One year I calculated my total tax burden to be over 60%
You poor soul! You should really get on to Human Rights Watch straight away.
I mean, why should you let the evil government get in the way, seeing as you've managed to rise to the top of the world all on your own with nobody's help? They're always out to screw hard working people like yourself!
Can't stick around and chat, my Dad has to pick me up in his SUV.
Just FYI, you were already able to do this in KDE 3.4. If you were using it with the HAL/DBUS options going, hotplugged media would have automatically popped up in media:/. It just didn't have the dialog popping up.
Are there webcams out for Linux that actually support face-tracking?
You'll probably find that all the face tracking is done in software. Which runs on windows.
But you're welcome to develop your own Free face tracking system. There are plenty of Free image analysis libraries available to start with. Such as the OpenCV Toolkit.
I'm considering cashing in my credibility. How much do you think I should settle for? The current offers are around $100,000 - do you think I could get much higher? Is $200,000 realistic? Because of course nobody will be able to take me seriously after I've done the deal.
You do realise that the BSA guys are just a couple of dudes some companies have hired to stand around looking threatening don't you?
You don't have to let them do anything. You don't even have to let them in. They don't have any special powers. They have as much right to come and check you out as I do to knock on Sony's front door and force them to let me check all of their systems for GPL violations.
Well, maybe that is because X11 is ugly, slow, complex, and obsolete?
There is no windowing implementation that can technologically come close to X11 even in 2005. And don't try and say quartz. I wouldn't be able to stop laughing.
The open office people have never been too apple-friendly.
This has nothing to do with some sort of jealous anti-Apple grudge. It's simply that very few Apple fanboys are interested in pulling their fingers out and getting to work on it. They're much better at sitting back and waiting for it to appear on their doorsteps.
Add to that the fact that most of openoffice seems to have been written by people on crack.
Whenever someone brings up the 'modern code is so bloated' argument I have to remind them that it's a compromise against maintainability & speed.
Do you remember the last time you saw code that hasn't been touched since the early 90s? Ever get that "I'm amazed it compiles" feeling? Granted, this is a generalisation, and there's good code and bad code no matter what decade you're talking about. A lot of the code which was 'much faster' was 'much faster' because it used some pretty dodgy shortcuts.
One thing that increased availability of computing power has done is let people concentrate on writing a solid codebase rather than having to worry about using trick (unreadable / fragile piece of code) x y or z.
Of course, that's not an excuse to use the wrong algorithm for something because you couldn't be bothered to sit down for a couple of hours and think before writing anything.
It has a need for package management. To me, this is a fundamental flaw with the design of the operating system. There are other techniques and ideas to handle how software is installed.
What? will the files just magically fly onto a person's hard drive in the right place?
You're saying your "packages" shouldn't be "managed"?
There are not any other techniques for software installation. What you're used to is just a really broken form of package management where any "package" is allowed to overwrite any library with its own (possibly vendor mangled or outdated version of a) library and do whatever it takes to get itself working. Screw any other things on the system. And no package is aware of any other package. And there's no liability for what package broke the system.
I didn't even read the rest of your points. This one was so laughable I just had to respond.
Smart cards for the next few years, until readers are as ubiquitous as USB is today. Lots of computers still ship without memory card readers, and I shouldn't be forced to buy one to do something I can already do without it.
Oh stop complaining. Once this becomes popular, USB smart card readers will cost around $10. They're already quite cheap, and getting drivers going for them is pretty strightforward.
How can spyware snoop data that only passses through the computer already encrypted?
It's not already encrypted in any way. The data on the card may be obfuscated or hashed, bit it is still a static string of data. The data used in one transaction will be the same as the data used in any transaction.
This device will NOT be available to the computer as a general-purpose magstripe reader.
99% of home PCs are windows machines running everything as the superuser. They will be fully accessible by any process, believe me. And once the string is snooped (just once) it can be used for anything.
This won't be cryptographically safe until the data held on the card is not directly readable. So magstripe cards are insufficient for this. All it needs is for the user to have spyware installed which snoops the data from the magstripe card next time it's scanned. Then the attacker has the right code to encrypt with the bank's public key himself and do what he likes with.
This is what smartcards are for. With a cryptographic smartcard, you can never directly read the key off it. It does the cryptographic routines internally. The authentication can only ever succeed if the card is accessible at the time of the transaction so it can give the right 'answer' to the bank's 'question'. The 'question' of course is always unique to the transaction.
And besides, nearly everyone in the UK already has a smartcard from their bank.
Exactly. And the SSL smartcard authentication framework is already built into browsers like firefox.
I'm guessing they're not doing this because they don't want to end up having to support tens of thousands of windows users trying to get their USB devices working.
Slashdot Mirror
You poor soul! You should really get on to Human Rights Watch straight away.
I mean, why should you let the evil government get in the way, seeing as you've managed to rise to the top of the world all on your own with nobody's help? They're always out to screw hard working people like yourself!
Can't stick around and chat, my Dad has to pick me up in his SUV.
Packages built by vendors = installations with broken dependencies.
Distributors make the packages for a reson. Because they know how their distribution works and how they want it to work.
Just FYI, you were already able to do this in KDE 3.4. If you were using it with the HAL/DBUS options going, hotplugged media would have automatically popped up in media:/. It just didn't have the dialog popping up.
You'll probably find that all the face tracking is done in software. Which runs on windows.
But you're welcome to develop your own Free face tracking system. There are plenty of Free image analysis libraries available to start with. Such as the OpenCV Toolkit.
I'm considering cashing in my credibility. How much do you think I should settle for? The current offers are around $100,000 - do you think I could get much higher? Is $200,000 realistic? Because of course nobody will be able to take me seriously after I've done the deal.
You do realise that the BSA guys are just a couple of dudes some companies have hired to stand around looking threatening don't you?
You don't have to let them do anything. You don't even have to let them in. They don't have any special powers. They have as much right to come and check you out as I do to knock on Sony's front door and force them to let me check all of their systems for GPL violations.
Well, maybe that is because X11 is ugly, slow, complex, and obsolete?
There is no windowing implementation that can technologically come close to X11 even in 2005. And don't try and say quartz. I wouldn't be able to stop laughing.
The open office people have never been too apple-friendly.
This has nothing to do with some sort of jealous anti-Apple grudge. It's simply that very few Apple fanboys are interested in pulling their fingers out and getting to work on it. They're much better at sitting back and waiting for it to appear on their doorsteps.
Add to that the fact that most of openoffice seems to have been written by people on crack.
And what if Creative or iriver releases a new kickass player that blows the iPod out of the water?
They won't be able to do that unless they are allowed to put the Apple logo on it.
I suppose Creative or iRiver could create their own, more powerful brand identity. But hipsters are pretty wed to their Apples.
Thank you Apple Computer Corporation Volunteer Marketing Recruit #14R2
I'm amazed that such technologically retarded hacks are used in 2005.
I'm trying to suppress the vomit.
Indeed, and I think it's a disservice to call them an 'IT Company'. 'Patent Farmers' is far more appropriate.
Wow! A website? These people are serious.
Whenever someone brings up the 'modern code is so bloated' argument I have to remind them that it's a compromise against maintainability & speed.
Do you remember the last time you saw code that hasn't been touched since the early 90s? Ever get that "I'm amazed it compiles" feeling? Granted, this is a generalisation, and there's good code and bad code no matter what decade you're talking about. A lot of the code which was 'much faster' was 'much faster' because it used some pretty dodgy shortcuts.
One thing that increased availability of computing power has done is let people concentrate on writing a solid codebase rather than having to worry about using trick (unreadable / fragile piece of code) x y or z.
Of course, that's not an excuse to use the wrong algorithm for something because you couldn't be bothered to sit down for a couple of hours and think before writing anything.
It has a need for package management. To me, this is a fundamental flaw with the design of the operating system. There are other techniques and ideas to handle how software is installed.
What? will the files just magically fly onto a person's hard drive in the right place?
You're saying your "packages" shouldn't be "managed"?
There are not any other techniques for software installation. What you're used to is just a really broken form of package management where any "package" is allowed to overwrite any library with its own (possibly vendor mangled or outdated version of a) library and do whatever it takes to get itself working. Screw any other things on the system. And no package is aware of any other package. And there's no liability for what package broke the system.
I didn't even read the rest of your points. This one was so laughable I just had to respond.
Did I miss the bit where he specifies that he wants to be locked in to a proprietary hardware and software system?
But they do make great penpals. Like the guy in my sig, for instance.
Smart cards for the next few years, until readers are as ubiquitous as USB is today. Lots of computers still ship without memory card readers, and I shouldn't be forced to buy one to do something I can already do without it.
Oh stop complaining. Once this becomes popular, USB smart card readers will cost around $10. They're already quite cheap, and getting drivers going for them is pretty strightforward.
This won't be cryptographically safe until the data held on the card is not directly readable. So magstripe cards are insufficient for this. All it needs is for the user to have spyware installed which snoops the data from the magstripe card next time it's scanned. Then the attacker has the right code to encrypt with the bank's public key himself and do what he likes with.
This is what smartcards are for. With a cryptographic smartcard, you can never directly read the key off it. It does the cryptographic routines internally. The authentication can only ever succeed if the card is accessible at the time of the transaction so it can give the right 'answer' to the bank's 'question'. The 'question' of course is always unique to the transaction.
And besides, nearly everyone in the UK already has a smartcard from their bank.
Exactly. And the SSL smartcard authentication framework is already built into browsers like firefox.
I'm guessing they're not doing this because they don't want to end up having to support tens of thousands of windows users trying to get their USB devices working.
Congrats. Funniest /. comment I've seen.
Another vocal member of the "I don't understand package management" club.
I thought "Funny. I haven't seen much inflammatory bullshit recently. I wonder if OSnews have got back into gear again."
Then I noticed the link. Brilliant.
With the choice of skins and what not, what a relief. For me the MSN interface has just become this weirdly bloated thing.
This line is full of hilarious irony.