He made a few very good points, but the overall tone was a little too ranty.
This was the most important point, I think, and was buried 2/3rds of the way down:
The emails being 8 months old, heuristic rules were clearly updated during this time to detect spams from the past eight months. The tests perform no analysis of how well SpamAssassin would do up against emails received the next day, or the next eight months. Essentially, by the time the tests were performed, SpamAssassin had already been told (by a programmer) to watch for these spams. [...] What good is a test to detect spam filter accuracy when the filter has clearly been programmed to detect its test set?
In a civilised society this won't happen, because we no longer have the problems (probably massive malnutrition) that caused the selection for more efficient production of vitamins in the skin (which is the benefit of having white skin) over resistance to long term exposure to sunlight (which is the benefit of having dark skin).
SELinux is a niche market, and not very well known. I'm not sure what project the German government has sponsored, but it may well be a higher profile project than that.
I don't know much about the Canadian legal system, but I know that Canada is a member of the British Commonwealth, and as such its legal system is based on the British one.
This means that, unless they have specifically enacted a change in the laws on burden of proof, the decision in a civil case like this one ought to be based on balance of evidence; that is, whichever side is most likely to be in the right should win. Nobody needs to prove anything.
Anyone with knowledge of Canadian law want to confirm or deny this?
According to the [Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999], a standard term must be expressed in plain and intelligible language. A term is open to challenge if it could put the consumer at a disadvantage because he or she is not clear about its meaning - even if its meaning could be worked out by a lawyer. If there is doubt as to what a term means, the meaning most favourable to the consumer will apply.
The more I think about it, the more I think I like the EU's privacy laws, and perhaps the US should step up to that level of privacy protection.
I don't believe the EU's laws render spyware illegal. What they _do_ do is:
* Require spyware to acquire your permission before processing any of your personal data (i.e. it must be mentioned in the EULA) * Require spyware operating companies to notify their appropriate government office with a list of the types of data they collect * Require spyware operators to provide you with a copy of all data they hold about you on request * Require spyware operators to correct or remove any inaccurate information they hold on you on request
Also note that these regulations only come into force if _you_ can be identified from the data processed. If they couldn't take your name & address (or other readily available identifying information) and find information specifically about you, none of this applies. I suspect most spyware operators are therefore exempt, because they only track information about an anonymous user.
I don't know much about the software in question here, but I can tell you that CoolWebSearch is installed (sometimes) by a server exploiting a vulnerability in the Microsoft (Java) Virtual Machine to perform an automatic installation without the user's consent. It isn't listed anywhere as a virus because it doesn't propogate itself, it requires somebody to set up a web page with the specific intent of propogating it. This is obviously the kind of software this law is targetted at.
Red+Green+Blue light _looks_ white to us, because our eyes cannot distinguish it, as they have only 3 receptor types that are tuned to those wavelengths of light.
White light contains all frequencies of visible light. We can see all frequencies of visible light, it is simply that we cannot distinguish them from an appropriate combination of the two nearest frequencies our eyes are tuned to.
This screen filters out the frequencies other than narrow bands around those used by the projector, which are (approximately) the same frequencies that our eyes are tuned to. This means that something like 90% of all the other frequencies that are in the white ambient light are absorbed, while almost all of the light from the projector is reflected.
I'll admit I was confused by that. The usage of "bright" to mean highly saturated is a familiar one, of course, but I only tend to think of it in terms of reflective colouration. As in: the colour is bright green because a large proportion of the green spectrum is retained when it reflects white light, so if you viewed it through a green filter it would be relatively bright.
But thinking about it, it _does_ colloquially simply mean saturated.
Yeah, OK. The author was just being ambiguous, which is what you expect from a journalist.
The author of the article doesn't know what he's talking about!
In a bright room, the image on the screen is brighter
No, it isn't. It's clearer, it might _appear_ brighter because of that, but there's no way it could actually _be_ brighter. Unless the technology does something not described.
Since Thomas Edison introduced motion-picture projectors more than 100 years ago
I could have sworn the motion picture projector was introduced by Lumiere.
It seems this is a surface that reflects only very selective frequencies, those used by their emitters. An interesting idea, but calling it black is deceptive.
A word of advice: when an abbreviation (eg "MFS") is used and is immediately followed (usually separated by some punctuation, in this case a dash, but parantheses and commas are also used frequently) by a series of words that has the same initial letters (eg "Minix from Scratch"), then that is normally considered to be a definition of the abbreviation.
Also, pay attention. The "Brown-Tannenbaum" controversy has been widely reported here and elsewhere. I'm sure some earlier stories relating to it have defined Minix in easy-to-understand terms. And if MFS (remember: Minix from Scratch) is to Minix as LFS is to Linux, what do you _think_ LFS means?
Huffman's contribution to LZH was simply that you do dictionary encoding using an algorithm developed by Lempel and Ziv, and then you apply standard Huffman Coding to the result. So it _isn't_ another contribution, just another application of the same contribution. Still cool, though.
I believe all of Sun's Java environments run fine. There is no reason that any competently developed software should fail, in fact, as the APIs required have been documented for years.
Run as root to disable NX? That's a ridiculous restriction.
The way most UNIX systems work, it would in fact stop the dynamic linker from working!
Also, it is far _more_ important to stop root processes from executing data that they're not supposed to than it is to stop user processes from doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
He made a few very good points, but the overall tone was a little too ranty.
This was the most important point, I think, and was buried 2/3rds of the way down:
The emails being 8 months old, heuristic rules were clearly updated during this time to detect spams from the past eight months. The tests perform no analysis of how well SpamAssassin would do up against emails received the next day, or the next eight months. Essentially, by the time the tests were performed, SpamAssassin had already been told (by a programmer) to watch for these spams. [...] What good is a test to detect spam filter accuracy when the filter has clearly been programmed to detect its test set?
Mail.app's filter isn't Bayesian. Please see previous slashdot article on how it works (I'm too lazy to find the reference right now).
In a civilised society this won't happen, because we no longer have the problems (probably massive malnutrition) that caused the selection for more efficient production of vitamins in the skin (which is the benefit of having white skin) over resistance to long term exposure to sunlight (which is the benefit of having dark skin).
For anyone who's wondering about the uses of treatments for blocking myostatin, here is an article you might want to read.
Myostatin and Myostatin Inhibitors: The Next Big Supplement Scam
it looks like they're still being sold at various web sites, so somebody must think they're working.
What, you mean like people think powdered rhino horn is a good treatment for impotence?
(A) they already are. (B) they already are, I guess.
The problem is that they don't work. It seems that you need to perform gene therapy in order to effectively achieve this kind of result.
According to the Medical College of Georgia, it weakens ligaments.
You're linking to a snake-oil product that doesn't work.
Googling for 'myostatin mutation' finds this, which seems to be an account of another person who has this condition, so you're probably right.
My understanding is that short of genetic engineering, there is no way to take advantage of this for athletics.
Of course, that hasn't stopped numerous companies selling "myostatin inhibitors", but from what I've read, none of them actually work.
SELinux is a niche market, and not very well known. I'm not sure what project the German government has sponsored, but it may well be a higher profile project than that.
No. They have enough experience with the law to know that even if SCO do win, they can legally only pursue distributors of Linux, not end users.
I don't know much about the Canadian legal system, but I know that Canada is a member of the British Commonwealth, and as such its legal system is based on the British one.
This means that, unless they have specifically enacted a change in the laws on burden of proof, the decision in a civil case like this one ought to be based on balance of evidence; that is, whichever side is most likely to be in the right should win. Nobody needs to prove anything.
Anyone with knowledge of Canadian law want to confirm or deny this?
Do you mean something like this?
According to the [Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999], a standard term must be expressed in plain and intelligible language. A term is open to challenge if it could put the consumer at a disadvantage because he or she is not clear about its meaning - even if its meaning could be worked out by a lawyer. If there is doubt as to what a term means, the meaning most favourable to the consumer will apply.
From the UK Office of Fair Trading, guidance on recent changes in UK contract law.
The more I think about it, the more I think I like the EU's privacy laws, and perhaps the US should step up to that level of privacy protection.
I don't believe the EU's laws render spyware illegal. What they _do_ do is:
* Require spyware to acquire your permission before processing any of your personal data (i.e. it must be mentioned in the EULA)
* Require spyware operating companies to notify their appropriate government office with a list of the types of data they collect
* Require spyware operators to provide you with a copy of all data they hold about you on request
* Require spyware operators to correct or remove any inaccurate information they hold on you on request
Also note that these regulations only come into force if _you_ can be identified from the data processed. If they couldn't take your name & address (or other readily available identifying information) and find information specifically about you, none of this applies. I suspect most spyware operators are therefore exempt, because they only track information about an anonymous user.
I don't know much about the software in question here, but I can tell you that CoolWebSearch is installed (sometimes) by a server exploiting a vulnerability in the Microsoft (Java) Virtual Machine to perform an automatic installation without the user's consent. It isn't listed anywhere as a virus because it doesn't propogate itself, it requires somebody to set up a web page with the specific intent of propogating it. This is obviously the kind of software this law is targetted at.
No.
Red+Green+Blue light _looks_ white to us, because our eyes cannot distinguish it, as they have only 3 receptor types that are tuned to those wavelengths of light.
White light contains all frequencies of visible light. We can see all frequencies of visible light, it is simply that we cannot distinguish them from an appropriate combination of the two nearest frequencies our eyes are tuned to.
This screen filters out the frequencies other than narrow bands around those used by the projector, which are (approximately) the same frequencies that our eyes are tuned to. This means that something like 90% of all the other frequencies that are in the white ambient light are absorbed, while almost all of the light from the projector is reflected.
I'll admit I was confused by that. The usage of "bright" to mean highly saturated is a familiar one, of course, but I only tend to think of it in terms of reflective colouration. As in: the colour is bright green because a large proportion of the green spectrum is retained when it reflects white light, so if you viewed it through a green filter it would be relatively bright.
But thinking about it, it _does_ colloquially simply mean saturated.
Yeah, OK. The author was just being ambiguous, which is what you expect from a journalist.
The author of the article doesn't know what he's talking about!
In a bright room, the image on the screen is brighter
No, it isn't. It's clearer, it might _appear_ brighter because of that, but there's no way it could actually _be_ brighter. Unless the technology does something not described.
Since Thomas Edison introduced motion-picture projectors more than 100 years ago
I could have sworn the motion picture projector was introduced by Lumiere.
If it reflects _anything_, it isn't black.
It seems this is a surface that reflects only very selective frequencies, those used by their emitters. An interesting idea, but calling it black is deceptive.
1 Gallon = 160 Fl. Oz., so approximately 160 Oz., or 10lb.
(Some of the imperial system is also designed with easy conversions in mind)
A word of advice: when an abbreviation (eg "MFS") is used and is immediately followed (usually separated by some punctuation, in this case a dash, but parantheses and commas are also used frequently) by a series of words that has the same initial letters (eg "Minix from Scratch"), then that is normally considered to be a definition of the abbreviation.
Also, pay attention. The "Brown-Tannenbaum" controversy has been widely reported here and elsewhere. I'm sure some earlier stories relating to it have defined Minix in easy-to-understand terms. And if MFS (remember: Minix from Scratch) is to Minix as LFS is to Linux, what do you _think_ LFS means?
Huffman's contribution to LZH was simply that you do dictionary encoding using an algorithm developed by Lempel and Ziv, and then you apply standard Huffman Coding to the result. So it _isn't_ another contribution, just another application of the same contribution. Still cool, though.
I believe all of Sun's Java environments run fine. There is no reason that any competently developed software should fail, in fact, as the APIs required have been documented for years.
Run as root to disable NX? That's a ridiculous restriction.
The way most UNIX systems work, it would in fact stop the dynamic linker from working!
Also, it is far _more_ important to stop root processes from executing data that they're not supposed to than it is to stop user processes from doing it.
Sometimes, OS designers can be remarkably dense.