Don't be silly, the information will be used to make more money! That's what companies do.
So the real problem isn't an erosion of my liberty, but that someone else will make more money by selling me things I actually want?
Sales pressure? Please give me some credit. Maybe you have trouble saying the word "no" to some schmuck at the store, but I don't. Just because the sales pitch is an amplified version of "would you like fries with that?" or "would you like to supersize that?" doesn't mean you have to just hand them your money.
I don't generally fear a loss of civil liberty when dealing with retail sales personnel, so I'm thinking that your statement about the government getting this information "for airline profiling and other security reasons" is far more insightful. But that's where you were most vague. Care to elaborate on how the Feds plan to deprive me of my rights based on what brand of jeans I buy?
Re:Only a problem if you never change clothes
on
The Trouble with RFID
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Oh no! Then they'll know I was wearing the clothes I bought! With my credit card! In a store filled with cameras! In a metro area under heavy surveillance! Being photographed via satellite! Where anybody with working eyeballs can see me! They'll get my social security number! And my SAT scores! They are going to STEAL MY IDENTITY!!111! My girlfriend will start dating someone else! (oh wait, that already happened)... My dog won't recognize me! I'll be deported to Cuba or France because I voted for a Democrat once by accident! I will disappear! It will be like in the Matrix where I won't know what's real ever again!
Seriously, what's the problem here? Worried that someone will be able to detect that the red lace teddy you bought at Victoria's Secret wasn't really for your girlfriend?
No, really. Is this going to cause an undue increase in the cost of these items? Am I going to be arrested because an RFID detector figures out that I've got on brown shoes and a blue suit? How is this actually going to make my life worse?
A liberal from the Nation cries about how RFID tags might create a problem and we show no skepticism at all? He says all these things could happen-- if this and if that and only if something else. To me he sounds more like those kooks who say that all check R/T numbers secretly begin with the numbers '666' or that credit cards are a tool of the anti-christ than he sounds like a reasonable person worrying about reasonable things.
(sorry for the dupe, didn't intend to post as AC the first time)
It's not rocket science. The statistical filter I've been writing doesn't ignore random words in general (during scoring they just get counted like any other token), but it will ignore them on incoming mail.
I think trying to classify email as spam/not-spam based on characteristics (which you seem to be suggesting) is a big waste of time. Have you ever tried to wade through Spam::Assassin to see what it actually does? It's painful... and not just because it's written in Perl. Trying to classify based on rules is an arms race with the spammers.
I'm in the process of replacing S::A with about 100 lines of Ruby code. I stopped using S::A immediately after I realized it had trashed emails from my daughter based on some broken-ness in her email client (the default client on a new Windows XP computer). Obviously the fault was mine for sending spam to the trash folder where it got deleted when I closed KMail, but I don't like that a default S::A called those mails spam in the first place. But it just points up the problems with rules-based filtering approaches.
The hardest part of a statistical spam filter is not the math, but writing a good "tokenizer" routine. I think mine works well because I push HTML tags to the end and discriminate against header-tokens uniquely (as suggested by Paul Graham). By pushing HTML tags to the end I defeat the attempts by spammers to break up obvious spam words by infixing them with nonsense (i.e. non-displayed) HTML tags.
It's nice to see someone whose priorities haven't been affected by these trying times and who can remind us all that people-- especially family-- are more important than machines. Thank you.;)
I hope you understand the rest of my statements better with this clarification.
I do. I was mostly hoping you had some good information about the Indian government preventing U.S. citizens from immigrating. I should have focused on that, sorry.
If you've been following the issues going on with Indian tech jobs taken from American IT workers, you'd see that both the Indian firms hiring these folks and the government of India are trying to keep these Americans from coming over to India and reclaiming positions.
First of all, I think it's odd that you say "taken" and "reclaim" as if jobs were some sort of property and there were some sort of natural right to have a job. But that's just nitpicking on my part.
More importantly, what's all this about India keeping out Americans? You got even a single link to support this? And besides, are the Indians working below minimum wage or something? If there are Americans willing to lower their rate and live less lavish lifestyles just to be able to continue a programming career, why couldn't they do it here in the U.S.?
Obviously one can't take minimum wage jobs in San Francisco and expect to be able to afford to rent even a bunk at the homeless shelter... but if the company is willing to export work all the way to India, why wouldn't they be willing to outsource it to Iowa or North Dakota or any number of other god-forsaken states in the Union? Take a page from the credit card companies who often have operations in South Dakota where the costs are relatively low and the tax and regulatory laws are favorable.
Or more realistically: you could have just listed the places where the movie and the books actually matched. Somehow the books and the movie tell approximately the same story, but I'll never know how since they had so little in common except some names and general plot developments.
Everyone is getting all fussy because trademark, copyright and patent law are pushing across dangerous lines. All of the above are in place to further a healthy, free competitive market.
Wrong. Copyrights and patents (which are not at issue in this case) are interference with the free market. Their only purpose is to artificially create scarcity and monopoly where none naturally exists. The reason (at least as stated in the U.S. Constitution) is not protect some inherent right of authors and inventors in works they produce, but to encourage development in these economic sectors.
Trademark, however, helps keep the market free because they promote honesty. Their real purpose is to prevent fraud-- i.e. you can sell a watch that looks like a Rolex, but you can't say it is a Rolex. In this case, I have to wonder whether Booble goes too far. Is a reasonable adult going to be confused and think Booble is a Google affiliate? Hard for me to answer since my first exposure to Booble was as a link in a/. story where it was clearly referred to as a "parody" site (what the parody or satire is, I don't see though). In my case I have no doubt that it's not a Google site. But what about people who find it on their own?
No I don't see and I think you're being argumentative. Private firms acting at the request of government will not have their databases protected by this law no matter how much you wish to twist the language to pretend that they might.
If you want to ignore my clear opposition to this law as part of a larger unacceptable "intellectual property" regime then be my guest. But the fact is you haven't even convinced me and I have held anti-intellectual-property views since at least 1989. What I'm saying is, we need to pay careful attention to what's being done here... within the existing framework there is nothing about this law that does not follow logically from the assumptions. And the language is there to prevent the things that we are rightfully concerned about.
The problem is not this law. The problem is the assumption that once work is done (i.e. writing or collecting or inventing or whatever), that the person who has now finished working has a right to prevent others from using their original work as a blueprint for their own. When you run around like Chicken Little worrying about things the law clearly intends not to happen, you are not helping. If all you're really worried about is that suddenly it will be impossible to have or make a database of laws, I think that concern is sorely mistaken. If you don't have a problem with the larger "intellectual property" situation then please demonstrate how this law does not follow logically from the assumptions used to justify copyright and patents. What language in this law would you change so that it is acceptable? You will notice that the existence of copyright hasn't made it impossible to get at the law. So how does this law achieve what copyright could not?
I was not apologizing for the law, thankyouverymuch. I was merely pointing out that the concern about it making it illegal to copy databases of the laws themselves (where such databases are created at the request of the government) are unfounded. If those of us who have concerns about the direction of so-called intellectual property laws don't take the time to actually read and understand those laws, we are going to do very poorly when we try to argue persuasively against those laws. We might even look like idiots, mmmkay?
So.... Why protect databases made by educational institutions? I dunno. Probably for the same reason those institutions are allowed to hold copyrights on dissertations and patents on research done in labs. I don't agree that any institution getting federal, state, or local tax money should be able to copyright, patent, or otherwise protect the results, but since they can it makes sense to extend database protection there as well.
If anything, Groklaw is an online database that would be protected by this law, since Groklaw is a unique conglomeration of original articles, copies of public domain documents, excerpts from the press, and commentary. If copyrights and patents are morally acceptable, I don't see what's wrong with this law. If I spend considerable time and effort to compile a database of Federal Statutes, FBI UCR stats, and Census materials (I've done some of this for my own hobby research), then make that public data available to sociologists for a fee, should they have any more right to copy the entire database than I would have to copy their resulting research papers?
Note: I personally favor a less strict regime of patent and copy rights than the one we have (in fact I favor a Constitutional amendment on the abolition of these things altogether), but in the existing framework I find this law perfectly justified.
If any of you ever bothered to RTFL(egislation), you'd have found this:
SEC. 5. EXCLUSIONS.
(a) GOVERNMENT INFORMATION-
(1) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in paragraph (2), protection under this Act shall not extend to--
(A) a database generated, gathered, organized, or maintained by a Federal, State, or local governmental entity, or by an employee or agent of such an entity, acting within the scope of such employment or agency; or
(B) a database generated, gathered, or maintained by an entity pursuant to and to the extent required by a Federal statute or regulation requiring such a database.
I leave it up to the reader to determine to what extent this protects various statute databases and other privately created systems housing purely public domain governmental data.
Interesting notion, except that alt-key combos in GNOME, KDE and Windows are used to select screen elements. I think the solution is either to remap terminal shortcuts and/or to get that stupid Windows key in on the action. Although now that I think about it, does anyone know where I can get an X logo or a GNOME foot sticker to cover up the logo an OS that is not even loaded on the system? Of further interest: my HP keyboard at work has a little key between the Windows key and Ctrl on the right side of the keyboard that brings up a context menu (instead of needing to right-click).
Sooner or later we'll be able to render mice totally unnecessary, except for tasks where they make actual sense.:)
It's a hard problem to solve because it requires content negotation. If I select and copy a graphic in a web browser and try to paste it into a pure text editor, what should it do? Nothing? Should it paste the ALT text? How about the longer description text if there is any? Should it paste the URL of the image? Should it attempt to use OCR on the image to convert it to textual data?
I can think of lots of content negotation problems with text, too, especially styled text. What if part of the style is unsupported? What if the style is the result of a named style using a name that both applications support but the visual rendering of that style is very different-- should it attempt to mimic the rendering or should it use the style as named? (Quick example would be copying some text from one HTML document to another where both used CSS for styling-- which style sheet's H1 definition would be used for headers?)
And FWIW, while I like left-drag-select and middle-click-paste sometimes. I find it annoying too. Because it fails miserably at replacing on the fly. Once you drag to select text to paste over you have wiped the clipboard clean.
For a fantastic demonstration of the real problem. Go into GNOME-terminal. Select some text. Press ctrl-c to copy (since that's the standard shortcut). Whoops. You just killed your running process if you had one.:)
I think I'll let the C*Os of the world decide what's professional and what's not. It's the glaring typo that got me chuckling. As for how to handle SCO, I think that sending back a nastygram is the calmest, sanest, cheapest response there is. Personally I'd be tempted to file a complaint with the FTC (or whichever agency really ought to receive the complaint) and possibly a lawsuit with a local district court.
If a company like SCO sends a letter, it is definitely worthwhile to send a letter back, this establishes that you are acting in good faith on your beliefs rather than ignoring them in hopes that your misdeeds will simply go unpunished for a while. And just because it's a business communication doesn't mean it can't be worded strongly. In this case the "wasting time" comment adds emphasis to the point the CIO was making about the level of detail he expects from SCO should SCO want to insist in pursuing their demands (i.e. don't just send the names of some kernel header files and expect us to cave).
Not quite. going through a closed door without permission, whether the door is locked or not, is called "breaking and entering". Walking on the lawn is usually considered "trespassing". I am not a lawyer, I do read law dictionaries and statutes for entertainment and educational purposes, though.
I do wish the headline would not use inflammatory and incorrect language like "Burglary" either. The files were not stolen, they were copied.
Which party did what to whom is irrelevant. On the one hand we have sheer incompetence and on the other we have a complete lack of an ethics. I really don't think it matters which label goes with which set of people, since I expect that there are similar ethical failings and key incompetencies enough to go around.
By "lower" do you mean "lower to the ground" or what? If not, what do you mean, and how do you determine this "lower"-ness... certainly not on observed evidence of dreaming while sleeping. And that you haven't observed dream symptoms in non-domestic animals does not mean those animals don't dream. In fact, you seem to be misunderstanding the "depth" of REM sleep, since that is one of the periods during a sleep session when the person is closest to consciousness and easiest to wake.
I don't really understand why anyone really needs a GUI to admin a MySQL server-- I suppose it is nice, though. What I'd like to know is: are there any good front-ends to ANY databases that run on Linux. Requirements: free software license, table linker (preferably capable of linking any ODBC-available table), data editor (sheet or form, I don't care, just something to make data entry/editing easier), drag-and-drop query editor (maybe a tree of all linked tables to the right where you can drag fields into a SQL editor and save a lot of typing)... and while I'm dreaming macros or query batching and report writer (turn any recordset into a halfway attractive report with options to export to HTML, XML, or PDF).
Computer games are designed to be used up and replaced.
Actually most computer games are puzzles, not games. Games involve two intelligent actors striving against each other for domination. Puzzles involve using clues to find a solution. The difference between computer game/puzzles and traditional puzzles is that timing is usually a factor. The bulk of traditional puzzles, like connecting pieces to form pictures, or crosswords, or word-finds, do not depend much on the order in which the solution is found. Solitaire is an exception to this. Computer game/puzzles (from Zork through Final Fantasy) usually depend on not just finding the right pieces, but connecting them in the right order. Just like you wouldn't do the same crossword over and over, why would you play Zork over and over? Sure, some computer game/puzzles have some random elements, or some "extra" pieces you can play with, but ultimately the challenge is to make the puzzle just hard enough to make it fun to play with at all, and just easy enough to be rewarding.
What's interesting is when you get to things like computer chess, because in that case, the computer does have an intelligence-- not always sufficient to beat a human. It has algorithms which may not exactly mimic human thought processes (i.e. intelligence) but which ultimately perform the same function-- allowing for open-ended, strategy-based play. Chess is still chess whether played against the computer or against humans.
It's also curious in cases like Everquest (which I have not played), because there you have some element of striving intelligent actors, but the overarching sense I get is that it is team puzzle solving (like when my friends and I would solve the crossword as a team).
I think you're thinking machine sales (which for Mac == 1 OS sale as well). When you start to count the number of desktop-targeted distros sold at retail, that's when you see that Linux is selling well in comparison to Mac OS. My case would be a perfect example. Paid once for a Mac. Paid twice for Yellow Dog Linux (1.2, 2.0) to put on that Mac. Which points up the problems with equating sales with market share... but the quote you quoted clearly is about "paid shipments".
Ah!:) Personally I'm partial to gtk2 and gnome2, precisely because so many of the apps are just gtk2-based... in fact, I think that's great because it means it's more likely those apps can find their way to non-free desktops like Windows and still be free software (whereas Qt on Windows, as I understand it isn't a free software situation). I consider this especially important because I'm a big fan of Ruby-- which has great gtk2 bindings on Linux, and I'd really love it if my scripts would be able to run on Windows, too.
If a malicious program were somehow run that could identify the terminal session window and programmatically do copy/paste, I could see how that would be a hole.
Now you're thinking like one of those security guys!:)
Your process describes how I myself operate (except that I use GNOME and I set up a sudo option on my laptop so it's easier to shut down since it gets shut down a lot more than my desktop does). What I mean by "run as root" (and what I think most people mean) is to do all of that stuff logged in as root.
Re: "privilege separation" on the desktop, what if a rogue process at the user level spawns a keylogger that waits for "su"? Then what? The keylogger could upgrade itself to root without us even knowing.
From tricycle.com: "What is Buddhism? Buddhism has alternately been called a religion, a philosophy, an ideology and a way of life. As with all the other great spiritual traditions that have withstood the test of time, Buddhism offers many different paths for people with different kinds of sensibilities, needs and capacities."
Considering the role Zen Buddhism (aka "Zen") plays in the cultures in which it comes from, I think it is accurate to consider it a religion-- in the sense that it is a codified spiritual practice that has been operating in an organized fashion for over 2500 years. But if you would like to adopt "Zen" has some sort of philosophical construct outside the context of Zen Buddhism, be my guest. "Religion", "philosophy", and "zen" are all just words so quibbling about them is most a waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be silly, the information will be used to make more money! That's what companies do.
So the real problem isn't an erosion of my liberty, but that someone else will make more money by selling me things I actually want?
Sales pressure? Please give me some credit. Maybe you have trouble saying the word "no" to some schmuck at the store, but I don't. Just because the sales pitch is an amplified version of "would you like fries with that?" or "would you like to supersize that?" doesn't mean you have to just hand them your money.
I don't generally fear a loss of civil liberty when dealing with retail sales personnel, so I'm thinking that your statement about the government getting this information "for airline profiling and other security reasons" is far more insightful. But that's where you were most vague. Care to elaborate on how the Feds plan to deprive me of my rights based on what brand of jeans I buy?
Oh no! Then they'll know I was wearing the clothes I bought! With my credit card! In a store filled with cameras! In a metro area under heavy surveillance! Being photographed via satellite! Where anybody with working eyeballs can see me! They'll get my social security number! And my SAT scores! They are going to STEAL MY IDENTITY!!111! My girlfriend will start dating someone else! (oh wait, that already happened)... My dog won't recognize me! I'll be deported to Cuba or France because I voted for a Democrat once by accident! I will disappear! It will be like in the Matrix where I won't know what's real ever again!
Seriously, what's the problem here? Worried that someone will be able to detect that the red lace teddy you bought at Victoria's Secret wasn't really for your girlfriend?
No, really. Is this going to cause an undue increase in the cost of these items? Am I going to be arrested because an RFID detector figures out that I've got on brown shoes and a blue suit? How is this actually going to make my life worse?
A liberal from the Nation cries about how RFID tags might create a problem and we show no skepticism at all? He says all these things could happen-- if this and if that and only if something else. To me he sounds more like those kooks who say that all check R/T numbers secretly begin with the numbers '666' or that credit cards are a tool of the anti-christ than he sounds like a reasonable person worrying about reasonable things.
(sorry for the dupe, didn't intend to post as AC the first time)
It's not rocket science. The statistical filter I've been writing doesn't ignore random words in general (during scoring they just get counted like any other token), but it will ignore them on incoming mail.
I think trying to classify email as spam/not-spam based on characteristics (which you seem to be suggesting) is a big waste of time. Have you ever tried to wade through Spam::Assassin to see what it actually does? It's painful... and not just because it's written in Perl. Trying to classify based on rules is an arms race with the spammers.
I'm in the process of replacing S::A with about 100 lines of Ruby code. I stopped using S::A immediately after I realized it had trashed emails from my daughter based on some broken-ness in her email client (the default client on a new Windows XP computer). Obviously the fault was mine for sending spam to the trash folder where it got deleted when I closed KMail, but I don't like that a default S::A called those mails spam in the first place. But it just points up the problems with rules-based filtering approaches.
The hardest part of a statistical spam filter is not the math, but writing a good "tokenizer" routine. I think mine works well because I push HTML tags to the end and discriminate against header-tokens uniquely (as suggested by Paul Graham). By pushing HTML tags to the end I defeat the attempts by spammers to break up obvious spam words by infixing them with nonsense (i.e. non-displayed) HTML tags.
It's nice to see someone whose priorities haven't been affected by these trying times and who can remind us all that people-- especially family-- are more important than machines. Thank you. ;)
I hope you understand the rest of my statements better with this clarification.
I do. I was mostly hoping you had some good information about the Indian government preventing U.S. citizens from immigrating. I should have focused on that, sorry.
If you've been following the issues going on with Indian tech jobs taken from American IT workers, you'd see that both the Indian firms hiring these folks and the government of India are trying to keep these Americans from coming over to India and reclaiming positions.
First of all, I think it's odd that you say "taken" and "reclaim" as if jobs were some sort of property and there were some sort of natural right to have a job. But that's just nitpicking on my part.
More importantly, what's all this about India keeping out Americans? You got even a single link to support this? And besides, are the Indians working below minimum wage or something? If there are Americans willing to lower their rate and live less lavish lifestyles just to be able to continue a programming career, why couldn't they do it here in the U.S.?
Obviously one can't take minimum wage jobs in San Francisco and expect to be able to afford to rent even a bunk at the homeless shelter... but if the company is willing to export work all the way to India, why wouldn't they be willing to outsource it to Iowa or North Dakota or any number of other god-forsaken states in the Union? Take a page from the credit card companies who often have operations in South Dakota where the costs are relatively low and the tax and regulatory laws are favorable.
Or more realistically: you could have just listed the places where the movie and the books actually matched. Somehow the books and the movie tell approximately the same story, but I'll never know how since they had so little in common except some names and general plot developments.
Everyone is getting all fussy because trademark, copyright and patent law are pushing across dangerous lines. All of the above are in place to further a healthy, free competitive market.
/. story where it was clearly referred to as a "parody" site (what the parody or satire is, I don't see though). In my case I have no doubt that it's not a Google site. But what about people who find it on their own?
Wrong. Copyrights and patents (which are not at issue in this case) are interference with the free market. Their only purpose is to artificially create scarcity and monopoly where none naturally exists. The reason (at least as stated in the U.S. Constitution) is not protect some inherent right of authors and inventors in works they produce, but to encourage development in these economic sectors.
Trademark, however, helps keep the market free because they promote honesty. Their real purpose is to prevent fraud-- i.e. you can sell a watch that looks like a Rolex, but you can't say it is a Rolex. In this case, I have to wonder whether Booble goes too far. Is a reasonable adult going to be confused and think Booble is a Google affiliate? Hard for me to answer since my first exposure to Booble was as a link in a
No I don't see and I think you're being argumentative. Private firms acting at the request of government will not have their databases protected by this law no matter how much you wish to twist the language to pretend that they might.
If you want to ignore my clear opposition to this law as part of a larger unacceptable "intellectual property" regime then be my guest. But the fact is you haven't even convinced me and I have held anti-intellectual-property views since at least 1989. What I'm saying is, we need to pay careful attention to what's being done here... within the existing framework there is nothing about this law that does not follow logically from the assumptions. And the language is there to prevent the things that we are rightfully concerned about.
The problem is not this law. The problem is the assumption that once work is done (i.e. writing or collecting or inventing or whatever), that the person who has now finished working has a right to prevent others from using their original work as a blueprint for their own. When you run around like Chicken Little worrying about things the law clearly intends not to happen, you are not helping. If all you're really worried about is that suddenly it will be impossible to have or make a database of laws, I think that concern is sorely mistaken. If you don't have a problem with the larger "intellectual property" situation then please demonstrate how this law does not follow logically from the assumptions used to justify copyright and patents. What language in this law would you change so that it is acceptable? You will notice that the existence of copyright hasn't made it impossible to get at the law. So how does this law achieve what copyright could not?
I was not apologizing for the law, thankyouverymuch. I was merely pointing out that the concern about it making it illegal to copy databases of the laws themselves (where such databases are created at the request of the government) are unfounded. If those of us who have concerns about the direction of so-called intellectual property laws don't take the time to actually read and understand those laws, we are going to do very poorly when we try to argue persuasively against those laws. We might even look like idiots, mmmkay?
So.... Why protect databases made by educational institutions? I dunno. Probably for the same reason those institutions are allowed to hold copyrights on dissertations and patents on research done in labs. I don't agree that any institution getting federal, state, or local tax money should be able to copyright, patent, or otherwise protect the results, but since they can it makes sense to extend database protection there as well.
If anything, Groklaw is an online database that would be protected by this law, since Groklaw is a unique conglomeration of original articles, copies of public domain documents, excerpts from the press, and commentary. If copyrights and patents are morally acceptable, I don't see what's wrong with this law. If I spend considerable time and effort to compile a database of Federal Statutes, FBI UCR stats, and Census materials (I've done some of this for my own hobby research), then make that public data available to sociologists for a fee, should they have any more right to copy the entire database than I would have to copy their resulting research papers?
Note: I personally favor a less strict regime of patent and copy rights than the one we have (in fact I favor a Constitutional amendment on the abolition of these things altogether), but in the existing framework I find this law perfectly justified.
Never thought I'd say this on Slashdot, but it's "loose" not "lose"!
Interesting notion, except that alt-key combos in GNOME, KDE and Windows are used to select screen elements. I think the solution is either to remap terminal shortcuts and/or to get that stupid Windows key in on the action. Although now that I think about it, does anyone know where I can get an X logo or a GNOME foot sticker to cover up the logo an OS that is not even loaded on the system? Of further interest: my HP keyboard at work has a little key between the Windows key and Ctrl on the right side of the keyboard that brings up a context menu (instead of needing to right-click).
:)
Sooner or later we'll be able to render mice totally unnecessary, except for tasks where they make actual sense.
It's a hard problem to solve because it requires content negotation. If I select and copy a graphic in a web browser and try to paste it into a pure text editor, what should it do? Nothing? Should it paste the ALT text? How about the longer description text if there is any? Should it paste the URL of the image? Should it attempt to use OCR on the image to convert it to textual data?
:)
I can think of lots of content negotation problems with text, too, especially styled text. What if part of the style is unsupported? What if the style is the result of a named style using a name that both applications support but the visual rendering of that style is very different-- should it attempt to mimic the rendering or should it use the style as named? (Quick example would be copying some text from one HTML document to another where both used CSS for styling-- which style sheet's H1 definition would be used for headers?)
And FWIW, while I like left-drag-select and middle-click-paste sometimes. I find it annoying too. Because it fails miserably at replacing on the fly. Once you drag to select text to paste over you have wiped the clipboard clean.
For a fantastic demonstration of the real problem. Go into GNOME-terminal. Select some text. Press ctrl-c to copy (since that's the standard shortcut). Whoops. You just killed your running process if you had one.
Ooh, that looks pretty cool. Thanks.
I think I'll let the C*Os of the world decide what's professional and what's not. It's the glaring typo that got me chuckling. As for how to handle SCO, I think that sending back a nastygram is the calmest, sanest, cheapest response there is. Personally I'd be tempted to file a complaint with the FTC (or whichever agency really ought to receive the complaint) and possibly a lawsuit with a local district court.
If a company like SCO sends a letter, it is definitely worthwhile to send a letter back, this establishes that you are acting in good faith on your beliefs rather than ignoring them in hopes that your misdeeds will simply go unpunished for a while. And just because it's a business communication doesn't mean it can't be worded strongly. In this case the "wasting time" comment adds emphasis to the point the CIO was making about the level of detail he expects from SCO should SCO want to insist in pursuing their demands (i.e. don't just send the names of some kernel header files and expect us to cave).
Not quite. going through a closed door without permission, whether the door is locked or not, is called "breaking and entering". Walking on the lawn is usually considered "trespassing". I am not a lawyer, I do read law dictionaries and statutes for entertainment and educational purposes, though.
I do wish the headline would not use inflammatory and incorrect language like "Burglary" either. The files were not stolen, they were copied.
Which party did what to whom is irrelevant. On the one hand we have sheer incompetence and on the other we have a complete lack of an ethics. I really don't think it matters which label goes with which set of people, since I expect that there are similar ethical failings and key incompetencies enough to go around.
lower life formas also do this.
By "lower" do you mean "lower to the ground" or what? If not, what do you mean, and how do you determine this "lower"-ness... certainly not on observed evidence of dreaming while sleeping. And that you haven't observed dream symptoms in non-domestic animals does not mean those animals don't dream. In fact, you seem to be misunderstanding the "depth" of REM sleep, since that is one of the periods during a sleep session when the person is closest to consciousness and easiest to wake.
I don't really understand why anyone really needs a GUI to admin a MySQL server-- I suppose it is nice, though. What I'd like to know is: are there any good front-ends to ANY databases that run on Linux. Requirements: free software license, table linker (preferably capable of linking any ODBC-available table), data editor (sheet or form, I don't care, just something to make data entry/editing easier), drag-and-drop query editor (maybe a tree of all linked tables to the right where you can drag fields into a SQL editor and save a lot of typing)... and while I'm dreaming macros or query batching and report writer (turn any recordset into a halfway attractive report with options to export to HTML, XML, or PDF).
Computer games are designed to be used up and replaced.
Actually most computer games are puzzles, not games. Games involve two intelligent actors striving against each other for domination. Puzzles involve using clues to find a solution. The difference between computer game/puzzles and traditional puzzles is that timing is usually a factor. The bulk of traditional puzzles, like connecting pieces to form pictures, or crosswords, or word-finds, do not depend much on the order in which the solution is found. Solitaire is an exception to this. Computer game/puzzles (from Zork through Final Fantasy) usually depend on not just finding the right pieces, but connecting them in the right order. Just like you wouldn't do the same crossword over and over, why would you play Zork over and over? Sure, some computer game/puzzles have some random elements, or some "extra" pieces you can play with, but ultimately the challenge is to make the puzzle just hard enough to make it fun to play with at all, and just easy enough to be rewarding.
What's interesting is when you get to things like computer chess, because in that case, the computer does have an intelligence-- not always sufficient to beat a human. It has algorithms which may not exactly mimic human thought processes (i.e. intelligence) but which ultimately perform the same function-- allowing for open-ended, strategy-based play. Chess is still chess whether played against the computer or against humans.
It's also curious in cases like Everquest (which I have not played), because there you have some element of striving intelligent actors, but the overarching sense I get is that it is team puzzle solving (like when my friends and I would solve the crossword as a team).
I think you're thinking machine sales (which for Mac == 1 OS sale as well). When you start to count the number of desktop-targeted distros sold at retail, that's when you see that Linux is selling well in comparison to Mac OS. My case would be a perfect example. Paid once for a Mac. Paid twice for Yellow Dog Linux (1.2, 2.0) to put on that Mac. Which points up the problems with equating sales with market share... but the quote you quoted clearly is about "paid shipments".
Ah! :) Personally I'm partial to gtk2 and gnome2, precisely because so many of the apps are just gtk2-based... in fact, I think that's great because it means it's more likely those apps can find their way to non-free desktops like Windows and still be free software (whereas Qt on Windows, as I understand it isn't a free software situation). I consider this especially important because I'm a big fan of Ruby-- which has great gtk2 bindings on Linux, and I'd really love it if my scripts would be able to run on Windows, too.
If a malicious program were somehow run that could identify the terminal session window and programmatically do copy/paste, I could see how that would be a hole.
:)
Now you're thinking like one of those security guys!
Your process describes how I myself operate (except that I use GNOME and I set up a sudo option on my laptop so it's easier to shut down since it gets shut down a lot more than my desktop does). What I mean by "run as root" (and what I think most people mean) is to do all of that stuff logged in as root.
Re: "privilege separation" on the desktop, what if a rogue process at the user level spawns a keylogger that waits for "su"? Then what? The keylogger could upgrade itself to root without us even knowing.
From tricycle.com: "What is Buddhism? Buddhism has alternately been called a religion, a philosophy, an ideology and a way of life. As with all the other great spiritual traditions that have withstood the test of time, Buddhism offers many different paths for people with different kinds of sensibilities, needs and capacities."
Considering the role Zen Buddhism (aka "Zen") plays in the cultures in which it comes from, I think it is accurate to consider it a religion-- in the sense that it is a codified spiritual practice that has been operating in an organized fashion for over 2500 years. But if you would like to adopt "Zen" has some sort of philosophical construct outside the context of Zen Buddhism, be my guest. "Religion", "philosophy", and "zen" are all just words so quibbling about them is most a waste of time.