Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Really, I'm appalled when stories like this come up and the great majority of/. posters cry foul.
The reality of the situation is, under the alleged crime(s) he committed, he has yet to be convicted. As such, he is entitled to be treated justly and without contempt, at least WRT the current situation.
As for his claim that there's no wrong-doing on his part, while then saying that the law hasn't yet passed - this is not a contradiction, at all, as the/. submitter implies. Until those things are made illegal, they are still legal and thus not "wrong," in the eyes of the law. That does of course fall to the ground in situations where the "wrong-doing," was initiated/perpetuated through fraud or other illicit activities, but the action in question would still not be wrong because it is not proscribed.
From my experience, it is common for shirts that are not tailored well (or at all), and thus loose-fitting, to be pinched behind the back - a sort of taking up of slack in the shirt, so that your forward appearance is as crisp and clean as possible. I had a few modeling sessions (no, I'm no looker - it was a face-of-the-corporation thing for PR/advertising). Wasn't there a news anchor many years ago that admitted to sitting on his shirttails, his secret for keeping the unwanted billowing out of his camera view? In my military service, we were encouraged to tuck our dress shirts into our briefs/boxers to achieve a similar effect.
To me, that's what this looks like, since the bulge appears more of a thick cable, like the folding or rolling of cloth, than a black box or the uniform displacement of a flack jacket.
Unfortunately, the exact parody in question is not currently available. I did find it interesting that one or more of the commenters (on both sides, mind you) suggested that the story was too real and thus unable to distinguish as parody. I fail to see how this is DMCA related, though; am I missing something, or wouldn't the blogger have had to defeat some CNN protection mechanism or be releasing information about protection processes at CNN to be guilty of a DMCA violation? (I'm too lazy to go read the DMCA, again, so somebody just tell me, please)
I think that libel would be a better case for CNN to make; certainly they are aware of what happened to Diebold recently? It would certainly make me think twice before seeking relief under DMCA.
The blogger should have done this parody on CBS, instead. Oh, wait, lying about and manufacturing information, nevermind. Then it really would be indistinguishable from real life.
I almost agree with you, here. It doesn't get any closer than Bush vs. Gore, but I don't think we're going to see a landslide for another 12 years. In other words, get used to these legal battles.
You lose me when you start with a salient point, but conclude with partisan BS. There were dozens of lawsuits filed by/on behalf of Bush and Gore, with respect to different issues, in Florida. Republicans initiated many of these suits, but Democrats initiated the rest. IIRC, the majority of these suits were brought by Democrats, and many of them had little or no factual or legal basis whatsoever.
And, let's not forget, we do NOT live in a democracy, so the tired battle cry of "Gore won the popular vote," means nothing. While we can sit here and maybe even be strangely comfortable with a purely democratic system amongst ourselves, a relatively small community of people that share a number of common ideals, the situation is a bit more complex when you take into account the number of people that vote purely on emotion/ego/peer-pressure. Surely, you don't want to bow to the popular opinion of all the people that think Farenheit 9/11 is an unbiased, upstanding representation of facts, just as you probably don't want to subjugate yourself to the will of people that hate Kerry solely based on his post-war activities.
Now, as you are reading this and thinking about what a Republican puppet I am, you can realize that the Electoral College is there to insulate you somewhat from the massive defection that might be caused by my release of a video showing Kerry having goat.cx with a bunch of ketchup bottles, while still giving a great deal more than lip service to your trumpet about democratic values.
As someone over at Despair, Inc. realized, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." I personally like the footnote there about disoriented Palm Beach voters.
IANAL, but my wife's boss is - I wrote a general contract for my consulting/programming services, and he liked it very much. The only thing added, on his advice, was a clause that both parties wave the right to trial by jury; this is important because if you end up getting scruxored by a company, it precludes their lawyers from using a lot of BS legal maneuvers to indefinitely delay the case from being heard. On a similar note, you could build some sort of clause that limits suits by requiring arbitration. But please, check with your legal counsel before taking either of those as "the way to go."
Second - word of mouth is king when you are starting up. I can't begin to tell you how many good contracts I got simply through friends/associates of clients. Of course, this is much easier when you (as I have) target small business.
Third. Incorporate. Again, use a lawyer here, and probably also a CPA. My CPA has some sort of thing he did for me which "sets up a temporary injuction against any attempts to pierce the corporate veil." I don't really know the specifics, and I'm not sure I want to, but it sounds like a good thing.
Once you're incorporated, remember that you ARE NOT your corporation. This is an important mental distinction you must get straight in your own mind, especially if you start doing a lot of business with friends or friends-of-friends. Put in writing corporate policies (one of mine is requiring a signed contract and 50% deposit on work over $1000), and adhere to them at all costs.
For hourly work, be smart about your rates. For example, my hourly rate on an expected workload of 40 man-hours is 50% of the rate for 1 man-hour. Base your 1 man-hour rate on a budget of say 5 to 10 1-hour jobs per week (or less, if you expect less) and make the assumption that that is the best you will do for a while (i.e. adjust this to your necessary take-home). Remember, as the President of YourCorp (and probably also Chairman), you have the power to change these rate tables, as the business dictates.
Last - treat every customer as though they are the most important client you have. Always be cordial and prompt with delivery of service. Ingratiating yourself in this manner is important to getting follow-on business and word-of-mouth jobs. Remember that they may not have your level of understanding of computers, so you have to not talk to them as a technogeek, but be careful also not to condescend.
I wish you luck - it's a tough thing to get going, but it is a very rewarding experience.
... we'll have to implement a physical bit-bucket, and empty it periodically?
... we can finally settle the Beer Wars by feeding streams of bubbly as input?
... on a more serious note, could this technology potentially be used to provide a 100% alcohol-free beer/wine, as opposed to the 99.9% or so achieved now through freezing?
I see in the future a top-ten contest for the most interesting use of the forthcoming fluid logic processor. Also, enterprising youths may wish to go hit USPTO and NetSol now to register all the potential names (WaterGate comes to mind, but that may already be taken:).
It may not be the best thing in the world as far as ergonomics, but a number of companies make housings for generic fit or specific fit digital cameras. Furthermore, here's a guy that builds his own.
Good point. I was mistaken. The clause I was referring to goes like this:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
This effectively says you must preserve the YEAR and OWNER fields associated with the copyright. It's the part that says "I did this."
Re:BSD community, uh not....
on
MicroBSD Is No More
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The heart of the BSD license, IMHO, is the "advertising clause." It means that you can do whatever you want with my code, so long as you recognize that I wrote the code. What the MicroBSD project managed to accomplish was a wholesale ripoff job, intentional or not. The "work" at MicroBSD violated the only real restriction on the OpenBSD code, which is the advertising clause.
Theo has done a tremendous amount of work over the years, and arguably his work has contributed not just to the BSD community, but to the open source community as a whole. The man has principles, and he sticks to them. He is hard core. So, it really bugs me to hear people like you complaining about his whining when what he's really doing is standing up for his principles (and his code). I wonder if you feel the same way about RMS; He's always "crying" about the GNU/Linux designation...
Hopefully, they can time any hardware requirements to release about the same time the FCC yanks the plug on analog TV. That is, assuming there are any equipment requirements (I can't point and click at anything on my TVs, now, so I would assume so). Having another box in my entertainment center is not an option.
Ideally, some corporate jackass will provide me with a completely new, state of the art entertainment system, gratis, that includes cable/satellite/internet access, all also for free, and then I'll think about using this BS they're touting as interactive. You want real interactive TV, you should read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Until something like that is generally available, I'll pass on buying any new TV technology.
IANAE (economist) From my point of view, there is no real change moving from the current system, which involves swapping tokens, with and electronic one, which swaps bits. In either case you are still at the mercy of the banks and the government. Either can be tracked (though the former is more difficult), and either can be counterfeited. In either case, the collapse of the government will render the money useless.
Precious metals have lost much of their intrinsic value because of the use of paper money - this true especially since the US and others have moved off the gold standard. We now define gold's value as how much you can get for paper, rather than the other way around. We shifted the idea - the commodity bit, if you will - from gold to paper.
I'm not saying this is bad, I'm not saying it's good. Everyone should realize, though, that whatever the medium, money is an illusion. It's a shared idea that something has value, and in many cases exactly what that value is.
The simplest way to quash this (and there are several examples in the responses above and below, depending on your browse prefs) is to not use it.
I dunno. You raise a good point. I'm actually fighting with myself on this very issue. I believe that they are implicitly related.
Take, for example, Saddam Hussein, to illustrate your point. Sure, I wouldn't mind telling people who he is (in fact, I make it a point in daily life these days to make sure that people know who he is, but that's a different thread), but by acting as an enabler for his transaction (I verified his identity), does that not make me somewhat liable? If my signing of his key put the person on the other side of his transaction over the threshold for continuing the transaction, am I not in the least bit responsible for the contents of the transaction? Theoretically, I would say no, but realistically, I would say yes.
So, by participating in this mass signing, can I really be sure that the people in control of the keys I sign are the people that they say they are? I certainly could not pick any of them out of a lineup. They may all be upstanding people with the highest morals and goals, but I will never sign a key for someone I don't personally know, and know well. By the same logic, I wouldn't want anyone that I don't know signing my key.
How about the eBay user feedback system as a trivial but similar situation? By giving someone good feedback, you are helping to establish that person as a credible entity to do business with. Good in theory, but there are cranks abound on eBay - let's say that I am a wholly disreputable seller, and I get some friends to "buy" a lot of merchandise from me, and to give good feedback. The sheer volume of good comments may convince my real targets to do business with me - I take their money and run. On the other hand, lets say I'm a good seller. eBay is my internet storefront, and I move lots of merchandise through there. People like me because I have good prices and great product, so I get good feedback. Any potential buyer should still be leary of me, unless he/she personally knows one or more of my commentators. The buyer has no other reliable method of establishing that I am not going to screw them in the transaction.
That is directly analagous to participating in this mass signing. It opens the doors for deception; whether or not deception occurs is irrelevant.
The simple act of identifying someone reflects on your character. I know that the people whose keys I've signed are very responsible about protecting their personal data. I know that they would never reveal their passphrase or leave their private keys available to compromise. They believe the same of me. This is the trust that we share, that allows us to act as a responsible second party identification system for each other.
At the end of the day, I being a party of a two-way PGP transaction, am trusting you, the signer of the other party's key, that the other party is who they say they are. I don't know you from Jack - and if you don't know the other party from Jack, then it is a breach of trust, not between me and my co-communicator, but between me and you. Should the other party end up to be not who they claim to be, you are at fault - you helped encourage me (by establishing that party's identity) to continue the transaction. That is a responsibility that I refuse to take on.
Sorry to ramble on, but it really did take this much thought to articulate my point.
Personally, I think that this kind of large-scale key signing is antithetical to the purpose of signed keys. A Web of Trust means nothing if I know or trust nobody in that web. I mean, lets be realistic - there is a limit as to how far we will let our trust go in personal relationships - everyone has a friend of a friend that's into some questionable shite; my keys are signed by two of my closest friends, my father, and a guy that I've worked closely with for going on 6 years. You see, just meeting someone doesn't mean that you can attest to their character. In this case, you don't even have to meet these potentially thousands of people - how can you honestly say that any one of them could be trustworthy and responsible enough to deserve your signature?
On that note, I personally would be suspicious of anyone that had more than a dozen or so signings of his/her key.
My philosophy (using the friend of a friend model) is you're probably safe if you're within four degrees (inclusive) - that is, if you're getting messages/content/whatever from an entity that is only four degrees from you by signature, I think you're probably guaranteed to be in a trustworthy transaction, assuming that everyone practices responsible signing. And, isn't that the whole purpose?
Final word: Verisign is a different type of trust model - I don't purport to be addressing that model in my argument.
I noticed that the Specification is offered for a Royalty-free 10 year license. The MaGIC developers seem to have a very strong sense that the only way for music to go digital is to have an Open Architecture. Sounds familiar... At any rate, I've downloaded the PDF Spec; very logically split up (chapter X for hardware guys, chapter Y for net hackers, and chapter Z for app developers) - can't wait to start! I wonder if they'ld mind if I hooked my Strat up with it;)
Through a merger, we recently converted to being a Big Blew shop, so when procurement dropped my new IBM x255 in my lap, I was extremely surprised to see that I had more processors (8) than the box physically supports (4). Freaky. Then, I find through some querying that there is apparently work being done in 2.5 to "turn off" this "feature." Makes you wonder if everyone really thinks this is an improvement. But this is a real head trip if you don't know anything about it and your first encounter is in dmesg!
On the whole, though, I'm pleased (so far) with its performance, though I haven't done any real benchmarking. But, the fact that anyone would want to turn this off still bugs me just a little bit - are people as scared of this as I am? I must be getting old...
I always knew there was a good reason to switch to thermal receipts on cash registers. The answer? To reduce your liability in a consumer class-action suit! If you've ever gone back and looked at a thermal-printed receipt from even just a few months ago, it's either nearly all black or all white. BASTARDS!
Lucky me, the conference this year is only 2 blocks from my office! On that note, if any potential attendees from out of the area would like information on Boca (like where to party, average prices of stuff, great places to eat, etc.), drop me an email.
That being said, don't let that stop you from producing the software and making a little side money. I've been buying UNIX software for Linux/FreeBSD for a long time, but I always opt the open-source and free route before I step into something like ApplixWare. Still, there are people out there that have unique offerings for UNIX (NcFTP springs to mind) which I purchase, both as a home user and a corporate decision maker.
I have a few apps that I've been collecting together to make a package. My intent with these is not to provide an open-source tool, but rather to provide a low-cost alternative toolkit to commercially available solutions. The two major competitors I'm going after start at $5000 a seat. It was because of their price that I've been forced into writing an alternative. So, I'm going to get paid - but I don't expect that it will be a full-time business, just a separate flow of income. I don't want the overhead of advertising, solicitation, etc.
On the other hand, I guess I can't really give you the advice one way or the other, since I haven't started selling my wares, yet! Good luck to you.
Re:Slashdot hype linkdumping at your service
on
FreeBSD Kernel Leak
·
· Score: 1
Incorrect... this affects 4.3 and later. It does effect -STABLE up until the point where the patch was installed. -STABLE is a line off of a release where tested new features, bug fixes, and security patches are applied. Thus, you could install a -RELEASE and then track -STABLE, but you would generally only do this if you were engaged in actively developing (on) FreeBSD. If you were using a -STABLE before this came to light, you are still vulnerable unless you've updated since.
5.0 may or may not be affected - I would assume the former, but I may be wrong.
The anti-radar coatings used by many US military vessels consists of essentially a piece of foil sandwiched between two thin pieces of foam. When I first saw it, I thought that somebody at Reynolds was making a killing on a government contract, but then I saw that it actually works - not to the point of making a vessel radar-invisible, but it significantly reduces the footprint (surfaces that are not perpendicular to the ground/sea/horizon greatly aid in this, as well, which is why newer ships look like the Cadillac CTS).
Back a long time ago, I was using OS2/Warp... I had three web browsers... The native Netscape, inside the windows 3.1 emulation, a copy of IE that I actually purchased (what a dipshit I was), and IBM's WebExplorer, IIRC. WebExplorer had a history function that would fill your screen with a tree of visited pages. It was a wonderful thing. I thought it would catch on, but nobody's done it, since. If any of the Konqueror coders are reading, do you do feature requests?
Slashdot Mirror
The reality of the situation is, under the alleged crime(s) he committed, he has yet to be convicted. As such, he is entitled to be treated justly and without contempt, at least WRT the current situation.
As for his claim that there's no wrong-doing on his part, while then saying that the law hasn't yet passed - this is not a contradiction, at all, as the /. submitter implies. Until those things are made illegal, they are still legal and thus not "wrong," in the eyes of the law. That does of course fall to the ground in situations where the "wrong-doing," was initiated/perpetuated through fraud or other illicit activities, but the action in question would still not be wrong because it is not proscribed.
From my experience, it is common for shirts that are not tailored well (or at all), and thus loose-fitting, to be pinched behind the back - a sort of taking up of slack in the shirt, so that your forward appearance is as crisp and clean as possible. I had a few modeling sessions (no, I'm no looker - it was a face-of-the-corporation thing for PR/advertising). Wasn't there a news anchor many years ago that admitted to sitting on his shirttails, his secret for keeping the unwanted billowing out of his camera view? In my military service, we were encouraged to tuck our dress shirts into our briefs/boxers to achieve a similar effect.
To me, that's what this looks like, since the bulge appears more of a thick cable, like the folding or rolling of cloth, than a black box or the uniform displacement of a flack jacket.
I think that libel would be a better case for CNN to make; certainly they are aware of what happened to Diebold recently? It would certainly make me think twice before seeking relief under DMCA.
The blogger should have done this parody on CBS, instead. Oh, wait, lying about and manufacturing information, nevermind. Then it really would be indistinguishable from real life.
I almost agree with you, here. It doesn't get any closer than Bush vs. Gore, but I don't think we're going to see a landslide for another 12 years. In other words, get used to these legal battles.
You lose me when you start with a salient point, but conclude with partisan BS. There were dozens of lawsuits filed by/on behalf of Bush and Gore, with respect to different issues, in Florida. Republicans initiated many of these suits, but Democrats initiated the rest. IIRC, the majority of these suits were brought by Democrats, and many of them had little or no factual or legal basis whatsoever.
And, let's not forget, we do NOT live in a democracy, so the tired battle cry of "Gore won the popular vote," means nothing. While we can sit here and maybe even be strangely comfortable with a purely democratic system amongst ourselves, a relatively small community of people that share a number of common ideals, the situation is a bit more complex when you take into account the number of people that vote purely on emotion/ego/peer-pressure. Surely, you don't want to bow to the popular opinion of all the people that think Farenheit 9/11 is an unbiased, upstanding representation of facts, just as you probably don't want to subjugate yourself to the will of people that hate Kerry solely based on his post-war activities.
Now, as you are reading this and thinking about what a Republican puppet I am, you can realize that the Electoral College is there to insulate you somewhat from the massive defection that might be caused by my release of a video showing Kerry having goat.cx with a bunch of ketchup bottles, while still giving a great deal more than lip service to your trumpet about democratic values.
As someone over at Despair, Inc. realized, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." I personally like the footnote there about disoriented Palm Beach voters.
Sincerely, a Palm Beach Libertarian
IANAL, but my wife's boss is - I wrote a general contract for my consulting/programming services, and he liked it very much. The only thing added, on his advice, was a clause that both parties wave the right to trial by jury; this is important because if you end up getting scruxored by a company, it precludes their lawyers from using a lot of BS legal maneuvers to indefinitely delay the case from being heard. On a similar note, you could build some sort of clause that limits suits by requiring arbitration. But please, check with your legal counsel before taking either of those as "the way to go."
Second - word of mouth is king when you are starting up. I can't begin to tell you how many good contracts I got simply through friends/associates of clients. Of course, this is much easier when you (as I have) target small business.
Third. Incorporate. Again, use a lawyer here, and probably also a CPA. My CPA has some sort of thing he did for me which "sets up a temporary injuction against any attempts to pierce the corporate veil." I don't really know the specifics, and I'm not sure I want to, but it sounds like a good thing.
Once you're incorporated, remember that you ARE NOT your corporation. This is an important mental distinction you must get straight in your own mind, especially if you start doing a lot of business with friends or friends-of-friends. Put in writing corporate policies (one of mine is requiring a signed contract and 50% deposit on work over $1000), and adhere to them at all costs.
For hourly work, be smart about your rates. For example, my hourly rate on an expected workload of 40 man-hours is 50% of the rate for 1 man-hour. Base your 1 man-hour rate on a budget of say 5 to 10 1-hour jobs per week (or less, if you expect less) and make the assumption that that is the best you will do for a while (i.e. adjust this to your necessary take-home). Remember, as the President of YourCorp (and probably also Chairman), you have the power to change these rate tables, as the business dictates.
Last - treat every customer as though they are the most important client you have. Always be cordial and prompt with delivery of service. Ingratiating yourself in this manner is important to getting follow-on business and word-of-mouth jobs. Remember that they may not have your level of understanding of computers, so you have to not talk to them as a technogeek, but be careful also not to condescend.
I wish you luck - it's a tough thing to get going, but it is a very rewarding experience.
... we'll have to implement a physical bit-bucket, and empty it periodically?
... we can finally settle the Beer Wars by feeding streams of bubbly as input?
... on a more serious note, could this technology potentially be used to provide a 100% alcohol-free beer/wine, as opposed to the 99.9% or so achieved now through freezing?
I see in the future a top-ten contest for the most interesting use of the forthcoming fluid logic processor. Also, enterprising youths may wish to go hit USPTO and NetSol now to register all the potential names (WaterGate comes to mind, but that may already be taken :).
Of course, it was just a regular infrastructure before CAN-SPAM made it a felony... So, then, which of the following goals have we accomplished?
Remember, there wouldn't be so many criminals if there weren't so many laws. Food for thought.
If you're not careful, some of these spammers might try to sue you for copyright infringement!
It may not be the best thing in the world as far as ergonomics, but a number of companies make housings for generic fit or specific fit digital cameras. Furthermore, here's a guy that builds his own.
Good point. I was mistaken. The clause I was referring to goes like this:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
This effectively says you must preserve the YEAR and OWNER fields associated with the copyright. It's the part that says "I did this."
The heart of the BSD license, IMHO, is the "advertising clause." It means that you can do whatever you want with my code, so long as you recognize that I wrote the code. What the MicroBSD project managed to accomplish was a wholesale ripoff job, intentional or not. The "work" at MicroBSD violated the only real restriction on the OpenBSD code, which is the advertising clause.
Theo has done a tremendous amount of work over the years, and arguably his work has contributed not just to the BSD community, but to the open source community as a whole. The man has principles, and he sticks to them. He is hard core. So, it really bugs me to hear people like you complaining about his whining when what he's really doing is standing up for his principles (and his code). I wonder if you feel the same way about RMS; He's always "crying" about the GNU/Linux designation...
Hopefully, they can time any hardware requirements to release about the same time the FCC yanks the plug on analog TV. That is, assuming there are any equipment requirements (I can't point and click at anything on my TVs, now, so I would assume so). Having another box in my entertainment center is not an option.
Ideally, some corporate jackass will provide me with a completely new, state of the art entertainment system, gratis, that includes cable/satellite/internet access, all also for free, and then I'll think about using this BS they're touting as interactive. You want real interactive TV, you should read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Until something like that is generally available, I'll pass on buying any new TV technology.
IANAE (economist)
From my point of view, there is no real change moving from the current system, which involves swapping tokens, with and electronic one, which swaps bits. In either case you are still at the mercy of the banks and the government. Either can be tracked (though the former is more difficult), and either can be counterfeited. In either case, the collapse of the government will render the money useless.
Precious metals have lost much of their intrinsic value because of the use of paper money - this true especially since the US and others have moved off the gold standard. We now define gold's value as how much you can get for paper, rather than the other way around. We shifted the idea - the commodity bit, if you will - from gold to paper.
I'm not saying this is bad, I'm not saying it's good. Everyone should realize, though, that whatever the medium, money is an illusion. It's a shared idea that something has value, and in many cases exactly what that value is.
The simplest way to quash this (and there are several examples in the responses above and below, depending on your browse prefs) is to not use it.
I dunno. You raise a good point. I'm actually fighting with myself on this very issue. I believe that they are implicitly related.
Take, for example, Saddam Hussein, to illustrate your point. Sure, I wouldn't mind telling people who he is (in fact, I make it a point in daily life these days to make sure that people know who he is, but that's a different thread), but by acting as an enabler for his transaction (I verified his identity), does that not make me somewhat liable? If my signing of his key put the person on the other side of his transaction over the threshold for continuing the transaction, am I not in the least bit responsible for the contents of the transaction? Theoretically, I would say no, but realistically, I would say yes.
So, by participating in this mass signing, can I really be sure that the people in control of the keys I sign are the people that they say they are? I certainly could not pick any of them out of a lineup. They may all be upstanding people with the highest morals and goals, but I will never sign a key for someone I don't personally know, and know well. By the same logic, I wouldn't want anyone that I don't know signing my key.
How about the eBay user feedback system as a trivial but similar situation? By giving someone good feedback, you are helping to establish that person as a credible entity to do business with. Good in theory, but there are cranks abound on eBay - let's say that I am a wholly disreputable seller, and I get some friends to "buy" a lot of merchandise from me, and to give good feedback. The sheer volume of good comments may convince my real targets to do business with me - I take their money and run. On the other hand, lets say I'm a good seller. eBay is my internet storefront, and I move lots of merchandise through there. People like me because I have good prices and great product, so I get good feedback. Any potential buyer should still be leary of me, unless he/she personally knows one or more of my commentators. The buyer has no other reliable method of establishing that I am not going to screw them in the transaction.
That is directly analagous to participating in this mass signing. It opens the doors for deception; whether or not deception occurs is irrelevant.
The simple act of identifying someone reflects on your character. I know that the people whose keys I've signed are very responsible about protecting their personal data. I know that they would never reveal their passphrase or leave their private keys available to compromise. They believe the same of me. This is the trust that we share, that allows us to act as a responsible second party identification system for each other.
At the end of the day, I being a party of a two-way PGP transaction, am trusting you, the signer of the other party's key, that the other party is who they say they are. I don't know you from Jack - and if you don't know the other party from Jack, then it is a breach of trust, not between me and my co-communicator, but between me and you. Should the other party end up to be not who they claim to be, you are at fault - you helped encourage me (by establishing that party's identity) to continue the transaction. That is a responsibility that I refuse to take on.
Sorry to ramble on, but it really did take this much thought to articulate my point.
Personally, I think that this kind of large-scale key signing is antithetical to the purpose of signed keys. A Web of Trust means nothing if I know or trust nobody in that web. I mean, lets be realistic - there is a limit as to how far we will let our trust go in personal relationships - everyone has a friend of a friend that's into some questionable shite; my keys are signed by two of my closest friends, my father, and a guy that I've worked closely with for going on 6 years. You see, just meeting someone doesn't mean that you can attest to their character. In this case, you don't even have to meet these potentially thousands of people - how can you honestly say that any one of them could be trustworthy and responsible enough to deserve your signature?
On that note, I personally would be suspicious of anyone that had more than a dozen or so signings of his/her key.
My philosophy (using the friend of a friend model) is you're probably safe if you're within four degrees (inclusive) - that is, if you're getting messages/content/whatever from an entity that is only four degrees from you by signature, I think you're probably guaranteed to be in a trustworthy transaction, assuming that everyone practices responsible signing. And, isn't that the whole purpose?
Final word: Verisign is a different type of trust model - I don't purport to be addressing that model in my argument.
I'd flame you back, but it would just get modded up and nobody would know what the hell I was talking about ;) Cheers!
I noticed that the Specification is offered for a Royalty-free 10 year license. The MaGIC developers seem to have a very strong sense that the only way for music to go digital is to have an Open Architecture. Sounds familiar... At any rate, I've downloaded the PDF Spec; very logically split up (chapter X for hardware guys, chapter Y for net hackers, and chapter Z for app developers) - can't wait to start! I wonder if they'ld mind if I hooked my Strat up with it ;)
Through a merger, we recently converted to being a Big Blew shop, so when procurement dropped my new IBM x255 in my lap, I was extremely surprised to see that I had more processors (8) than the box physically supports (4). Freaky. Then, I find through some querying that there is apparently work being done in 2.5 to "turn off" this "feature." Makes you wonder if everyone really thinks this is an improvement. But this is a real head trip if you don't know anything about it and your first encounter is in dmesg!
On the whole, though, I'm pleased (so far) with its performance, though I haven't done any real benchmarking. But, the fact that anyone would want to turn this off still bugs me just a little bit - are people as scared of this as I am? I must be getting old...
(warning: conspiracy theory)
I always knew there was a good reason to switch to thermal receipts on cash registers. The answer? To reduce your liability in a consumer class-action suit! If you've ever gone back and looked at a thermal-printed receipt from even just a few months ago, it's either nearly all black or all white. BASTARDS!
Lucky me, the conference this year is only 2 blocks from my office! On that note, if any potential attendees from out of the area would like information on Boca (like where to party, average prices of stuff, great places to eat, etc.), drop me an email.
That being said, don't let that stop you from producing the software and making a little side money. I've been buying UNIX software for Linux/FreeBSD for a long time, but I always opt the open-source and free route before I step into something like ApplixWare. Still, there are people out there that have unique offerings for UNIX (NcFTP springs to mind) which I purchase, both as a home user and a corporate decision maker.
I have a few apps that I've been collecting together to make a package. My intent with these is not to provide an open-source tool, but rather to provide a low-cost alternative toolkit to commercially available solutions. The two major competitors I'm going after start at $5000 a seat. It was because of their price that I've been forced into writing an alternative. So, I'm going to get paid - but I don't expect that it will be a full-time business, just a separate flow of income. I don't want the overhead of advertising, solicitation, etc.
On the other hand, I guess I can't really give you the advice one way or the other, since I haven't started selling my wares, yet! Good luck to you.
Incorrect... this affects 4.3 and later. It does effect -STABLE up until the point where the patch was installed. -STABLE is a line off of a release where tested new features, bug fixes, and security patches are applied. Thus, you could install a -RELEASE and then track -STABLE, but you would generally only do this if you were engaged in actively developing (on) FreeBSD. If you were using a -STABLE before this came to light, you are still vulnerable unless you've updated since.
5.0 may or may not be affected - I would assume the former, but I may be wrong.
For more information on -CURRENT and -STABLE...
The anti-radar coatings used by many US military vessels consists of essentially a piece of foil sandwiched between two thin pieces of foam. When I first saw it, I thought that somebody at Reynolds was making a killing on a government contract, but then I saw that it actually works - not to the point of making a vessel radar-invisible, but it significantly reduces the footprint (surfaces that are not perpendicular to the ground/sea/horizon greatly aid in this, as well, which is why newer ships look like the Cadillac CTS).
... but only if it can tell me when my wife wants to have sex!
Back a long time ago, I was using OS2/Warp... I had three web browsers... The native Netscape, inside the windows 3.1 emulation, a copy of IE that I actually purchased (what a dipshit I was), and IBM's WebExplorer, IIRC. WebExplorer had a history function that would fill your screen with a tree of visited pages. It was a wonderful thing. I thought it would catch on, but nobody's done it, since. If any of the Konqueror coders are reading, do you do feature requests?