that weigh less, in fact, the bulk of the tech industry is primarily focussed on progress on many fields, with efficiency and performance as the main goal. These solutions exist today, but the manufacturing costs are still too high for mass consumption, however, slowly, progress is being made in this direction as well.
Viruses are like graffiti. There are people who admire some graffiti for its artistic merit. But when I sit on a subway train and I'm faced with someone's tag, my day is not improved.
Virus are vandalism. It's wrong to write and release them. The people who do so should be punished.
Anyway, you have an entire industry supported by virus writers. Antivirus, just like you have an entire industry supported by crooks and robers, the police. The larger effect from virus writers isn't going to be larger penetration of OSS anti-virus and anti-spam, it's going to be more freedoms lost because the majority of people don't understand how computers work and will ask for laws to protect them, and their IT people who are telling them it's partly the vendor's fault they were infected are just extremeists and the vendor will never get the blame.
But, becuiase there are miscreants who wish to coopt the system to their own ends, we have to waste some of that productivity gain in fighting off the miscreants. And it's an ever accelerating battle.
Secturity is not an end goal. It is a process. You can buy as much security as you can afford and still not be 100% protected from miscreants. Money spent of fighting spam and viruses is, by and large, wasted money.
I just can't see how you can defend virus writers. It's vandalism pure and simple.
That's all very well and very true, but at the end of the day, your systems, secured or not, are going to get attacked by malicious persons. Instead of simply waiting for the court, police, justice dept, brother in law or the local mob to spend their energy into the bottomless pit of chasing the bad guy (tm), which as a matter of fact is also payed by your corporation, your emplyees, the coffee-lady and her dog, why not invest in making it less possible to get attacked in the first place? Your corporation should be able to trust the 'guaranteed safety' when using a solution, and that trust should be earned by the one delivering the software/hardware. On a construction yard, you don't use a crane that is not sufficiently safe for the workers to work with, and you don't want that crane tipping over on the construction you're completing.
If I declare it illegal for cats to walk onto my lawn and poo between the plants, does that prevent cats from messing on it? No. Do i need to kill the cat to solve that problem? No. Do I need to keep the cat in my cellar? Maybe, if you're cold blooded. Can I prevent that the cat returns by using special anti-cat sticks between the plants? Yes.
[Mental note: The cat will go somewhere else instead..]
One small thing: I'm not defending virus writers. I'm saying virusses are good because they sound the alarm when it comes to security. They keep people on their toes, and they raise the level of awareness about digital security. I think that's good, not because I want everybody paranoid, but because I'm fond of my personal privacy, and I think most other people are too, and I'd like us all to enjoy that as much and as long as possible.
No not backwards, just another view than the one everyone else has.
And yes, the costs are large, devastatingly large, and real, and yes perfect security does not exist. Very annoying, and I hate *that* as much as you do. But if everything is so damn sensitive to breaches, why the hell are we trusting our corporations and institutions with that 'technology' in the first place? It is our job to make sure our kids are safe, our car is locked, our money is in a bank, and our borders are protected. Likewise, it is our job to make sure our digital data is safe, if not, reality is bound to make a wake-up call one way or the other.
Virusses do not solve anything, but they raise red flags. They are the watchdogs of our digital civilisation. Of course that doesn't mean that we don't have to try to minimize the breaches wherever possible, in fact, that's the whole point. However, punishing people for spreading virusses is a reaction that is easy, brings brief relief to the community, and seems just because we invented a law for it. But does it solve anything? Of course not. Why kid ourselves any longer, lapping up the milk each time the can spills over?
So burglary is OK, because it tests the locks and makes lock companies build better ones?
No because burglary directly breaches personal rights, i.e. unlawfully enter and steal.
Drunk driving is OK, because it tests car safety and makes car manufacturers build better ones?
No because drunk driving puts other people directly in life threatening danger.
Murder is OK, because it tests the human race and makes us build better ones?
No because it directly harms people.
Virus writing does NOT have to be part of the PC world. Making it sound like virus writers have this noble purpose of improving PC security is 100% pure BS. Virus writers are attempting to cause the most damage possible, either for some type of adrenaline rush or for profit. I can't imagine anyone possibly thinking that they're making the world a better place by wasting thousands of man-hours by people trying to clean infected systems.
The question is not what's good about spending man-hours on cleaning infected systems, the question is what's not good about spending man-hours on preventing infection. You are 100% true about the motives of virus writers. A lot of them are just in it for the kick, but not all of them. Some even make a job out of it hacking into systems. Regardless of their motives, the entire virus scene constantly waves red flags around flaws and holes that should not be there. Instead of looking at it as an attack to fight, the 'system' should learn and overcome as fast as possible. I'm not some romanticizing lunatic that has ties with virus writers, in fact I have nothing to do with them. I'm concerned with sociological trends in society, and virusses are more usefull than people take them for.
None of the things you mentioned is going to disappear, btw.. Not by prohbiting people, punishing people, killing people.. you can wish for it to end, but you know your wish will never be a reality. The only thing you can hope for, is that more people become educated and can correctly tax the risks involved.
You probably thought of slapping the powerplant example right in my face, where critical systems can become compromised, and can become a real life threatening danger to people, and that's very, very seriously bad. But you know that those systems should be protected well enough so that such things simply can't go wrong when that magnitude of risk is involved. They build airplane- and bomb- proof cages around nuclear reactors for a reason. Why is it so strange to ask for similar stringent approaches when software is involved? The real fuckwit is not the killer, it is the one that doesn't care enough and so allows the catastrophe to happen.
A) The idiot didn't even write the virus, the real author will write another just to please you.
B) Catching people who write virusses and sentencing them away does not stop others from writing virusses.
C) Writing a virus that takes advantage of security leaks is like journalism, it gets the word out on a defunct security system. It is GOOD that virusses exist, because companies will sell anything to anyone without true user rights and security issue considerations otherwise. It protects us from blind market driven comformancy, and informs users what the dangers are when they trust their machines and the software on it blindly.
... but I think in this case, he *should* be made an example of. Virus writers need to *STOP*. Now.
I do *SO* NOT agree. A virus is a challenge to the system. It tests the system. If there were no virusses written, security would simply NOT exist.
I hate mail virusses and spam just as anyone else, but a true virus that manages to infect and spread contains a 2-fold message: OS and App vendors need to get their act together before selling stuff, and consumers need to be more critical of what they buy before they buy, and then learn how to use it.
Virus writers are part of the underground of the PC world. Just like in the organic world, no world exists without an underground, it's a fundamental part of it, a symbiosis. If you destroy the groundlayer, you weaken and eventually destroy the whole system. People need to think more before putting everything into white and black boxes.
Yeah, that's what I want, someone who's taken a wonderful recreational activity and turned into a job. Don't you know the fastest way to turn something fun into drudgery is to make it your job?
If the culture doesn't support the idea of paying for software (and music, and movies, etc) in some way, then we are basically just denying artists and programmers the right to make money from what they do. There needs to be a balance somewhere between the draconian strategies being pursued by the RIAA, MPAA and other "intellectual property" syndicates. We should be able to make money from our labors, without screwing over the user in the process.
He confuses 'the right to make money with' with 'should be able to make money with'. The first states a deterministic given, the second is a probabilistic statement.
I like the probabilistic statement more, because the deterministic claim gears the software market towards a tight ruled unflexible, toplevel controlled system of laws and rights. Software and digital media have commodotized the human intellectual produce into binary streams, and the internet has become the carrier. Where every other commodity item has been subject to market driven law and economic interest, the world finds itself afraid to deviate from that strategy, but in the back of it's mind, there is a question that ponders whether human intellect and derivatives need to serve a higher cause rather than just filling pockets.
I am all for protecting and rewarding invention and intellect, but I am far from sure that patent offices are able to make that call. Let the market itself make the call. You want your artists to continue? Fine, donate. You want your software to be written? Fine, donate. You want to play that next game? Fine, donate.
It's as simple as that, and potential could be huge, if you press the 'right keys' (pun intended). Donations are much more rewarding, much more flexible, much more able to express what the honest real need expects you to do. It's completely in line with eXtreme Programming. But of course, they are not the ever guaranteeing money-making machine, which I agree is a bit scary, but then, what is not scary these days.
..pure economic way of thinking, what's wrong with that? Those pharmaceutical companies have the right to make money, and they're helping mankind by researching and spending huge amounts of cash on the development of those drugs. They have millions of people working for them that have to earn their daily bread as well. What's so bad about this? It's no different from any other industrial lobby that wants to lock their market down. There will always be annoying minorities that stand in the way of progress because they think selfishly, but we must not let them interfere with what we know is good for them. We have to help them understand the bigger picture, that in order to guarantee that the pharmaceutical industry will be able to help humanity in the future, this is the most sensible idea to enact. They should have done this a lot sooner!
In case you haven't noticed, life contains a mysterious female half of the population running fast into menopauses and realizing they aren't 20 anymore. Well at least the biggest part of that population.
And I'll be damned: recognisable situations turned upside down and with extreme twists here and there ARE comedy after all.
Slashdot Mirror
The UK is the worlds oldest demoracy.
Look up the words 'demos' and 'kratia' in your GREEK dictionary, please, thank you.
Hell, I think even I'd like to be trained liek that, too..
Bush Jr,
History Class,
April 2003
Given:
A, B,C
B prooves A, C refutes A, B contrdicts C
Question:
Ignite Politics With Claim A
Answer:
Send Claim A To World
Receive Claim C From World
Search For Claim B In World
Search Some More For Claim B In World
Bomb The Hell Out Of World Untill Destroyed
Spend Tax Money On Anti-Democrat Commercials
Get Re-Elected
I fear that this is above Bush's head. The man just does as he's told by whoever is really pulling the strings. Also, whether Bush or Kerry wins the election, nothing is going to change. It's all smoke and mirrors. We will lose our rights and there's nothing we can really do about it, short of revolution.
That would not be such a wrong thing to do. What America needs, is a multi party system, with parties having public balance books and vastly reduced and law-enforced budgets, that come from the government, and are based on the number of voters for that party. Dompanies helping or donnating to the party would be considered highly illegal, and all campaign spending should be officially declared.
This means parties can monitor their adversaries on a financial basis, and protest in the event of fraud. It also means more parties will be founded, since every vote brings money. And it also means the big Enron's and all the other corporate mob consortia can no longer manipulate the world's most powerfull office decisions. And to top it off, you get a truely complex political debate.
It's not a good idea to replace an API when that API is one of the major libraries people use to display fast graphics.
It is however a good idea to force people to use a new standard when the old one has limitations that start to pop up. Sometimes it's necessary to cut the cables and start over.
Personally I think Dx9 is still all valid and good, it has no issues concerning shader support or other. I would not have replaced this API at this point, because I would consider the WGF as a surplus, something extra alongside DX. I guess doubling up the internal library is too cumbersome for the ones writing the video card drivers, which is why they replaced everything at once.
In our case, we chose to manufacture disks and not use ftp, so we know which person has gotten into contact with the physical media in case of a leak. The disks are just simple writeables, nothing goldish
You people lack some imagination. Really.
For starters "burrying nuked waste is perfectly safe" sounds great but is a lie, because *you* deny future generations (and I'm talking millions of years) to use that part of earthy soil, because *you* need your energy to be cheap. Of course you have to think for 2 seconds longer, and about consequences which are in the future.
Reprocessing means a lot of traffic, a lot of vulnerability to criminal activity, a potential risk of dissipation. It also means more waste, and the merrits of reprocessing are really not that big compared to other sources of energy.
Re-ignition of the whole atomic powersource industry would be harmfull for our industries (and our planet, mankind, yadeyade..) which are trying to innovate with fuelcells, engines that consume less, vehciles that weigh less, in fact, the bulk of the tech industry is primarily focussed on progress on many fields, with efficiency and performance as the main goal. These solutions exist today, but the manufacturing costs are still too high for mass consumption, however, slowly, progress is being made in this direction as well.
And for any info you can always go to mobygames
Does that mean that if they all would start to wear the patriotic hat all of a sudden, that they could paralyze the rest of the digital world?
Viruses are like graffiti. There are people who admire some graffiti for its artistic merit. But when I sit on a subway train and I'm faced with someone's tag, my day is not improved.
Virus are vandalism. It's wrong to write and release them. The people who do so should be punished.
Ok, every man his own beliefs, brother.
Peace.
Anyway, you have an entire industry supported by virus writers. Antivirus, just like you have an entire industry supported by crooks and robers, the police. The larger effect from virus writers isn't going to be larger penetration of OSS anti-virus and anti-spam, it's going to be more freedoms lost because the majority of people don't understand how computers work and will ask for laws to protect them, and their IT people who are telling them it's partly the vendor's fault they were infected are just extremeists and the vendor will never get the blame.
Yay! Somebody gets it!
But, becuiase there are miscreants who wish to coopt the system to their own ends, we have to waste some of that productivity gain in fighting off the miscreants. And it's an ever accelerating battle.
Secturity is not an end goal. It is a process. You can buy as much security as you can afford and still not be 100% protected from miscreants. Money spent of fighting spam and viruses is, by and large, wasted money.
I just can't see how you can defend virus writers. It's vandalism pure and simple.
That's all very well and very true, but at the end of the day, your systems, secured or not, are going to get attacked by malicious persons. Instead of simply waiting for the court, police, justice dept, brother in law or the local mob to spend their energy into the bottomless pit of chasing the bad guy (tm), which as a matter of fact is also payed by your corporation, your emplyees, the coffee-lady and her dog, why not invest in making it less possible to get attacked in the first place? Your corporation should be able to trust the 'guaranteed safety' when using a solution, and that trust should be earned by the one delivering the software/hardware. On a construction yard, you don't use a crane that is not sufficiently safe for the workers to work with, and you don't want that crane tipping over on the construction you're completing.
If I declare it illegal for cats to walk onto my lawn and poo between the plants, does that prevent cats from messing on it? No. Do i need to kill the cat to solve that problem? No. Do I need to keep the cat in my cellar? Maybe, if you're cold blooded. Can I prevent that the cat returns by using special anti-cat sticks between the plants? Yes.
[Mental note: The cat will go somewhere else instead..]
One small thing: I'm not defending virus writers. I'm saying virusses are good because they sound the alarm when it comes to security. They keep people on their toes, and they raise the level of awareness about digital security. I think that's good, not because I want everybody paranoid, but because I'm fond of my personal privacy, and I think most other people are too, and I'd like us all to enjoy that as much and as long as possible.
No not backwards, just another view than the one everyone else has.
And yes, the costs are large, devastatingly large, and real, and yes perfect security does not exist. Very annoying, and I hate *that* as much as you do. But if everything is so damn sensitive to breaches, why the hell are we trusting our corporations and institutions with that 'technology' in the first place? It is our job to make sure our kids are safe, our car is locked, our money is in a bank, and our borders are protected. Likewise, it is our job to make sure our digital data is safe, if not, reality is bound to make a wake-up call one way or the other.
Virusses do not solve anything, but they raise red flags. They are the watchdogs of our digital civilisation. Of course that doesn't mean that we don't have to try to minimize the breaches wherever possible, in fact, that's the whole point. However, punishing people for spreading virusses is a reaction that is easy, brings brief relief to the community, and seems just because we invented a law for it. But does it solve anything? Of course not. Why kid ourselves any longer, lapping up the milk each time the can spills over?
Sigh.. again..
So burglary is OK, because it tests the locks and makes lock companies build better ones?
No because burglary directly breaches personal rights, i.e. unlawfully enter and steal.
Drunk driving is OK, because it tests car safety and makes car manufacturers build better ones?
No because drunk driving puts other people directly in life threatening danger.
Murder is OK, because it tests the human race and makes us build better ones?
No because it directly harms people.
Virus writing does NOT have to be part of the PC world. Making it sound like virus writers have this noble purpose of improving PC security is 100% pure BS. Virus writers are attempting to cause the most damage possible, either for some type of adrenaline rush or for profit. I can't imagine anyone possibly thinking that they're making the world a better place by wasting thousands of man-hours by people trying to clean infected systems.
The question is not what's good about spending man-hours on cleaning infected systems, the question is what's not good about spending man-hours on preventing infection. You are 100% true about the motives of virus writers. A lot of them are just in it for the kick, but not all of them. Some even make a job out of it hacking into systems. Regardless of their motives, the entire virus scene constantly waves red flags around flaws and holes that should not be there. Instead of looking at it as an attack to fight, the 'system' should learn and overcome as fast as possible. I'm not some romanticizing lunatic that has ties with virus writers, in fact I have nothing to do with them. I'm concerned with sociological trends in society, and virusses are more usefull than people take them for.
None of the things you mentioned is going to disappear, btw.. Not by prohbiting people, punishing people, killing people.. you can wish for it to end, but you know your wish will never be a reality. The only thing you can hope for, is that more people become educated and can correctly tax the risks involved.
You probably thought of slapping the powerplant example right in my face, where critical systems can become compromised, and can become a real life threatening danger to people, and that's very, very seriously bad. But you know that those systems should be protected well enough so that such things simply can't go wrong when that magnitude of risk is involved. They build airplane- and bomb- proof cages around nuclear reactors for a reason. Why is it so strange to ask for similar stringent approaches when software is involved? The real fuckwit is not the killer, it is the one that doesn't care enough and so allows the catastrophe to happen.
A) The idiot didn't even write the virus, the real author will write another just to please you.
B) Catching people who write virusses and sentencing them away does not stop others from writing virusses.
C) Writing a virus that takes advantage of security leaks is like journalism, it gets the word out on a defunct security system. It is GOOD that virusses exist, because companies will sell anything to anyone without true user rights and security issue considerations otherwise. It protects us from blind market driven comformancy, and informs users what the dangers are when they trust their machines and the software on it blindly.
D) Virusses create jobs. Lots of jobs.
I do *SO* NOT agree. A virus is a challenge to the system. It tests the system. If there were no virusses written, security would simply NOT exist.
I hate mail virusses and spam just as anyone else, but a true virus that manages to infect and spread contains a 2-fold message: OS and App vendors need to get their act together before selling stuff, and consumers need to be more critical of what they buy before they buy, and then learn how to use it.
Virus writers are part of the underground of the PC world. Just like in the organic world, no world exists without an underground, it's a fundamental part of it, a symbiosis. If you destroy the groundlayer, you weaken and eventually destroy the whole system. People need to think more before putting everything into white and black boxes.
on Siggraph2003, and here
I'm using XP and I've both a cheap-ass USB2 card reader for CF as well, and it runs just fine. It must be the OEM or the drivers..
Yeah, that's what I want, someone who's taken a wonderful recreational activity and turned into a job. Don't you know the fastest way to turn something fun into drudgery is to make it your job?
:)
Hmm, except for sex maybe ?
here
Looks damn UGLY to me..
If the culture doesn't support the idea of paying for software (and music, and movies, etc) in some way, then we are basically just denying artists and programmers the right to make money from what they do. There needs to be a balance somewhere between the draconian strategies being pursued by the RIAA, MPAA and other "intellectual property" syndicates. We should be able to make money from our labors, without screwing over the user in the process.
He confuses 'the right to make money with' with 'should be able to make money with'. The first states a deterministic given, the second is a probabilistic statement.
I like the probabilistic statement more, because the deterministic claim gears the software market towards a tight ruled unflexible, toplevel controlled system of laws and rights. Software and digital media have commodotized the human intellectual produce into binary streams, and the internet has become the carrier. Where every other commodity item has been subject to market driven law and economic interest, the world finds itself afraid to deviate from that strategy, but in the back of it's mind, there is a question that ponders whether human intellect and derivatives need to serve a higher cause rather than just filling pockets.
I am all for protecting and rewarding invention and intellect, but I am far from sure that patent offices are able to make that call. Let the market itself make the call. You want your artists to continue? Fine, donate. You want your software to be written? Fine, donate. You want to play that next game? Fine, donate.
It's as simple as that, and potential could be huge, if you press the 'right keys' (pun intended). Donations are much more rewarding, much more flexible, much more able to express what the honest real need expects you to do. It's completely in line with eXtreme Programming. But of course, they are not the ever guaranteeing money-making machine, which I agree is a bit scary, but then, what is not scary these days.
Crucial Note: I'm not too good at sarcasm.
In case you haven't noticed, life contains a mysterious female half of the population running fast into menopauses and realizing they aren't 20 anymore. Well at least the biggest part of that population.
And I'll be damned: recognisable situations turned upside down and with extreme twists here and there ARE comedy after all.