> We need a more intelligent, better-educated populace!
You will never get them in the United States as long as being "smart" isn't "cool". Right now, being openly intelligent is a social death sentence in many schools. Even with the new classes and the new teachers, how many kids are going to go for broke academically, knowing what it could mean socially?
Ok, the picture on that page looks like some woman who's just had her head bashed into the shower tiles. She's obviously dead, given that blissful-but-unmoving gaze. Microsoft supports domestic violence against women and murder? Er...
This makes me sad. Yes, it's lame that companies are profiting off this information. On the other hand, I would have killed to have this kind of thing around when I was a kid. Number theory? Graph theory? Oh, here, check out these notes from Ma119. I'm in favor of any fair solution that allows the curious kid to get his hands on this sort of thing. Preserving intellectual property rights comes in a close second.
Once upon a time contracts were infrequent things. You signed a contract when you sold your house, maybe you signed a marriage license or other official documents. You could definitely say that what you signed was Important.
Over time, the signature gets more play. Sign this W2. Sign this NDA. Fill out our Video Rental Membership Form. Don't forget your tax return... Oh, could you sign this liability release?
Still, there was a natural barrier to presenting a contract. You had to provide the paper, get the signature, keep a copy on file, etc. Contracts for Stupid Shit didn't exist. No more.
Now anything, no matter how stupid, can have a contract associated with it. Visit our website? First agree to our terms. Shop at our grocery store? Please touch this touch-screen first. The thing that distresses me about this, aside from the forgery aspect, is that it introduces a galaxy of new contracts into my world. Contracts I don't want to review, don't want to think about, and don't want to sign. Now I can sign them with a button.
It would be nice to use technology to free me from this. How? For one, a proxy server that recognizes these "agreements" and "agrees" to them. Would this be legal? Right now, it's my best hope, next to Refusing to Sign.
For the new python user, what are the pros and cons of using the python.org version versus the pythonlabs.com version? Which is more current, and which is closer to the language specification? Is python.org's hosting The Python Consortium a real sign, or the equivalent of "People For Fair Play in Elections", ie semi-bogus.
I'd love to hear the skinny from an experienced developer.
If I'm Microsoft and I donate 1000 copies of Microsoft Blonk to a non-profit, I can deduct the price of Blonk on my taxes. This money-laundering trick is used to make the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation smell sweet like flowers.
If I'm an open source developer and I donate an
infinite number of copies of FreeBlonk to
non-profits all over the world, I can't deduct
anything. What's the difference here? Arguably,
the latter can have much greater value. The software would free you from the Blonk 2000, BlonkPro, etc. path of wasting money, and this is important in a non-profit, right? The software could even be superior. Still, it has no retail
value.
What's one solution? One could go the way RedHat and many other companies have done. Package the
software and sell it, with support, and donate
a healthy number. Still, some applications are
too niche to garner a healthy (for the IRS) number of sales, and who's going to buy something they
can get for free? Only a few.
I think automated warfare is coming, and it's gonna be messy. What's the current state of these things, anyway? The autocannons from the director's cut of Aliens are little more than an academic exercise at this point. Is anyone building them? Terrorists can take
advantage of death via remote control. I don't trust the anyone to make these hack-proof, and the consequences are pretty lethal.
This is funny, but some people will think it's not a joke. If so, just remember that
creating booby traps and destructive devices (without a license) is a state and/or federal felony.
It hadn't been slashdotted in the traditional sense, true. However...
There are a lot of stupid people on slashdot. Sure, there are a lot of smart people, too, but you get a lot of people wondering what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of Natalie Portmans with hot grits on their penis birds. What the lack in clue they make up for in volume.
Idiots, basically. Script kiddies and the persistently annoying who're more interested in doodling than discussions.
Every time slashdot mentioned kuro5hin, it brought it one step closer to death.
I can get the instructions for how to build an ANFO truck bomb on the web, but I can't go to loseyourmoney.com and get the instructions for how to play their games? Both are simply instructions for informational purposes only. Following them may or may not be illegal. What would someone who was researching these sites do? Get an overseas ISP? I wish the gummint would stop trying to protect the stupid from themselves.
XML is fine. XML is lovely. But putting unencrypted (or weakly encrypted) XML on Microsoft's servers is asking for severe amounts of pain.
Even if it's strongly encrypted, the court may be able to ask you for your key. It's much better to do private client-to-client transfers of this sort of data.
Still, that only works if Microsoft packages it as several discrete functions working together, instead of a monolithic GUI. We all know which way they tend to take these things, though.
Possibly a more interesting design would use the junk itself for propulsion. It would only work against reasonably small stuff, but if it can grab it and throw it into an unstable orbit, well, the satellite gets a push in the opposite direction.
If it can see many pieces of space junk, then it can actually throw one piece and use the push to put it into position to grab another piece. It'd need a backup thruster, in case something goes wrong, but if something like this was, say, solar powered and took its time between throws, it could be in space for quite a while.
Last night at Circuit City (yeah, I know...) I was asked to sign my credit card slip on one of those damned pen tablets. I refused, claiming that it was against my religion (Western Sect Freedonianism). She just made a photocopy instead, but it was a nuisance.
I couldn't figure out why I was so annoyed then, but now I understand better. A system like this could ensure that my signature looks the same *and* is produced with some kind of similar beat/regularity.
I notice that banks have little fingerprint pads now, too, like you're a criminal or something. Woo! I really do hope that more atheists "get religion", specifically one that says little more than "leave me the fuck alone and stop trying to measure my dick size".
My comment was intended as humor. While I'm sure that he has the resources to build or buy a nuclear weapon, I don't think he has the desire, especially when weighed against the risks.
Bill Gates is not an evil genius, but, pretending he is makes for Quality Humor, IMO.
In my opinion, error correcting codes are the most important algorithm of this century.
Without them, hard drives would be useless or contain 1/3 of the data or less (mirroring isn't enough, since you don't know whether the mirror or the original got corrupted). Digital phones would suffer the same kind of audio glitches that analog phones do.
An transmission technology, in fact, would suffer without ECCs, so it's rather surprising that they're not on this list.
Which is more threatening? A web browser which can leverage extra features of the operating system, or a web browser that can leverage extra features of applications?
What on earth would a "Microsoft enhanced" web browser do that it doesn't already do now? All the networking stuff is open enough, because it's basically a hacked up version of Unix networking. If the browser draws a little faster because it calls __chunder32_WinBlitBrowserCrap(), well, it doesn't really make that much of a difference to the end-user.
On the other hand, if it's tightly integrated with Office, Excel, and all the other business applications, that's just another huge nail in Netscape's coffin, because it's the "gotta have" application for all the Office Lusers.
Black Knight 2000 was a great game all around. Remember the catchy theme song? W = woman's voice, B = Black Knight (this is CNN) W: You've got the power. B: Ha ha ha ha W: You've got the might. B: No way. W: Get ready for battle. B: Give me your money. W: Beat the Black Knight! Plus, the magnasave and an utterly playable upper deck (ie doesn't drain after 3 seconds every time) make this one a lot of fun. High Speed and any game I could get an extra credit on were also fun.
If you want an example of how people don't really give a crap about privacy, take a look at supermarket shopper cards. These cards have popped up over the last few years, and they really only have two purposes.
Brand loyalty (yummy carrot, here's a few pennies, now love us!)
Data mining (they all include clauses allowing them to share the data with marketing "partners" (ie people who pay them money)
Joe Sixpack isn't generally thinking about this sort of thing enough to figure out why this might be bad. Sure, if he reads something like Database Nation it'll be crystal clear, but that's not going to happen.
The only way to get this message out is if the mass media breaks it in a big way (yeah, the same ones who get paid by big marketing firms), or via some really embarrassing guerrilla action.
For example, a website screaming: "Congressman Albertson has hemmrhoids, and gets laid about 1 time a month at home, but 3 times a week when on the road (who's the woman? come clean!)" Of course, the data miners would never do this, and would probably try damned hard to make sure that it never got out like this.
Still, anyone with enough money can poison the well, by "accidentally" leaking selected data they've purchased from these data whores.
It is now up to us to boot these scoundrels out of office.
In favor of whom, exactly? As Chomsky points out, the problem with attacking the head is that another one will sprout.
For example, if you kill the President of the United States or assassinate the CEO of General Electric, they'll just get someone else who has pretty much the same interests as the previous guy.
Short of broader reforms, there really isn't any hope. As much as I'd love to see a guy like Ralph Nader as President, I know it's not going to happen.
Throwing the scoundrels out will just win us a new set of scoundrels to howl about.
Slashdot Mirror
> We need a more intelligent, better-educated populace!
You will never get them in the United States as long as being "smart" isn't "cool". Right now, being openly intelligent is a social death sentence in many schools. Even with the new classes and the new teachers, how many kids are going to go for broke academically, knowing what it could mean socially?
Ok, the picture on that page looks like some woman who's just had her head bashed into the shower tiles. She's obviously dead, given that blissful-but-unmoving gaze. Microsoft supports domestic violence against women and murder? Er...
This makes me sad. Yes, it's lame that companies are profiting off this information. On the other hand, I would have killed to have this kind of thing around when I was a kid. Number theory? Graph theory? Oh, here, check out these notes from Ma119. I'm in favor of any fair solution that allows the curious kid to get his hands on this sort of thing. Preserving intellectual property rights comes in a close second.
Once upon a time contracts were infrequent things. You signed a contract when you sold your house, maybe you signed a marriage license or other official documents. You could definitely say that what you signed was Important.
Over time, the signature gets more play. Sign this W2. Sign this NDA. Fill out our Video Rental Membership Form. Don't forget your tax return... Oh, could you sign this liability release?
Still, there was a natural barrier to presenting a contract. You had to provide the paper, get the signature, keep a copy on file, etc. Contracts for Stupid Shit didn't exist. No more.
Now anything, no matter how stupid, can have a contract associated with it. Visit our website? First agree to our terms. Shop at our grocery store? Please touch this touch-screen first. The thing that distresses me about this, aside from the forgery aspect, is that it introduces a galaxy of new contracts into my world. Contracts I don't want to review, don't want to think about, and don't want to sign. Now I can sign them with a button.
It would be nice to use technology to free me from this. How? For one, a proxy server that recognizes these "agreements" and "agrees" to them. Would this be legal? Right now, it's my best hope, next to Refusing to Sign.
For the new python user, what are the pros and cons of using the python.org version versus the pythonlabs.com version? Which is more current, and which is closer to the language specification? Is python.org's hosting The Python Consortium a real sign, or the equivalent of "People For Fair Play in Elections", ie semi-bogus.
I'd love to hear the skinny from an experienced developer.
If I'm Microsoft and I donate 1000 copies of Microsoft Blonk to a non-profit, I can deduct the price of Blonk on my taxes. This money-laundering trick is used to make the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation smell sweet like flowers.
If I'm an open source developer and I donate an infinite number of copies of FreeBlonk to non-profits all over the world, I can't deduct anything. What's the difference here? Arguably, the latter can have much greater value. The software would free you from the Blonk 2000, BlonkPro, etc. path of wasting money, and this is important in a non-profit, right? The software could even be superior. Still, it has no retail value.
What's one solution? One could go the way RedHat and many other companies have done. Package the software and sell it, with support, and donate a healthy number. Still, some applications are too niche to garner a healthy (for the IRS) number of sales, and who's going to buy something they can get for free? Only a few.
What's to be done?
I think automated warfare is coming, and it's gonna be messy. What's the current state of these things, anyway? The autocannons from the director's cut of Aliens are little more than an academic exercise at this point. Is anyone building them? Terrorists can take advantage of death via remote control. I don't trust the anyone to make these hack-proof, and the consequences are pretty lethal.
This is funny, but some people will think it's not a joke. If so, just remember that creating booby traps and destructive devices (without a license) is a state and/or federal felony.
Actually, the bug was DOS-related, and on Bugtraq. But yes, DOS==secure.
It hadn't been slashdotted in the traditional sense, true. However...
There are a lot of stupid people on slashdot. Sure, there are a lot of smart people, too, but you get a lot of people wondering what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of Natalie Portmans with hot grits on their penis birds. What the lack in clue they make up for in volume.
Idiots, basically. Script kiddies and the persistently annoying who're more interested in doodling than discussions.
Every time slashdot mentioned kuro5hin, it brought it one step closer to death.
Also, the pictures on the front page of the site are misleading. See one next to a desktop G4, and it looks like a washing machine.
It's only 19.5cm square and 24.8cm tall (7.7 inches square and 9.8 inches tall).
It weighs 14 pounds. Think "square bowling ball". If not for the pop-up handle, you could just hold it with two hands.
The CD "upgrade" was, in its own way, a big swindle.
Negativland wrote an excellent article covering CDs: Shiny, Aluminum, Plastic, and Digital.
The short version is: instead of letting the market decide, the record companies muscled distributors into going to CDs.
I can get the instructions for how to build an ANFO truck bomb on the web, but I can't go to loseyourmoney.com and get the instructions for how to play their games? Both are simply instructions for informational purposes only. Following them may or may not be illegal. What would someone who was researching these sites do? Get an overseas ISP? I wish the gummint would stop trying to protect the stupid from themselves.
Subpoena
XML is fine. XML is lovely. But putting unencrypted (or weakly encrypted) XML on Microsoft's servers is asking for severe amounts of pain.
Even if it's strongly encrypted, the court may be able to ask you for your key. It's much better to do private client-to-client transfers of this sort of data.
Still, that only works if Microsoft packages it as several discrete functions working together, instead of a monolithic GUI. We all know which way they tend to take these things, though.
Possibly a more interesting design would use the junk itself for propulsion. It would only work against reasonably small stuff, but if it can grab it and throw it into an unstable orbit, well, the satellite gets a push in the opposite direction.
If it can see many pieces of space junk, then it can actually throw one piece and use the push to put it into position to grab another piece. It'd need a backup thruster, in case something goes wrong, but if something like this was, say, solar powered and took its time between throws, it could be in space for quite a while.
Last night at Circuit City (yeah, I know...) I was asked to sign my credit card slip on one of those damned pen tablets. I refused, claiming that it was against my religion (Western Sect Freedonianism). She just made a photocopy instead, but it was a nuisance.
I couldn't figure out why I was so annoyed then, but now I understand better. A system like this could ensure that my signature looks the same *and* is produced with some kind of similar beat/regularity.
I notice that banks have little fingerprint pads now, too, like you're a criminal or something. Woo! I really do hope that more atheists "get religion", specifically one that says little more than "leave me the fuck alone and stop trying to measure my dick size".
My comment was intended as humor. While I'm sure that he has the resources to build or buy a nuclear weapon, I don't think he has the desire, especially when weighed against the risks.
Bill Gates is not an evil genius, but, pretending he is makes for Quality Humor, IMO.
Well, a report from MSNBC suggest the missing data is more likely related to the wildfire that took place recently than espionage.
If we discover in the next few weeks that Bill Gates has full nuclear capability, well, that's just a big coincidence.
In my opinion, error correcting codes are the most important algorithm of this century.
Without them, hard drives would be useless or contain 1/3 of the data or less (mirroring isn't enough, since you don't know whether the mirror or the original got corrupted). Digital phones would suffer the same kind of audio glitches that analog phones do.
An transmission technology, in fact, would suffer without ECCs, so it's rather surprising that they're not on this list.
I don't want Office for Linux. I can deal with Office for Windows with files saved in. Leave it to other people to write the demanglers.
Of course, this is such a good idea, it'll never happen.
Which is more threatening? A web browser which can leverage extra features of the operating system, or a web browser that can leverage extra features of applications?
What on earth would a "Microsoft enhanced" web browser do that it doesn't already do now? All the networking stuff is open enough, because it's basically a hacked up version of Unix networking. If the browser draws a little faster because it calls __chunder32_WinBlitBrowserCrap(), well, it doesn't really make that much of a difference to the end-user.
On the other hand, if it's tightly integrated with Office, Excel, and all the other business applications, that's just another huge nail in Netscape's coffin, because it's the "gotta have" application for all the Office Lusers.
Black Knight 2000 was a great game all around. Remember the catchy theme song? W = woman's voice, B = Black Knight (this is CNN) W: You've got the power. B: Ha ha ha ha W: You've got the might. B: No way. W: Get ready for battle. B: Give me your money. W: Beat the Black Knight! Plus, the magnasave and an utterly playable upper deck (ie doesn't drain after 3 seconds every time) make this one a lot of fun. High Speed and any game I could get an extra credit on were also fun.
- Luke Thompson, New Times LA
And many more! Ok, and 3 more. So certainly, one of these five is deserving of free stuff, eh?Bob Graham, SF Chronicle
Joe Sixpack isn't generally thinking about this sort of thing enough to figure out why this might be bad. Sure, if he reads something like Database Nation it'll be crystal clear, but that's not going to happen.
The only way to get this message out is if the mass media breaks it in a big way (yeah, the same ones who get paid by big marketing firms), or via some really embarrassing guerrilla action.
For example, a website screaming: "Congressman Albertson has hemmrhoids, and gets laid about 1 time a month at home, but 3 times a week when on the road (who's the woman? come clean!)" Of course, the data miners would never do this, and would probably try damned hard to make sure that it never got out like this.
Still, anyone with enough money can poison the well, by "accidentally" leaking selected data they've purchased from these data whores.
It is now up to us to boot these scoundrels out of office.
In favor of whom, exactly? As Chomsky points out, the problem with attacking the head is that another one will sprout.
For example, if you kill the President of the United States or assassinate the CEO of General Electric, they'll just get someone else who has pretty much the same interests as the previous guy.
Short of broader reforms, there really isn't any hope. As much as I'd love to see a guy like Ralph Nader as President, I know it's not going to happen.
Throwing the scoundrels out will just win us a new set of scoundrels to howl about.