Smug and humble are not opposites. The opposite of smugness is self-effacement. The opposite of humility is conceit. If you want to keep yourself humble, there are better ways to do it than exposing yourself to needless security holes.
Certainly some people get overly smug about free software being more secure. More users means more people finding normal bugs. Security holes, however, aren't usually found by casual users trying to use the software as intended. Security is achieved not by exposing the source to many eyeballs, but to the right eyeballs.
Prompting to create a non-root account works. If lots of people were running as root, there would have been a Linux virus spreading in the wild by now.
You point to two articles that describe the same virus. Yes the proof of concept happened in 2001. No such viruses have been found spreading in the wild. Windows apologists who claim that most people run as root on Linux are obviously wrong.
Can you point to some source to corroborate your story that early viruses infected Unix machines? Early viruses predate Unix on x86, and I don't think most Unix installations used boot floppies.
Yes there are vulnerabilities everywhere, but the difference between *nix vulns and Windows vulns are enough to justify smugness.
The majority in Diamond v. Diehr had a whole section (Section IV) devoted to explaining why their ruling does not "allow a competent draftsman to evade" what is and isn't patentable, and they were right. The basic idea of the ruling was that software being an element of the claim does not make the whole claim nonstatutory. The fact that this question was even raised shows how non-patentable software was at the time. The ruling seems common sense to me. If you make a machine out of stock parts, you don't base patentability on the individual parts, but on the way they're combined into a whole. People who have made the leap from Diehr to patents where all the inventiveness is in software are in direct contradiction of that ruling.
The dissent had absolutely zero disagreement with the majority on matters of law. Stevens wrote that he would have ruled the same way if he read the claims as the majority did. However, he then went on to rail at length against software patents, which may have led some to believe that the majority was for software patents. This is a widespread misconception I'm trying to clear up.
If software patents were about allowing small competitors to jump in and topple big, established businesses, big companies would be fighting against them tooth and nail. The truth is big companies can leverage the limited monopoly granted by a patent much better than any small company could.
The U.S. never officially adopted software patents. The U.S. Supreme Court always ruled that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not statutory material for a patent. Lower court decisions appear to have contradicted the Supreme Court, and the USPTO has certainly granted many patents like the ones the Supreme Court struck down, but software patents have never been formally legalized. If the EU formally legalizes software patents, they will precede the U.S. in doing so.
The Debian testing distribution already balances the leading edge with robustness very well. I don't think we need a new distribution to do it.
some things newbs should learn about encryption
on
Intro to Encryption
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you're going to give a cursory intro to encryption for the masses, I think a less mathematical approach would be warranted. This is not an exhaustive list, but here are some practical questions:
Who can intercept my interaction with web sites if it's unencrypted?
Who can intercept my email if it's unencrypted?
How can I tell if my web browser is using encryption?
What do those warnings about SSL certificates mean?
Why does Internet Explorer warn me about a page with "both secure and nonsecure items"? What can I do about it?
The primer seems a little overconfident about random ciphers being generally secure. Is it safe to say that most ciphers in use today aren't vulnerable to known plaintext attacks?
Could you cite the Supreme Court case that legalized business method patents? If you can't cite such a case, I suspect it's much like the situation with software patents, which were legalized in spite of the Supreme Court, not because of it.
I have created a no-nonsense photo blogging service that makes it very easy to turn a pile of digital photos into illustrated blog entries. It takes me hardly any time after a day out with my wife and children to share photos from that day, and from prior days when I procrastinated putting them up. Friends and extended family have been happy to see the cute pictures in a timely manner, and I get to sleep sooner.
Search less relevant to most video/photo blogs
on
Videoblog Revolution
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· Score: 1
Most video/photo blogs are of interest only to people who know the blog authors. The way you find interesting photos on such blogs is you get an email from the author saying, "Hey, look at my new pictures from my trip", visit the link, and scan for pictures that look interesting. With a layout that takes advantage of monitor width you can scan through a lot of thumbnails quickly. Or with properly shrunk JPEGs you can put them all on one page and scroll up and down. A similar thing could be done using stills from a video that you click on to jump to a specific segment.
Fox has the resources to run exit polls, and the results are a matter of public record. Or is your theory that Fox is really a left-leaning syndicate posing as a right-leaning one to disguise the big liberal media conspiracy?
The poster you're replying to noted a trend in states, not a universal quality of all individuals who voted for Bush. Yes, you have a job paid for by government spending. Big spender Bush does serve your interest. That doesn't explain the pattern among states.
OK, obviously there is systematic error here, not just random variation within the margin for error. I suspect the Hispanic vote may be a source of such error, as they tend to be reluctant to say whom they voted for. Do you have handy anywhere the discrepancy between California exit polls and the ballot counts? There's a large Hispanic population there, yet little incentive to try to rig electronic voting.
The cited article does not say the Pennsylvania voting problems went in Kerry's favor.
Nader's place is in the Democratic primary
on
Pre-Election Discussion
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Many people who voted for Nader in 2000 got a hard lesson in why choosing the lesser of two evils is important. Their conscience is telling them to vote for Kerry now. This election is about determining who will be President, not about making a statement. The mathematics of US voting is such that we cannot escape the two-party system. If you can't win over one party or the other, you can't win over the nation. Nader definitely should speak out, but he should do so as part of the Democratic primary process.
They got it from the Hart Rudman report issued in January, 2001. The Bush administration was too busy trashing the economy in early 2001 to pay attention to the important warnings in that report, but 9/11 forced them to.
Only one slight clarification: Software patents do not need to be repealed, because they were never legislated. The US Supreme Court has always held that software for general-purpose digital computers is not statutory material for a patent. What is needed is legislation that clarifies that no software is statutory material for a patent. In the meantime, we need a policy at the USPTO that is consistent with the Benson, Flook and Diehr cases.
I would expect OpenDarwin to be prominently linked from this site. That's what I found searching for jhead on MacOS X. Seems like a big project. Am I missing something?
Slashdot Mirror
Smug and humble are not opposites. The opposite of smugness is self-effacement. The opposite of humility is conceit. If you want to keep yourself humble, there are better ways to do it than exposing yourself to needless security holes.
Certainly some people get overly smug about free software being more secure. More users means more people finding normal bugs. Security holes, however, aren't usually found by casual users trying to use the software as intended. Security is achieved not by exposing the source to many eyeballs, but to the right eyeballs.
Prompting to create a non-root account works. If lots of people were running as root, there would have been a Linux virus spreading in the wild by now.
You point to two articles that describe the same virus. Yes the proof of concept happened in 2001. No such viruses have been found spreading in the wild. Windows apologists who claim that most people run as root on Linux are obviously wrong.
Can you point to some source to corroborate your story that early viruses infected Unix machines? Early viruses predate Unix on x86, and I don't think most Unix installations used boot floppies.
Yes there are vulnerabilities everywhere, but the difference between *nix vulns and Windows vulns are enough to justify smugness.
The majority in Diamond v. Diehr had a whole section (Section IV) devoted to explaining why their ruling does not "allow a competent draftsman to evade" what is and isn't patentable, and they were right. The basic idea of the ruling was that software being an element of the claim does not make the whole claim nonstatutory. The fact that this question was even raised shows how non-patentable software was at the time. The ruling seems common sense to me. If you make a machine out of stock parts, you don't base patentability on the individual parts, but on the way they're combined into a whole. People who have made the leap from Diehr to patents where all the inventiveness is in software are in direct contradiction of that ruling.
The dissent had absolutely zero disagreement with the majority on matters of law. Stevens wrote that he would have ruled the same way if he read the claims as the majority did. However, he then went on to rail at length against software patents, which may have led some to believe that the majority was for software patents. This is a widespread misconception I'm trying to clear up.
If software patents were about allowing small competitors to jump in and topple big, established businesses, big companies would be fighting against them tooth and nail. The truth is big companies can leverage the limited monopoly granted by a patent much better than any small company could.
The U.S. never officially adopted software patents. The U.S. Supreme Court always ruled that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not statutory material for a patent. Lower court decisions appear to have contradicted the Supreme Court, and the USPTO has certainly granted many patents like the ones the Supreme Court struck down, but software patents have never been formally legalized. If the EU formally legalizes software patents, they will precede the U.S. in doing so.
If you care about democracy, voting issues are important even if they don't turn a given election.
I had similar experiences with Tomcat. However, Jetty has worked great for me.
Yes, the slashdot title completely mischaracterizes the article.
The Debian testing distribution already balances the leading edge with robustness very well. I don't think we need a new distribution to do it.
The primer seems a little overconfident about random ciphers being generally secure. Is it safe to say that most ciphers in use today aren't vulnerable to known plaintext attacks?
Could you cite the Supreme Court case that legalized business method patents? If you can't cite such a case, I suspect it's much like the situation with software patents, which were legalized in spite of the Supreme Court, not because of it.
I have created a no-nonsense photo blogging service that makes it very easy to turn a pile of digital photos into illustrated blog entries. It takes me hardly any time after a day out with my wife and children to share photos from that day, and from prior days when I procrastinated putting them up. Friends and extended family have been happy to see the cute pictures in a timely manner, and I get to sleep sooner.
Most video/photo blogs are of interest only to people who know the blog authors. The way you find interesting photos on such blogs is you get an email from the author saying, "Hey, look at my new pictures from my trip", visit the link, and scan for pictures that look interesting. With a layout that takes advantage of monitor width you can scan through a lot of thumbnails quickly. Or with properly shrunk JPEGs you can put them all on one page and scroll up and down. A similar thing could be done using stills from a video that you click on to jump to a specific segment.
Fox has the resources to run exit polls, and the results are a matter of public record. Or is your theory that Fox is really a left-leaning syndicate posing as a right-leaning one to disguise the big liberal media conspiracy?
The poster you're replying to noted a trend in states, not a universal quality of all individuals who voted for Bush. Yes, you have a job paid for by government spending. Big spender Bush does serve your interest. That doesn't explain the pattern among states.
OK, obviously there is systematic error here, not just random variation within the margin for error. I suspect the Hispanic vote may be a source of such error, as they tend to be reluctant to say whom they voted for. Do you have handy anywhere the discrepancy between California exit polls and the ballot counts? There's a large Hispanic population there, yet little incentive to try to rig electronic voting.
The cited article does not say the Pennsylvania voting problems went in Kerry's favor.
Many people who voted for Nader in 2000 got a hard lesson in why choosing the lesser of two evils is important. Their conscience is telling them to vote for Kerry now. This election is about determining who will be President, not about making a statement. The mathematics of US voting is such that we cannot escape the two-party system. If you can't win over one party or the other, you can't win over the nation. Nader definitely should speak out, but he should do so as part of the Democratic primary process.
They got it from the Hart Rudman report issued in January, 2001. The Bush administration was too busy trashing the economy in early 2001 to pay attention to the important warnings in that report, but 9/11 forced them to.
Well said! Well said!
Only one slight clarification: Software patents do not need to be repealed, because they were never legislated. The US Supreme Court has always held that software for general-purpose digital computers is not statutory material for a patent. What is needed is legislation that clarifies that no software is statutory material for a patent. In the meantime, we need a policy at the USPTO that is consistent with the Benson, Flook and Diehr cases.
I would expect OpenDarwin to be prominently linked from this site. That's what I found searching for jhead on MacOS X. Seems like a big project. Am I missing something?