I think this is a great idea, and I don't know why this kind of thing wasn't implemented earlier. The so-called "hackers" that this targets are the ones that won't know the difference between a honeypot and won't care. If these jerks know that there is a possibility of them being setup, I don't think they will be so ready to go randomly try to screw people over.
Its really interesting, because I used to be the type of person that would not neccessarily approve of such a trap in the name of protecting the curious individual who wanted to see what was out there. But the fact is, the people doing these things are becoming too big of a problem. And it seems that the whole purpose of snooping around has been sort of eliminated with the open source movement and Linux. Why snoop around when you can have your own *nix box with just about anything available at your fingertips, for free?
Well, on my school's network many of the computers have some kind of load-sharing, where any given name might send a person to more than one computer. Since this is the case, the key "changes" quite a bit. There is, of course an easy solution to this, but if someone wants to go to the least-busy computer, they might expect to see a key change quite frequently.
Call me crazy, but maybe the fact that the news media is getting so big that all of the news and opinions are coming from one place disturbs me a little bit more than a chat client protocol. I find it hard to understand why this small issue is such a big deal in this case. Shouldn't people be more worried about the monopoly on information distribution methods that is occuring?
Just kidding, but seriously, I don't think everyone here reading slashdot thinks that the world would function if every piece of software on this earth was completely free.
I actually applaud and am amazed that there even exists a GNU compiler, but then again from what I've read about it, its pretty outdated as far as front and back-end optimizations and intermediate languages.
I mean, if you depended on your livlihood to make money as a programmer, would you really want to give every innovation you came up with away for free right away? I'd want to make at least a little bit of money on it first. I think most/.'ers would agree with that too.
I thought Amiga sorta died out. I was pretty sure that a few years ago, Newtek bought them out because they needed to keep them alive because of their video toaster application (ever seen Babylon 5? 100% toasters. Farms of amigas.)
Which, BTW, when I worked on a toaster in my school's media lab, it never failed that it would crash in the middle of a rendering session that failed if it was at all interrerupted (and took on the order of 8-24 hours to complete).
I am not bashing Amiga, I just thought that they had sorta died with the old days of future crew demos and bulletin boards.
I am curious, for those Biology buffs out there (I suck at it), how revealing is genetic code to understanding how things are made? What do I mean? Well, for example, if you looked at artificial intelligence, some methods (decision trees, bayesian belief networks) show you as a person information about how decisions are being come to, but others (neural networks, genetic algorithms) tend to be more of a black box.
By mapping the genome, are we actually figuring out the underlying structure of what every gene serves to do in a given plant? (more like a decision tree) or are we just figuring out in a vague way what groups of genes do what (more like a bayesian belief net)?
(Obviously, a having the understanding at the "neural net" level implies no mapping at all, so it can't be like that.)
Maybe someone can explain this one. The whole concept that is moving this GPL / Open Source kind of idea is the concept of free-flowing information. If this is the case, then why is it that Linux is so chasmotically divided? It seems most people are more interested in flaming other Distros then contributing to the movement. In other words, most people seem to be more interested in the fact that they don't have to pay for all the stuff on their desktop (terminal). Perhaps if the true nature of open source permeated into more people's brains, we wouldn't have this big of a problem. Then again, I am fairly new to Linux/Unix so I may not know what I am talking about, however as a newbie, I find it strange that each Linux distribution can't agree on where to put startup files, or the kernel source, libraries, etc. or on a a standard packaging system that works well for everyone. I like variety and choice as much as the next person, but as a matter of practicality, doesn't it make sense to agree on certain basic things?
What does this have to do with open sourcing Be? Maybe not much, except the observation that it may just add more "shit to the pot", making the Linux movement even more fragmented than it already is.
And just so that I don't get flamed all to hell, I should mention that I love Linux/BSD/Unix. It is a great system to work in, and after many years, I finally enjoy computing again. Despite my gripes, I still love what is going on, and I hope that I can make contributions to the "pool" when I learn more.
Please, could someone correct me on this, if I am wrong, but it seems to me that this adds another layer on top of the existing UI of windows, so has no possible way of making it faster, less problematic, etc. I mean, I like GNOME too; its pretty neat, but there is nothing horribly wrong with the Windows GUI. It is probably more intuitive than GNOME, actually. So if there is no speed benefit or stability benefit from having this window-manager, then what is the point excactly?
If you really like Unix, but have to run windows, do what one of my professors do, and run evey GNU application you can find. (GCC, Emacs, etc) her desktop looks like a free software smorgasbord, and there's no _additional_ layer of interface between her and her computer.
You contend that the government should not tax behaviour that it "doesn't like" and perhaps you are right, partially.
However, I think that it is appropriate to use this tactic in some situations. Why? Because the fact of the matter is that capitalism is based on a consumer-supplier relationship, and because of this, certain factors of society are ignored. One of the most important factors being ignored is the environment. If companies have no monetary reason to lessen the amount they pollute our air, they aren't going to do it! And don't you think they should pay revenue for taking away from the habitability of our earth? I think so.
Capitalism is a great economic theory, as our history demonstrates pretty well, but it isn't the best social theory, so it needs to be curbed by government in ways that keep it from getting out of control. Capitalism as a tenet tends to think fairly short-term, and though it leads to many smart decisions/actions, it does not as often lead to wise ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Its really interesting, because I used to be the type of person that would not neccessarily approve of such a trap in the name of protecting the curious individual who wanted to see what was out there. But the fact is, the people doing these things are becoming too big of a problem. And it seems that the whole purpose of snooping around has been sort of eliminated with the open source movement and Linux. Why snoop around when you can have your own *nix box with just about anything available at your fingertips, for free?
Well, on my school's network many of the computers have some kind of load-sharing, where any given name might send a person to more than one computer. Since this is the case, the key "changes" quite a bit. There is, of course an easy solution to this, but if someone wants to go to the least-busy computer, they might expect to see a key change quite frequently.
Call me crazy, but maybe the fact that the news media is getting so big that all of the news and opinions are coming from one place disturbs me a little bit more than a chat client protocol. I find it hard to understand why this small issue is such a big deal in this case. Shouldn't people be more worried about the monopoly on information distribution methods that is occuring?
Just kidding, but seriously, I don't think everyone here reading slashdot thinks that the world would function if every piece of software on this earth was completely free.
I actually applaud and am amazed that there even exists a GNU compiler, but then again from what I've read about it, its pretty outdated as far as front and back-end optimizations and intermediate languages.
I mean, if you depended on your livlihood to make money as a programmer, would you really want to give every innovation you came up with away for free right away? I'd want to make at least a little bit of money on it first. I think most /.'ers would agree with that too.
Which, BTW, when I worked on a toaster in my school's media lab, it never failed that it would crash in the middle of a rendering session that failed if it was at all interrerupted (and took on the order of 8-24 hours to complete).
I am not bashing Amiga, I just thought that they had sorta died with the old days of future crew demos and bulletin boards.
By mapping the genome, are we actually figuring out the underlying structure of what every gene serves to do in a given plant? (more like a decision tree) or are we just figuring out in a vague way what groups of genes do what (more like a bayesian belief net)?
(Obviously, a having the understanding at the "neural net" level implies no mapping at all, so it can't be like that.)
What does this have to do with open sourcing Be? Maybe not much, except the observation that it may just add more "shit to the pot", making the Linux movement even more fragmented than it already is.
And just so that I don't get flamed all to hell, I should mention that I love Linux/BSD/Unix. It is a great system to work in, and after many years, I finally enjoy computing again. Despite my gripes, I still love what is going on, and I hope that I can make contributions to the "pool" when I learn more.
If you really like Unix, but have to run windows, do what one of my professors do, and run evey GNU application you can find. (GCC, Emacs, etc) her desktop looks like a free software smorgasbord, and there's no _additional_ layer of interface between her and her computer.
However, I think that it is appropriate to use this tactic in some situations. Why? Because the fact of the matter is that capitalism is based on a consumer-supplier relationship, and because of this, certain factors of society are ignored. One of the most important factors being ignored is the environment. If companies have no monetary reason to lessen the amount they pollute our air, they aren't going to do it! And don't you think they should pay revenue for taking away from the habitability of our earth? I think so.
Capitalism is a great economic theory, as our history demonstrates pretty well, but it isn't the best social theory, so it needs to be curbed by government in ways that keep it from getting out of control. Capitalism as a tenet tends to think fairly short-term, and though it leads to many smart decisions/actions, it does not as often lead to wise ones.