Just to add something: what's the big deal with pressing Fn?
If the Fn key was in a more convenient location, on the right side of the leyboard, so I could hit FnHome or FnPgDn with one hand, I suppose it wouldn't be a problem.
And just to add something, Home and End DO work correctly in Windows Explorer and in IE. I guess it's just Word brokenness that treats them as beginning and end of line.
I understand that some people using the lowest common denominator operating system are under that misapprehension, but that only started with the introduction of Microsoft Word. Traditionally, and on other platforms, home moves to the beginning of the document, and end moves to the bottom of the document.
Fn+Arrows is Page Up/Page Down/Home/End. It's rather nice.
Please tell me you don't actually LIKE having to hit Fn to get to those keys. God, that's exactly the thing I'm complaining about.
Here's a picture of the mck-86. The arrangement of home, page-up, page-down, and end is nearly ideal, and wrap nicely around the inverted-T cursor keys.
You could add those things as a separate set of very small buttons but since most decent notebooks already divde all available space between the keyboard, the trackpad and the hand rests it's unlikely that you can find a proper space without having to make other sacrifices.
Many notebooks have used this approach very effectively, and for all but the very smallest netbooks there really is ample room to "double up" the function keys. However, that's really a secondary issue. It's not those key combinations that I'm complaining about.
See... if Fn-keys were ONLY used for these kinds of meta-functions I wouldn't gripe as much, but they're not. Personally, I rarely use these keys... I prefer to use normal OS and application interfaces to do things like adjusting volume or screen size. But I DO use page-up, home, and other functions that are routinely shoved off to Fn-keys on a regular basis and every time I have to hit Fn to get one it burns.
You can fit all the keys you really need on a laptop-size keyboard, full sized keys, too... with no Fn key. I had a very nice "compact" desktop keyboard made by Adesso that had a near-ideal layout, with no scaled down keys and no Fn keys. Unfortunately this keyboard is no longer available, and my last one broke a couple of years ago. If anyone knows a reliable source for the Adesso MCK-86 (or MCK-84), I'd love to hear about it.
The US government shows up with a warrant for a user. Google gives them access.
Google set up a server so the Chinese government could show up with authorization and get access to a user's information.
The Chinese hacked into that server, either because waiting for authorization was too much of a bother, or because they wanted to go on a fishing expedition.
it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity
If the companies with the largest portfolios of new patents in the US include Microsoft, and given a few of the Microsoft patents highlighted in Slashdot over the year... I think the US is worse off than the numbers make it sound.
Tesla blacked out Colorado Springs trying to get enough power into the air to make broadcast power work. He thought aliens were talking to him. He was a genius, but he was also missing a few screws.
Google's role ends the moment you purchase the product (except for warranty and support issues, which apparently they are keen to pass along to HTC).
If you paid Google full price for it, yes. If you paid the subsidized price, Google's role only ends when T-Mobile pays them the rest. When does that happen? That's between Google and T-Mobile, but how much you want to bet it's after 120 days?
Google is reimbursed by T-Mobile. If they're reimbursed by you, then T-Mobile doesn't owe them anything, so why is T-mobile charging you an early termination fee?
A bit of background. A few years ago I got a Smartphone, a T-Mobile Smartphone, but not from T-Mobile. I wanted to get service from T-Mobile because that was the only way at the time you could get software updates. So I go to the T-Mobile store, and ask for a month-to-month contract, for THIS phone. I had it with me, they knew I was going to use my own phone.
No problem.
Then they asked for a $200 deposit.
For what?
In case I terminated the contract before two years are up.
But it's month to month.
Yes, but you see, I had to pay for the phone.
But I already had a phone.
But the contract came with one.
I didn't want it.
That's OK, I didn't have to take it, but I had to pay for it anyway.
Needless to say, I walked out without a cellphone contract.
So... T-Mobile is perfectly prepared to charge you an ETF for a phone you never bought from them, that doesn't come out of their pocket. I strongly suspect that 120 days is when Google gets the $350 from T-Mobile, and any ETF T-Mobile is charging before that point is just them up to their old tricks. I'm sure that any other US carrier would do the same thing, I'm not ragging on T-Mobile here, I'm ragging on the whole cellphone industry.
It's not the Google ETF that's the problem, it's the T-Mobile one. You're buying the phone from Google, not T-Mobile. If you trigger Google's early termination fee, T-Mobile shouldn't be out of pocket at all, and shouldn't be charging you anything.
So, instead of a single, well documented, easy to break DRM scheme we have multiple obscure DRM schemes with less documentation then a Microsoft product.
No, instead of a single, obscure DRM scheme (DRM used as copy protection has to be obscure by definition, because you're giving the attacker the cyphertext, the algorithm, and the key... the only protection from attack is to obscure the key or the algorithm) that's accepted by everyone and doesn't get pushback from consumers because it just works, we have multiple schemes all protecting the same content (so as soon as you break one you don't need to break the others), universally hated by the consumer (so there's an economic cost to using any DRM at all), and not protected by boobytraps and tilt switches in the Windows kernel (so the digital hole remains open).
Apple are the last people I'd trust to help in the fight against DRM.
This isn't about trust or motivation, this is about the results of their actions. The results of their actions, regardless of their motivation, are that DRM-free music is now the standard. Whether they mean to be a spoiler or not, so long as they *are* a spoiler I don't care why they're doing it.
The difference between this format war and the last one is that Blu Ray, while picking up speed - is not quite at the same point DVD's were when Blu Ray/HD DVD were introduced.
The real difference is that it's software, not hardware. There's nothing stopping you from installing both players on your PC, or Sony licensing both codecs and wrappers for their TVs. You don't HAVE to cook all your eggs in one pan.
With the multiyear HD DVD Blu-ray battle still a recent memory, we have a new standards face off in video, just as we do in eBooks, and just as it looks like we may in on-line print, where a new consortium led by the News Corporation and others is launching a standards-based "digital newsstand." All of these devices, of course, are targeted at you and I, and each has the potential to not only extend the woes of the music/video/print vendors behind these standards battles, but to waste your money and mine as well.
Does that strike you as a shame?
Hell no. The last thing we need is easy to use, standardized DRM. Apple derailed Microsoft's attempt to make Plays for Sure the boot stamping in the face of the music lover, forever, by making sure NOBODY won the music DRM wars. It looks like they're up to their loveable tricks again, and I salute them for it. A fragmented, hard to use, unreliable DRM ecosystem is to the consumer's benefit in the long term.
I really think you're missing my original point, which was about MySQL... since MySQL was owned by a specific company and was licensed in such a way that it actually mattered who owned it, that company was a vulnerability. PostgreSQL is not exposed this way because the license doesn't give the copyright owner the ability to restrict the fork in any meaningful way.
This is a problem with dual licensing, one that (for example) Qt avoided because Trolltech gave the Free Qt foundation the right to release Qt under the BSD license if Trolltech stopped its development. Monty could have given MySQL an escape clause like that, but either he didn't think of it or he thought it was giving up too much control.
Sounds like he's cribbed stuff from Greg Egan. "For example, the requirement of the diffeomorphism invariance is a bulk constraint needed to eliminate unphysical degrees of freedom of the spin-two fields. But this argument only makes sense if you start with bulk spin-two fields with bulk Lorentz indices." sounds pretty much like the debate in Schild's Ladder about spin networks and the derivation of the Sarumpaet Rules.
Pick a browser with a more closed ecosystem instead
Actually, I use Camino. It's based on Gecko, but with a native OS X shell. Unfortunately, that's not an option for Windows. Well, unless Seamonkey goes to a more native and less scripted shell, that is.
leave the powerful addon framework for those of us who need or want it
What on earth are you on about now? The article is about Seamonkey, not Firefox. Firefox will continue down its merry path towards the kind of security environment previously only available in Internet Explorer, whether or not Seamonkey ditches the Firefox extension framework for a less ambitious one.
As for Chrome, I'm not interested in it until Google changes their terms of service and makes their updater a native application instead of a set of extensions that let a remote site install software on your computer without notification or approval.
Of course, making accidental vulnerabilities harder is a god start by itself.
And if they do it right, make it require an explicit action from OUTSIDE the web page to initiate installation, they will avoid things like zero-interaction remote execution vulnerabilities. That would be nice.
I have never liked the Firefox design, and I have never trusted the XPI installer mechanism. Switching to an extension mechanism that doesn't open up the whole performance and security bag of worms the Firefox extensions do would be worth trying.
OK, any company can shut down a project. Or sell it, or whatever. The point is that MySQL was dual-licensed proprietary+GPL and once it was sold to Sun the fate of the proprietary license was the fate of Sun.
PostgreSQL is BSD licensed. So it doesn't need a dual license strategy to allow it to be used in the ways that MySQL's proprietary license let it be used. Which means it's at less risk because you *can't* own it the way Sun could own MySQL.
In any case, doesn't Oracle pretty much already own MySQL's balls because they own InnoDB?
The whole idea that Psystar was using strong DRM to protect their code to strip the honor-system-level protections from OS X installs was mind-meltingly ironic in the first place. The fact that they're so quickly demonstrating why buying anything protected by strong DRM is a bad idea just adds salt to the dish.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to add something: what's the big deal with pressing Fn?
If the Fn key was in a more convenient location, on the right side of the leyboard, so I could hit FnHome or FnPgDn with one hand, I suppose it wouldn't be a problem.
And just to add something, Home and End DO work correctly in Windows Explorer and in IE. I guess it's just Word brokenness that treats them as beginning and end of line.
I think you've ignored the part about the numpad.
Who uses the numpad?
Home/End move left/right.
I understand that some people using the lowest common denominator operating system are under that misapprehension, but that only started with the introduction of Microsoft Word. Traditionally, and on other platforms, home moves to the beginning of the document, and end moves to the bottom of the document.
Fn+Arrows is Page Up/Page Down/Home/End. It's rather nice.
Please tell me you don't actually LIKE having to hit Fn to get to those keys. God, that's exactly the thing I'm complaining about.
Here's a picture of the mck-86. The arrangement of home, page-up, page-down, and end is nearly ideal, and wrap nicely around the inverted-T cursor keys.
You could add those things as a separate set of very small buttons but since most decent notebooks already divde all available space between the keyboard, the trackpad and the hand rests it's unlikely that you can find a proper space without having to make other sacrifices.
Many notebooks have used this approach very effectively, and for all but the very smallest netbooks there really is ample room to "double up" the function keys. However, that's really a secondary issue. It's not those key combinations that I'm complaining about.
See... if Fn-keys were ONLY used for these kinds of meta-functions I wouldn't gripe as much, but they're not. Personally, I rarely use these keys... I prefer to use normal OS and application interfaces to do things like adjusting volume or screen size. But I DO use page-up, home, and other functions that are routinely shoved off to Fn-keys on a regular basis and every time I have to hit Fn to get one it burns.
You can fit all the keys you really need on a laptop-size keyboard, full sized keys, too... with no Fn key. I had a very nice "compact" desktop keyboard made by Adesso that had a near-ideal layout, with no scaled down keys and no Fn keys. Unfortunately this keyboard is no longer available, and my last one broke a couple of years ago. If anyone knows a reliable source for the Adesso MCK-86 (or MCK-84), I'd love to hear about it.
The US government shows up with a warrant for a user. Google gives them access.
Google set up a server so the Chinese government could show up with authorization and get access to a user's information.
The Chinese hacked into that server, either because waiting for authorization was too much of a bother, or because they wanted to go on a fishing expedition.
it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity
If the companies with the largest portfolios of new patents in the US include Microsoft, and given a few of the Microsoft patents highlighted in Slashdot over the year... I think the US is worse off than the numbers make it sound.
Tesla blacked out Colorado Springs trying to get enough power into the air to make broadcast power work. He thought aliens were talking to him. He was a genius, but he was also missing a few screws.
Google's role ends the moment you purchase the product (except for warranty and support issues, which apparently they are keen to pass along to HTC).
If you paid Google full price for it, yes. If you paid the subsidized price, Google's role only ends when T-Mobile pays them the rest. When does that happen? That's between Google and T-Mobile, but how much you want to bet it's after 120 days?
Google is reimbursed by T-Mobile. If they're reimbursed by you, then T-Mobile doesn't owe them anything, so why is T-mobile charging you an early termination fee?
A bit of background. A few years ago I got a Smartphone, a T-Mobile Smartphone, but not from T-Mobile. I wanted to get service from T-Mobile because that was the only way at the time you could get software updates. So I go to the T-Mobile store, and ask for a month-to-month contract, for THIS phone. I had it with me, they knew I was going to use my own phone.
No problem.
Then they asked for a $200 deposit.
For what?
In case I terminated the contract before two years are up.
But it's month to month.
Yes, but you see, I had to pay for the phone.
But I already had a phone.
But the contract came with one.
I didn't want it.
That's OK, I didn't have to take it, but I had to pay for it anyway.
Needless to say, I walked out without a cellphone contract.
So... T-Mobile is perfectly prepared to charge you an ETF for a phone you never bought from them, that doesn't come out of their pocket. I strongly suspect that 120 days is when Google gets the $350 from T-Mobile, and any ETF T-Mobile is charging before that point is just them up to their old tricks. I'm sure that any other US carrier would do the same thing, I'm not ragging on T-Mobile here, I'm ragging on the whole cellphone industry.
It's not the Google ETF that's the problem, it's the T-Mobile one. You're buying the phone from Google, not T-Mobile. If you trigger Google's early termination fee, T-Mobile shouldn't be out of pocket at all, and shouldn't be charging you anything.
So, instead of a single, well documented, easy to break DRM scheme we have multiple obscure DRM schemes with less documentation then a Microsoft product.
No, instead of a single, obscure DRM scheme (DRM used as copy protection has to be obscure by definition, because you're giving the attacker the cyphertext, the algorithm, and the key... the only protection from attack is to obscure the key or the algorithm) that's accepted by everyone and doesn't get pushback from consumers because it just works, we have multiple schemes all protecting the same content (so as soon as you break one you don't need to break the others), universally hated by the consumer (so there's an economic cost to using any DRM at all), and not protected by boobytraps and tilt switches in the Windows kernel (so the digital hole remains open).
Apple are the last people I'd trust to help in the fight against DRM.
This isn't about trust or motivation, this is about the results of their actions. The results of their actions, regardless of their motivation, are that DRM-free music is now the standard. Whether they mean to be a spoiler or not, so long as they *are* a spoiler I don't care why they're doing it.
Reboot "Reboot"!
How about People of the Wind, by Poul Anderson? Make the CGI people REALLY stretch themselves instead of just painting humans blue.
The difference between this format war and the last one is that Blu Ray, while picking up speed - is not quite at the same point DVD's were when Blu Ray/HD DVD were introduced.
The real difference is that it's software, not hardware. There's nothing stopping you from installing both players on your PC, or Sony licensing both codecs and wrappers for their TVs. You don't HAVE to cook all your eggs in one pan.
With the multiyear HD DVD Blu-ray battle still a recent memory, we have a new standards face off in video, just as we do in eBooks, and just as it looks like we may in on-line print, where a new consortium led by the News Corporation and others is launching a standards-based "digital newsstand." All of these devices, of course, are targeted at you and I, and each has the potential to not only extend the woes of the music/video/print vendors behind these standards battles, but to waste your money and mine as well.
Does that strike you as a shame?
Hell no. The last thing we need is easy to use, standardized DRM. Apple derailed Microsoft's attempt to make Plays for Sure the boot stamping in the face of the music lover, forever, by making sure NOBODY won the music DRM wars. It looks like they're up to their loveable tricks again, and I salute them for it. A fragmented, hard to use, unreliable DRM ecosystem is to the consumer's benefit in the long term.
I really think you're missing my original point, which was about MySQL... since MySQL was owned by a specific company and was licensed in such a way that it actually mattered who owned it, that company was a vulnerability. PostgreSQL is not exposed this way because the license doesn't give the copyright owner the ability to restrict the fork in any meaningful way.
This is a problem with dual licensing, one that (for example) Qt avoided because Trolltech gave the Free Qt foundation the right to release Qt under the BSD license if Trolltech stopped its development. Monty could have given MySQL an escape clause like that, but either he didn't think of it or he thought it was giving up too much control.
Sounds like he's cribbed stuff from Greg Egan. "For example, the requirement of the diffeomorphism invariance is a bulk constraint needed to eliminate unphysical degrees of freedom of the spin-two fields. But this argument only makes sense if you start with bulk spin-two fields with bulk Lorentz indices." sounds pretty much like the debate in Schild's Ladder about spin networks and the derivation of the Sarumpaet Rules.
Pick a browser with a more closed ecosystem instead
Actually, I use Camino. It's based on Gecko, but with a native OS X shell. Unfortunately, that's not an option for Windows. Well, unless Seamonkey goes to a more native and less scripted shell, that is.
leave the powerful addon framework for those of us who need or want it
What on earth are you on about now? The article is about Seamonkey, not Firefox. Firefox will continue down its merry path towards the kind of security environment previously only available in Internet Explorer, whether or not Seamonkey ditches the Firefox extension framework for a less ambitious one.
As for Chrome, I'm not interested in it until Google changes their terms of service and makes their updater a native application instead of a set of extensions that let a remote site install software on your computer without notification or approval.
the LOLcat Generation
iVote for this one.
Of course, making accidental vulnerabilities harder is a god start by itself.
And if they do it right, make it require an explicit action from OUTSIDE the web page to initiate installation, they will avoid things like zero-interaction remote execution vulnerabilities. That would be nice.
I have never liked the Firefox design, and I have never trusted the XPI installer mechanism. Switching to an extension mechanism that doesn't open up the whole performance and security bag of worms the Firefox extensions do would be worth trying.
OK, any company can shut down a project. Or sell it, or whatever. The point is that MySQL was dual-licensed proprietary+GPL and once it was sold to Sun the fate of the proprietary license was the fate of Sun.
PostgreSQL is BSD licensed. So it doesn't need a dual license strategy to allow it to be used in the ways that MySQL's proprietary license let it be used. Which means it's at less risk because you *can't* own it the way Sun could own MySQL.
In any case, doesn't Oracle pretty much already own MySQL's balls because they own InnoDB?
You fail irony forever.
The whole idea that Psystar was using strong DRM to protect their code to strip the honor-system-level protections from OS X installs was mind-meltingly ironic in the first place. The fact that they're so quickly demonstrating why buying anything protected by strong DRM is a bad idea just adds salt to the dish.