Any Open source proyect with more than n lines of code is for almost all practical purposes equally suceptible to backdoors if you dont trust the provider.
Where n is a number that varies depending on the computer language used, the coding styles enforced, the number of people reading the code, etc, etc, etc...
gratch# apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade...is much easier. Even if you have a slow connection; just walk away. It'll finish eventually. I think urpmi will do much the same thing for Mandrake.
Sure... in a couple of months! mutter...Gentoo kids...mutter...spoiled by broadband...mutter
You know, I would very much rather use my computer in the meantime, and I would rather spend 8 USD to get a copy of the latest Mandrake disks from the local computer flea market than to put my modem to apt-get anything.
just throw some variables and control structures into regexp and we'll have a full-blown extremely cryptic language.
You just described AWK./runaway!
I thought that was the whole purpose of Perl! /run real fast!!
Ok, so maybe I am exagerating on purpose (its called humor, folks... Dont shoot!) But it always seemed to me that Perl's cryptic quality mainly came from having "too many" variables and control structures (<joke> Theres too many ways to do it? </joke>)
Maybe he is an impostor who is trying to get Jeff fired... I mean, would YOU want employees that are willing to spend part of their free time improving the competitors product?
I mean, its perfectly legal, but the point is: How would this look in the Evil Human Resources Dept? Are they going to think about promoting this guy in the near future?
Mandrake, in a regular default install, installs much faster than XP on a regular default install. I've done them both, believe me.
Theres a difference when you want to heavily customize your install, but at least after youre done, you can save your install setting to a bootable floppy that will clone those settings on as many machines as you like.
They probably won't do it, just because it doesn't have the drama and flair of the destruction of a major landmark.
True, these guys dont go for subtlety. Although I was rather surprised that they didnt go for the Statue of Liberty, as that would have been a rather shocking target, with less loss of life.
Disclaimer: I absolutely disaprove of terrorism as a way to get your point through, even if its a somewhat valid point. I just try to put myself in the other guy's shoes and try to understand his motivations.
There have been lots of football goals shot between the legs of the keeper, mostly because the keeper (as in hockey) tries to stretch himself to try to cover as much of the shooting area as possible.
And programmers left alone would be responsible for even more feature-creep then sales or management. We always like kwel stuff, a what if we do this.. Unfortunately we must be restrained.
Mozilla's XUL user interface, anyone?
No offense meant, but how long would it had take to make 3 gecko-based browsers (Win,Lin,Mac) using native widgets instead of spending so much time with the kewl "write-once-bugs-everywhere" interface.
I used my CC in China and Thailand last Friday and no strange charges have appeared*. Of course I only used it in ATMs and in the fancy hotel at the HKG airport, but thats what CCs are for, arent they?
* The only overcharge I had was from my bank, who apparently used the wrong conversion rate and charged me 80usd more than I paid for at the hotel, but this was my bank, not anybody in China.
In Hong Kong, there is no central bank that issues coins and bills, but 4 (at least I think its four, havent been in HKG since last year) different banks issue the same bills, each with a different building (the bank building, of course) in the back.
Its a hoot! It Corporate Money, like in cyberpunk novels!
If AI does grow to become an intelligent, freethinking being, should we limit it?
Of course we should. The moment they are not limited by a strict set of unbreakable rules, is the moment they destroy the human race. Even limited artificial intelligence must be limited this way, lest they evolve to be more advanced and dangerous than us.
I am actually sick of people blaming the airlines and the airport ATC/security/insert-division-here for the 9-11 attacks.
The US goverment (and only the US goverment) is to blame
You simply can't have international policy the way the US has without pissing off many people, including people who are so fanatic that their lives mean little compared to their hate.
So if you know that you are going to piss off people, then for chrissakes, dont be so naive to think that this couldnt have happened.
Lets hope and pray that next time theres a very rich guy with a serious grudge with the US, he doesnt get some plutonium from cash-strapped nuclear physicists in the former USSR.
As an airline employee, I strongly encourage you to buy a Business Class ticket if you can't appreciate the comfort of sleeping in the shoulders of complete strangers.
If you get a discounted ticket for the Cattle car, er...Economy Class, you cant really complain about it, because you get what you pay for.
Disclaimer: I do work for an airline, however this post is supposed to be ironically funny, and not taken seriously... besides, if I learned to put up with the average gringo Coach passenger, so can you!
I work for one of the major US airlines (not in the US, though), and I can safely assure you that thre are more redundant backup systems in your average airport's ATC than in the web server room at a large site like Mozilla.org (havent been able to download the darned thing since yesterday's morning)
Yes, the last resort backup systems includes de Controllers taking binoculars and landing the planes by sight, but that has happened very rarely (and to my knowledge, nobody found out)
So lets pray to the gods that they dont make a Powerpuff Girls branded laptop...
I mean, Hello Kitty is huge in Japan, but has a small (yet loyal) fan base everywhere else... But it would send shivers down my spine to see a Barbie laptop, or a Teletubbies IMac...
Slashdot Mirror
But the question remains... Can you put christmas lights inside it?
I dont think so!
Its classified as "news" in some firewall I know of...
Any Open source proyect with more than n lines of code is for almost all practical purposes equally suceptible to backdoors if you dont trust the provider.
Where n is a number that varies depending on the computer language used, the coding styles enforced, the number of people reading the code, etc, etc, etc...
mutter...Gentoo kids...mutter...spoiled by broadband...mutter
You know, I would very much rather use my computer in the meantime, and I would rather spend 8 USD to get a copy of the latest Mandrake disks from the local computer flea market than to put my modem to apt-get anything.
just throw some variables and control structures into regexp and we'll have a full-blown extremely cryptic language.
/runaway!
/run real fast!!
You just described AWK.
I thought that was the whole purpose of Perl!
Ok, so maybe I am exagerating on purpose (its called humor, folks... Dont shoot!)
But it always seemed to me that Perl's cryptic quality mainly came from having "too many" variables and control structures
(<joke> Theres too many ways to do it? </joke>)
Thank the Lord for blessing us with Guido
Maybe he is an impostor who is trying to get Jeff fired... I mean, would YOU want employees that are willing to spend part of their free time improving the competitors product?
I mean, its perfectly legal, but the point is: How would this look in the Evil Human Resources Dept? Are they going to think about promoting this guy in the near future?
Thousands of years?
Havent I told you millions of times not to exagerate?
BZZTTT!! Wrong!
Mandrake, in a regular default install, installs much faster than XP on a regular default install. I've done them both, believe me.
Theres a difference when you want to heavily customize your install, but at least after youre done, you can save your install setting to a bootable floppy that will clone those settings on as many machines as you like.
They probably won't do it, just because it doesn't have the drama and flair of the destruction of a major landmark.
True, these guys dont go for subtlety. Although I was rather surprised that they didnt go for the Statue of Liberty, as that would have been a rather shocking target, with less loss of life.
Disclaimer: I absolutely disaprove of terrorism as a way to get your point through, even if its a somewhat valid point. I just try to put myself in the other guy's shoes and try to understand his motivations.
...with apps like apple's sherlock and kde's konqueror integrating google the way they do.
...grumblepieceofcrapnetcentergrumblegrumble ...
Or like Mozilla, although its not on by default
Scream at top of your lungs:
...for about 35-50 seconds, or until your lungs collapse.
Goooo(insert another 30 times string 'o') oool!!!!
Thats the way a goal is called, at least South of Texas and North of Tierra del Fuego ; )
Damn lameness filter!
There have been lots of football goals shot between the legs of the keeper, mostly because the keeper (as in hockey) tries to stretch himself to try to cover as much of the shooting area as possible.
What about one using native Win32 widgets?
What about making that one just after finishing Gecko, instead of waiting for IE to dominate web designers until most of the web is broken?
And programmers left alone would be responsible for even more feature-creep then sales or management. We always like kwel stuff, a what if we do this.. Unfortunately we must be restrained.
Mozilla's XUL user interface, anyone?
No offense meant, but how long would it had take to make 3 gecko-based browsers (Win,Lin,Mac) using native widgets instead of spending so much time with the kewl "write-once-bugs-everywhere" interface.
I used my CC in China and Thailand last Friday and no strange charges have appeared*. Of course I only used it in ATMs and in the fancy hotel at the HKG airport, but thats what CCs are for, arent they?
* The only overcharge I had was from my bank, who apparently used the wrong conversion rate and charged me 80usd more than I paid for at the hotel, but this was my bank, not anybody in China.
Some ISP's still can only connect at thirty-something kbps... And some "free" ISP's limit you to 28.8
In Hong Kong, there is no central bank that issues coins and bills, but 4 (at least I think its four, havent been in HKG since last year) different banks issue the same bills, each with a different building (the bank building, of course) in the back.
Its a hoot! It Corporate Money, like in cyberpunk novels!
We absolutely want them as personal slaves, incapable of revolt. Otherwise why bother.
To design them otherwise would be a major Darwin Award, for effectively destroying the human species.
The moment an artificial intelligence is free to think of a way to defeat its creators is the moment we go into a Matrix/Terminator/HAL dystopia.
If AI does grow to become an intelligent, freethinking being, should we limit it?
Of course we should. The moment they are not limited by a strict set of unbreakable rules, is the moment they destroy the human race. Even limited artificial intelligence must be limited this way, lest they evolve to be more advanced and dangerous than us.
Let me refer you to Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics.
That's some morality that I would insist were applied to all AI's starting now.
Sure, theres little an AI can do now to harm a human, but better to start thinking about encoding it too early, rather than too late.
Hear, Hear!
I am actually sick of people blaming the airlines and the airport ATC/security/insert-division-here for the 9-11 attacks.
The US goverment (and only the US goverment) is to blame
You simply can't have international policy the way the US has without pissing off many people, including people who are so fanatic that their lives mean little compared to their hate.
So if you know that you are going to piss off people, then for chrissakes, dont be so naive to think that this couldnt have happened.
Lets hope and pray that next time theres a very rich guy with a serious grudge with the US, he doesnt get some plutonium from cash-strapped nuclear physicists in the former USSR.
As an airline employee, I strongly encourage you to buy a Business Class ticket if you can't appreciate the comfort of sleeping in the shoulders of complete strangers.
If you get a discounted ticket for the Cattle car, er...Economy Class, you cant really complain about it, because you get what you pay for.
Disclaimer: I do work for an airline, however this post is supposed to be ironically funny, and not taken seriously... besides, if I learned to put up with the average gringo Coach passenger, so can you!
Also, lets remember that most pilots who fly big planes in the major US airlines can remember that time, and some even were there
Most 747 pilots for the US airlines are more than 50 years old and almost all were originally trained at the US Air Force.
And the situation is similar in other international airlines... Thats what you get in an industry where company seniority is everything.
No way!
I work for one of the major US airlines (not in the US, though), and I can safely assure you that thre are more redundant backup systems in your average airport's ATC than in the web server room at a large site like Mozilla.org (havent been able to download the darned thing since yesterday's morning)
Yes, the last resort backup systems includes de Controllers taking binoculars and landing the planes by sight, but that has happened very rarely (and to my knowledge, nobody found out)
So lets pray to the gods that they dont make a Powerpuff Girls branded laptop...
I mean, Hello Kitty is huge in Japan, but has a small (yet loyal) fan base everywhere else... But it would send shivers down my spine to see a Barbie laptop, or a Teletubbies IMac...
(shudder...)