Oh, oops, that's right. Food is provided by many different providers, suppliers, packagers. Why didn't it make your list of important things? It's only with the establishment of the FDA and other redistribution and regulation agencies that corporate Agriculture has been able to consolidate and create monopolies.
Gee, there we go again! Government intrusion creates the very problems of consolidation and monopoly that get blamed on the "free market", long after the "free" part has been regulated out of existence.
Actually, I'm kind of happy that there's an FDA around, setting minimum food standards and prosecuting those who don't meet them. Our FDA isn't as good as the agencies they have in a lot of other countries, and a lot of dubious food gets by, but it's still better than nothing. If you don't believe this, try reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," to see what kinds of things they used to do to food back under the free market. Here's a hint... it turns out that lead chromate is cheaper than leavening in biscuits... and sawdust makes a great filler for sausages. You don't want to think about these things. The best part was, nobody knew what was in the food. There was no requirement for the companies to disclose this, because there was no government regulation of any kind.
Also, the free market naturally leads to harmful monopolies, "boom and bust" cycles, de-skilling and mechanization, and a lot of other bad things. It's just like any other incentive system-- it works well for some things but in others you need a different incentive system. This isn't a matter of philosophy-- it's a matter of economic fact. Put down that Ayn Rand and start reading the work of some serious economists.
The oft cited justification for not doing what you recommend is "what about the little guy?" You are proposing essentially taking away a patentee's ability to negotiate a license for practicing the patented invention if they "sit on it for years." The law already does this, and simply asks that an infringer pay a "reasonable royalty" in this case.
The patent system is inherently biased in favor of large companies, because they have the financial and legal resources to stay the course throught difficult litigation. This is exactly what we are seeing in the RIM vs. NTP case. RIM has deep pockets, so they have been able to hold out almost indefinitely.
In fact, it's possible for a large company to ignore the patents of a smaller one, and "win" in the marketplace. Even if they are eventually fined, their smaller competitor may no longer even be in business by the time the case is over. Try googling the Microsoft vs. Stac case. Patent law is a "pay-to-play" system that prices out smaller corporations, let alone startups in the garage. Arguments that patents help "the little guy" are completely bogus.
If the invention is truly valuable, a would-be infringer would be willing to pay a reasonable royalty to use it. If they negotiate such a deal, cheers! If they accidentally end up using the patent and the patentee only sustained the theoretical loss you are concerned with, the law has you covered!
Who decides what is "reasonable"? Why should anyone be assessed a fee, "reasonable" or not, for re-inventing something that has already been discovered?
If the invention is worthless, no one would be concerned with implementing it in the first place, or they have work-arounds.
Maybe. Or maybe the "invention" is so abstract in nature that there are no work-arounds. A patent like "one-click shopping" or "wireless email." Of course, the patent office would never grant those patents... would they?
I think the key thing to remember here is that the patent system is not self-correcting. It's very open to abuses of power. Whenever you have lots and lots of money being tossed around, you will get some amount of corruption, statistically. It's also very easy for clever people to "game the system" by creating patent holding companies. This is what SCO and NTP have turned into. Although both started out as legitimate companies, they have become shell companies, part of an elaborate chess game played by cynical mega-corporations.
It may be true that the patent system was created with good intentions, but take a look at what is actually happening in practice. At least in the field of computers, I think you will find that the "useful arts" are advancing not because of, but in spite of, the system. Maybe "intellectual property" has been a useful concept in other domains. I haven't followed those other fields closely enough to have an opinion.
The ultimate question here is one of power. Do we want to give away our right to create code, and invent in other domains, to established interests-- the so-called original inventors and established corporations? Or do we want to retain these rights for ourself? I think the answer is clear.
Wrong. Do i need to post the balancing tests for Fair Use yet again?
Ok, you are right here. The law was written with the intent that it would have minimal impact on the industry's profits. Sorry. Still, my point was that, in a larger sense, the welfare of the public trumps the benefit that one small industry may gain from favorable regulations.
I can't be bothered to read the rest of your post, given that I've already responded to the same false claim that you just made several times already. If you can't be asked to read the other replies before reading, then I am not going to waste my time on you.
The fact that you're attacking his past actions instead of the argument he made is telling. I think he has a point. Would you like to reply to his actual argument instead of just attacking the man?
It seems to me that in this letter, Bill Gates is outlining his moral views on the rights of individuals vs. the commons. If his philosophy has proven to be so idealistic that even he cannot practice it, I think it is very relevant to the topic at hand. Don't you?
If you want to discuss all the other, horrible things that Bill Gates may have done... then that's fine. But it also is completely offtopic and should be moderated as such.
The "topic" is Gate's open letter. If people think Gates is a hypocrite for posting the letter, that's 100% on topic! Just because YOU are only interested in moral questions centered around copyright, doesn't mean that everything else is "offtopic."
Congratulations, you just invented "capabilities"-- something that a lot of researchers in the Operating Systems field have been pushing for.
Unfortunately, the compatibility monkey is on everyone's shoulders, so we're going to be stuck with "permissions" for a long while yet. When was chmod invented? 1970 or thereabouts?
Intellectually, I don't like this ruling one bit. "Fair Use" is broadly supposed to have minimal to nil financial effects on the copyrightholder and in general the "fair user" is doing the using for personal reasons.
You completely made up this part. The law does not specify whether or not fair use will have financial impacts on the copyright holder.
Google's cache is basically a large-scale financial transfer from the copyrightholders (who serve to benefit from the ads they serve and other interaction they get from end-users visitng their site) to google, who benefits directly by keeping people longer on google's site and thus, basically, shucks them more ads.
Bzzzt! Google doesn't put google ads on the cached pages. If anything, the google cache is a large scale financial transfer from Google to the copyrightholders, because when their sites are down, their users can often use the google cache, rather than switching to using a competing site.
Those of you who do the "yesbutNOCACHEtag" dance have got it backwards to: it's not the responsibility of the copyrightholder to sing to the tune of whatever the latest fad is. Rather, it's the other way around - google should convince people that it's in their interest to put a "CACHEME!" tag.
robots.txt is not a fad, it's the de-facto standard for the internet, the same as http, TCP/IP, or DNS itself.
Rememeber folks, in terms of the cache here, we're referring to google's ability to serve content IN ITS ENTIRETY to end-users - we're not talking about those tiny snippets needed to make search engine results useful.
How about your ability to download web pages "IN THEIR ENTIRIETY" to your computer, and then view them using a "web browser"? According to your own legal philosophy, you should be barred from doing this.
So, in conclusion, I suggest that you follow your own advice-- starting with slashdot.org. Do not post again to this site without getting written approval from the "copyrightholders" (what a contrived word). Otherwise, I will consider you just another hypocritical troll.
Should users be able to go anywhere on the 'net they want? hell no! The company pays for the bandwidth and owns the workstations... they can say "no" to anything they consider to be unrelated to doing business. If users need to get somewhere on the filtered list, it should be easy enough to justify it to management. Do the homework and make your case... you'll get much farther than someone that just pisses and moans about how restrictive those IT bastards are.
There will always be some legitimate sites that get caught up in the web filter. Websites about breast cancer that get blocked because they say "breast", things like that. When people can't get to the sites they want, they will not have time to submit every such site to management for approval. They will just either find a way around the filter, or keep searching. In both cases, it is a waste of company time.
In some cases it might be appropriate to prohibit users from installing software or even connecting to the internet. It depends on what their job is. But http filters are just crap, pure and simple.
Yes, this is the case sometimes. But honestly... How many times does [using the internet become necessary for] anyone but the most radical coal-face level three network technician? And if you are one of those then I would imagine you know some of the dangers of providing this access to everyone!
The company I work at doesn't filter the web. We assume that all of our employees are adults, and treat them accordingly. I use the internet all the time to find answers to problems. It is usually much quicker than reading through documentation.
If your company is so filled with deadwood that you can't even trust people to use a web browser, you've got big problems. Or the kind of work you do is so menial that you need a slave-driver mentality to motivate people every day. Either way, I'd start learning how to speak Hindu or Mandarin, because you may need it in a few years.
As I said in another post in this thread If a analyst/tech/programmer can provide a good valid business reason to get access above what Joe in Marketing can then he should be allowed to create a tunnel. He should also be required to sign paper saying he won't abuse the tunnel as well.
What about taking a dump? This is also a risky activity, and I feel it should require a form to be filled out. Think about it-- there is the possibility of masturbation-- or of sexual encounters in the bathroom-- or any one of a number of inappropriate behaviors. If you don't trust or understand your employees, a mentality like this becomes "reasonable."
Re:The hypocrisy of "sustainable"
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Chinese Eco-Cities
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Things that are "interesting," (and "provocative," in the political troll subculture), are often championed by trolls who claim to know more than everyone else. They spout off like enlightened, forward-thinking people upon whom the rest of the common slashbots relies for knowledge and sophistication.
In other words, they're trolls. But we're all used to troll sanctimony, right? Here's the part that really gets under my skin.
Any "hyperlinks" (or "links") are guaranteed to be links to goatse. In other words, poor slashbots simply can't afford to click on them. While rich, sophisticated trolls wallow in their somethingawful.com, the poor rabble that they claim to "care about" will still be clicking on lemonparty.com and hick.org. (Or tubgirl.com, seeing as these people will be living in China.) "Humor" won't help those poor people one iota because their eyeballs will be fried by it. The rest of the subhumans will still be ignorantly destroying the slashdot as before. When you see "trolls," you can think of this tagline: "Trolling. By creepy losers, for creepy losers."
Even reading the post makes it seem like these "paragraphs" are going to be nothing more than deviant giggles for jaded readers of "adequacy.org". When the denizens of these not-quite-quaint sad, pathetic subcultures are toasting each other with glasses of "certified 100% organic" urine, will they also be asking themselves, "I wonder what the poor slobs who replied to our troll posts are doing?" Despite their tired rhetoric, I would have to say, "hell, no."
BTW: The war talk is juvenile, completely off-topic, and a sign of a sort of strange obsessiveness you share with a portion of society. You'd be better off getting over it. I don't think your obsession with the war is making you happy.
He has the right to care about his country's foreign policies. He has the right to know what's going on, not to "get over it." Your condenscending attitude and your sneer are not going to make you any friends here.
People who think that the words "liberal" or "conservative" mean anything any more have a child's view of politics. You can't reduce political philsophy down to a boolean value.
Incidentally, is there any remotely mainstream platform out there now that *doesn't* "auto-run" freshly inserted removable media ? Mac OS doesn't. My linux install doesn't. Of course, I'm guessing from the tone of your post that you don't consider those "remotely mainstream platforms," or know that much about them.
[Hiding file extensions is] a configuration option, trivially changable - ceertainly not a design or "model" fault. Granted, it is changeable. But it's a bad default.
[The shatter vulnerability] is at least a design issue. A pity it's a problem that's largely the responsibility of the application developers, has had workarounds developed and requires an attacker to get the user to execute code for them (at which point, it's mostly a matter of semantics). The shatter vulnerability is a design flaw in the Win32 thread message passing API. How is that "the responsibility of the application developers"? I don't think you understand the nature of this vulnerability.
[ActiveX is the same as] any executable code you download off the internet. Google "Java security model."
At some stage, for practicalities sake, you have to trust someone. I see no reason why trusting Microsoft is any different than trusting Red Hat, or even Linus himself. But you explained the difference yourself: Microsoft Windows is closed-source, whereas Linux is open source. Government agencies, and large companies that want to secure their systems CAN audit the linux kernel if they want to. It may take a few months, but it can be done. This cannot be done with Windows.
Windows is far from operating systems design utopia, but it's also far from the smoldering wreck people like you would like to think it is. In terms of *design*, Windows is/streets/ ahead of Linux. What exactly do you mean by "people like me"? You have no idea who I am. Anyway, Microsoft itself has admitted that they need to focus more on security in the future.
Your whole post demonstrates a basic lack of comprehension of basic security principles. You claim that users are stupid, but then blame the users themselves for problems that result from bad defaults. You don't understand why privilege escalation is a problem, or even what it is. You don't see why ActiveX is flawed. You don't understand what a "sandbox" is... probably you have never even heard the term.
You also make some objectively false statements. You claim that viruses and malware affect "only a tiny portion of properly configured machines and environments." You claim that Microsoft's security models are no better or worse than anyone else's... despite the fact that Microsoft has admitted that it needs to focus on security. You obviously don't know anything about the non-MS platforms or their behavior.
How ? You keep asking this question over and over, so I guess I'll answer you.
Microsoft's security model is fundamentally broken because of:
* Auto-run. Why should putting in a CD cause arbitrary code from that CD to be executed?
* The option to hide the extensions of file names. So users see files named "BrittanySpears.jpg.exe" as "Brittany Spears.jpg". This "small" issue (which has not been fixed) cost businesses millions of dollars. If it weren't for this problem, you could kiss Code Red, etc. goodbye.
* The Shatter vulnerability. Any application on a given desktop can send a message to any window on the same desktop, regardless of whether or not that window is owned by the sending application, and regardless of whether the target application wants to receive those messages. There is no mechanism for authenticating the source of a message; a message sent from a malicious application is indistinguishable from a message sent by the Windows kernel.
This allows so-called 'privilege escalation' where any random application can gain Administrator privileges. Microsoft has declared this vulnerability unfixable.
* ActiveX. Any Active X control downloaded over the web might be a trojan or virus. So there are websites than will shut down your computer, install software, etc. This problem is inherent in the design of ActiveX and cannot be fixed.
* Various brain-dead network protocols and standards, like NetBui.
* Bad defaults for most security-related settings. For example, tons and tons of potentially buggy, esoteric services are enabled by default.
* The fact that so many people run as Administrator, all the time. To be fair, Microsoft has made some effort to fix this problem, and get people to log in as regular users. But there is still not a clear privilege separation as there is in unix.
* The fact that windows is closed-source. The code that runs at the very highest privilege level, Ring 0, cannot be viewed by you, the user. It's impossible to audit code that you can't see. So you are basically relying on Microsoft's programmers to be honest.
Ask yourself this question: If you had to pick any one company to manage the security of your system, would it be Microsoft? I wouldn't let those guys guard the security of my parking spot when I go on lunch break, let alone MANAGE MY ENTIRE COMPUTER.
Farming produced more food per acre, but popultation density went up as well, so the average person was worse off.
Arguing that individual farmers were worse-off than individual hunters really doesn't make any sense. Why did the farmer population go up? It went up because people had more kids that survived to adulthood. That was because they had more resources to care for those kids. For the most part, individuals must have been better off.
If hunting and gathering had been the paradise that you describe it as, you would expect to see huge populations of hunters and gatherers-- whole flocks of them spreading over the land. There weren't. Their population was limited-- at some point, there wasn't enough food to go around. At that point, they had to either practice birth control (yeah right), inter-tribal war (definitely), or just starvation. And that doesn't sound very happy and cheerful, does it?
Farmers could usually expand their plots of land. But at some point, there are only so many animals to go around. Don't romanticize the hunting and gathering lifestyle, just because you know so little about it.
Re:And I just got a Pocket PC yesterday...
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Palm's Mistakes
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· Score: 1
I consider Linux, for example, to be a superior product as far as servers go, but if I had serious concerns about a new workstation's platform being at least partially abandoned by it's own maker, I'd switch to a second-favorite product in a heartbeat. This actually works against MS much of the time, as their old products aren't very scalar. Would you be inclined to buy a new workstation that you knew wouldn't work with Longhorn (screw that new name, Longhorn was a better one)?
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Do you really think Windows will continue to support obsolete platforms for longer than Linux will? Linux still compiles on "dead" architectures like the Alpha. Linux still usefully runs on old 486s and Pentiums. Microsoft, on the other hand, barely supports the slow CPUs that came out 2 years ago.
Line following is what created this industry - otherwise that nice highly-compatible x86-based platform you're on today would still be one of many, and instead of the Mac/Microsoft/Unix debate, you'd have a plurality of mutually incompatible systems and a shambles market. Microsoft owns the line followers because their business model was built on that concept. It's not a flaw - people who don't at least watch the line, let alone not follow it, usually get left in the dust no matter how great their new toy.
Line following is also what created Unix. It was a (relatively) simple system that was widely implemented (think IBM Aix, Hpux, SCO unix, DIGITAL unix, etc.) This eventually enabled it to win out over competitors like VMS. Now the platform has been resurrected by GNU Linux, to do battle with Microsoft's new proprietary standards.
Anyway, I don't want to start a flame war here. I just thought that your implication that Windows is somehow more standard than the unices was kind of silly. Unix was around back when VMS was king, and back when Windows 3.0 was creaking along. The smart money says, it will be around after Windows XP is just a bad memory.
The parent poster was talking about other cards, not about on-board audio. Of course on-board audio is going to suck for musicians and audiophiles, since it's the lowest-end, cheapest solution.
And creative's drivers are a huge mess. I remember for the SBLive, they forced me to install about a hundred megs of useless crap in order to get at the driver. And once I finally had the driver, it was no model of stability.
Creative was also known for playing fast and loose with the PCI spec on their SBLives, which caused headaches for a lot of people, including me. Maybe they're gotten better since then, but I still wouldn't recommend them.
You can say, ``well, you're supposed to have code standards to handle that,'' and you'll be completely right. I agree with that, but that doesn't escape the technical problems associated with it. The Python parser needs to be able to handle it.
At the place where I work, tabs are always 8 spaces. There's a reason for that-- it's because we need to look at each other's code! As far as newlines are concerned, I believe python accepts any of the popular 3 styles of newline. So that is never an issue.
I'm pretty tired of listening to people bitch about python's indentation rules. They are an elegant solution to the problem of specifying program control flow.
In contrast, bash has been sensitive to whitespace for decades, and yet you never hear anyone calling for us to move to a better shell. Why? Because bash is "the standard" and it's OLD. It seems like there's a lot of dinosaurs out there who just don't want to evolve.
Auto-indenters are just tool for re-arranging indentation based on brace structure. If there is no brace structure, then there is no need for auto-indenters.
The fact that the same information is being represented in two ways-- as the brace structure, and as the indentation-- is the problem that auto-indenters are designed to solve. This problem does not exist in python.
When I got out of college, I was used to working only 4 or 5 hours at a time at the computer. My keyboard habits were all right, but not good enough to carry me through an 8-hour work day. At my new job, my hands started to hurt.
I experimented with several keyboard positions, and eventually found that using a keyboard tray and a wrist rest was the best one. Using high mouse sensitivity was also much better because it reduced the wrist motion I needed to move the mouse. Now I experience almost no pain at all. So I have firsthand proof that ergonomics is important.
It is really important to spend some time finding the right office configuration. You may think you can put it off, but the reality of the situation is that using the wrong ergonomic configuration, even for a day, can lead to a lot of pain.
And as for "Dr. Sarno," he sounds about as scientific as this. Here's a helpful hint, kids. Real researchers advertise their findings in peer-reviewed journals, not through propagandizing the public. Yes, even psychology researchers.
In many cases tried-and-true materials and machines simply are not good enough for space. The vast pressures and temperatures experienced during re-entry, for example, are far beyond what most materials can endure. So new materials and techniques were invented for this purpose.
To consider your example-- if you invented a chip that could tolerate the extreme conditions you name, people in the manufacturing business might be interested. There's a lot of blast furnaces that need to be controlled, and maybe a chip that could withstand large temperature variations would be good for that.
The bottom line here is that any space program will generate a lot of new technology, and that will get used in other places. Even if you are not imaginative to see the applications of some of the new tech, there will be someone who is.
I'd rather see the money go into this, than go into new and more efficient ways of creating a police state (DOD projects.) But I guess nobody asked me, anyway.
But there's always some fossilized coprolite willing to blame ideas he doesn't like on "the enemy." I bet he thinks people download mp3s because of Al Quaida.
For some reason I cannot understand, people like you want to reduce the argument to a "We know it will happen" vs. "We know it won't happen" argument. Unfortunately, neither is true. We don't know what will happen in the next hundred years or so, we know what might happen. The Earth's climate depends on a number of factors, CO2 is only one of many.
It really depends on who "we" are. If "we" is the majority of the world's scientists, then yes, "we" do know it will happen.
What do you expect [Bush] to do, make sure he remembers to turn off the lights to the Oval Office? Launch a giant mirror into orbit to reflect sunlight? If you were to actually RTFA, if their calculations are right at this point these changes are inevitable. Buying hybrid cars that get maybe ten more miles to the gallon won't do squat. Hell we were probably doomed by the 70's.
Whether you like the man or hate him, you have to admit that he has done more to increase global warming than any other president in the last two decades, maybe even the last half century. He has pushed for more drilling in formerly protected wilderness areas. He has given huge subsidies to the energy industry-- see the latest energy bill for some examples. And whatever his motivation for invading Iraq was (I'm not going to go into that) the effect has certainly been to secure a supply of petroleum for us. These are not the actions of a man who takes climate change seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot "food".
Oh, oops, that's right. Food is provided by many different providers, suppliers, packagers. Why didn't it make your list of important things? It's only with the establishment of the FDA and other redistribution and regulation agencies that corporate Agriculture has been able to consolidate and create monopolies.
Gee, there we go again! Government intrusion creates the very problems of consolidation and monopoly that get blamed on the "free market", long after the "free" part has been regulated out of existence.
Actually, I'm kind of happy that there's an FDA around, setting minimum food standards and prosecuting those who don't meet them. Our FDA isn't as good as the agencies they have in a lot of other countries, and a lot of dubious food gets by, but it's still better than nothing. If you don't believe this, try reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," to see what kinds of things they used to do to food back under the free market. Here's a hint... it turns out that lead chromate is cheaper than leavening in biscuits... and sawdust makes a great filler for sausages. You don't want to think about these things. The best part was, nobody knew what was in the food. There was no requirement for the companies to disclose this, because there was no government regulation of any kind.
Also, the free market naturally leads to harmful monopolies, "boom and bust" cycles, de-skilling and mechanization, and a lot of other bad things. It's just like any other incentive system-- it works well for some things but in others you need a different incentive system. This isn't a matter of philosophy-- it's a matter of economic fact. Put down that Ayn Rand and start reading the work of some serious economists.
The oft cited justification for not doing what you recommend is "what about the little guy?" You are proposing essentially taking away a patentee's ability to negotiate a license for practicing the patented invention if they "sit on it for years." The law already does this, and simply asks that an infringer pay a "reasonable royalty" in this case.
The patent system is inherently biased in favor of large companies, because they have the financial and legal resources to stay the course throught difficult litigation. This is exactly what we are seeing in the RIM vs. NTP case. RIM has deep pockets, so they have been able to hold out almost indefinitely.
In fact, it's possible for a large company to ignore the patents of a smaller one, and "win" in the marketplace. Even if they are eventually fined, their smaller competitor may no longer even be in business by the time the case is over. Try googling the Microsoft vs. Stac case. Patent law is a "pay-to-play" system that prices out smaller corporations, let alone startups in the garage.
Arguments that patents help "the little guy" are completely bogus.
If the invention is truly valuable, a would-be infringer would be willing to pay a reasonable royalty to use it. If they negotiate such a deal, cheers! If they accidentally end up using the patent and the patentee only sustained the theoretical loss you are concerned with, the law has you covered!
Who decides what is "reasonable"? Why should anyone be assessed a fee, "reasonable" or not, for re-inventing something that has already been discovered?
If the invention is worthless, no one would be concerned with implementing it in the first place, or they have work-arounds.
Maybe. Or maybe the "invention" is so abstract in nature that there are no work-arounds. A patent like "one-click shopping" or "wireless email." Of course, the patent office would never grant those patents... would they?
I think the key thing to remember here is that the patent system is not self-correcting. It's very open to abuses of power. Whenever you have lots and lots of money being tossed around, you will get some amount of corruption, statistically. It's also very easy for clever people to "game the system" by creating patent holding companies.
This is what SCO and NTP have turned into. Although both started out as legitimate companies, they have become shell companies, part of an elaborate chess game played by cynical mega-corporations.
It may be true that the patent system was created with good intentions, but take a look at what is actually happening in practice. At least in the field of computers, I think you will find that the "useful arts" are advancing not because of, but in spite of, the system. Maybe "intellectual property" has been a useful concept in other domains. I haven't followed those other fields closely enough to have an opinion.
The ultimate question here is one of power. Do we want to give away our right to create code, and invent in other domains, to established interests-- the so-called original inventors and established corporations? Or do we want to retain these rights for ourself? I think the answer is clear.
Wrong. Do i need to post the balancing tests for Fair Use yet again?
Ok, you are right here. The law was written with the intent that it would have minimal impact on the industry's profits. Sorry.
Still, my point was that, in a larger sense, the welfare of the public trumps the benefit that one small industry may gain from favorable regulations.
I can't be bothered to read the rest of your post, given that I've already responded to the same false claim that you just made several times already. If you can't be asked to read the other replies before reading, then I am not going to waste my time on you.
I don't see your written permission to post!
The fact that you're attacking his past actions instead of the argument he made is telling. I think he has a point. Would you like to reply to his actual argument instead of just attacking the man?
... then that's fine. But it also is completely offtopic and should be moderated as such.
It seems to me that in this letter, Bill Gates is outlining his moral views on the rights of individuals vs. the commons. If his philosophy has proven to be so idealistic that even he cannot practice it, I think it is very relevant to the topic at hand. Don't you?
If you want to discuss all the other, horrible things that Bill Gates may have done
The "topic" is Gate's open letter. If people think Gates is a hypocrite for posting the letter, that's 100% on topic!
Just because YOU are only interested in moral questions centered around copyright, doesn't mean that everything else is "offtopic."
Congratulations, you just invented "capabilities"-- something that a lot of researchers in the Operating Systems field have been pushing for.
Unfortunately, the compatibility monkey is on everyone's shoulders, so we're going to be stuck with "permissions" for a long while yet.
When was chmod invented? 1970 or thereabouts?
Intellectually, I don't like this ruling one bit. "Fair Use" is broadly supposed to have minimal to nil financial effects on the copyrightholder and in general the "fair user" is doing the using for personal reasons.
You completely made up this part. The law does not specify whether or not fair use will have financial impacts on the copyright holder.
Google's cache is basically a large-scale financial transfer from the copyrightholders (who serve to benefit from the ads they serve and other interaction they get from end-users visitng their site) to google, who benefits directly by keeping people longer on google's site and thus, basically, shucks them more ads.
Bzzzt! Google doesn't put google ads on the cached pages.
If anything, the google cache is a large scale financial transfer from Google to the copyrightholders, because when their sites are down, their users can often use the google cache, rather than switching to using a competing site.
Those of you who do the "yesbutNOCACHEtag" dance have got it backwards to: it's not the responsibility of the copyrightholder to sing to the tune of whatever the latest fad is. Rather, it's the other way around - google should convince people that it's in their interest to put a "CACHEME!" tag.
robots.txt is not a fad, it's the de-facto standard for the internet, the same as http, TCP/IP, or DNS itself.
Rememeber folks, in terms of the cache here, we're referring to google's ability to serve content IN ITS ENTIRETY to end-users - we're not talking about those tiny snippets needed to make search engine results useful.
How about your ability to download web pages "IN THEIR ENTIRIETY" to your computer, and then view them using a "web browser"? According to your own legal philosophy, you should be barred from doing this.
So, in conclusion, I suggest that you follow your own advice-- starting with slashdot.org. Do not post again to this site without getting written approval from the "copyrightholders" (what a contrived word).
Otherwise, I will consider you just another hypocritical troll.
Should users be able to go anywhere on the 'net they want? hell no! The company pays for the bandwidth and owns the workstations... they can say "no" to anything they consider to be unrelated to doing business. If users need to get somewhere on the filtered list, it should be easy enough to justify it to management. Do the homework and make your case... you'll get much farther than someone that just pisses and moans about how restrictive those IT bastards are.
There will always be some legitimate sites that get caught up in the web filter. Websites about breast cancer that get blocked because they say "breast", things like that. When people can't get to the sites they want, they will not have time to submit every such site to management for approval. They will just either find a way around the filter, or keep searching. In both cases, it is a waste of company time.
In some cases it might be appropriate to prohibit users from installing software or even connecting to the internet. It depends on what their job is. But http filters are just crap, pure and simple.
Yes, this is the case sometimes. But honestly... How many times does [using the internet become necessary for] anyone but the most radical coal-face level three network technician? And if you are one of those then I would imagine you know some of the dangers of providing this access to everyone!
The company I work at doesn't filter the web. We assume that all of our employees are adults, and treat them accordingly. I use the internet all the time to find answers to problems. It is usually much quicker than reading through documentation.
If your company is so filled with deadwood that you can't even trust people to use a web browser, you've got big problems. Or the kind of work you do is so menial that you need a slave-driver mentality to motivate people every day. Either way, I'd start learning how to speak Hindu or Mandarin, because you may need it in a few years.
As I said in another post in this thread If a analyst/tech/programmer can provide a good valid business reason to get access above what Joe in Marketing can then he should be allowed to create a tunnel. He should also be required to sign paper saying he won't abuse the tunnel as well.
What about taking a dump? This is also a risky activity, and I feel it should require a form to be filled out. Think about it-- there is the possibility of masturbation-- or of sexual encounters in the bathroom-- or any one of a number of inappropriate behaviors. If you don't trust or understand your employees, a mentality like this becomes "reasonable."
Things that are "interesting," (and "provocative," in the political troll subculture), are often championed by trolls who claim to know more than everyone else. They spout off like enlightened, forward-thinking people upon whom the rest of the common slashbots relies for knowledge and sophistication.
In other words, they're trolls. But we're all used to troll sanctimony, right? Here's the part that really gets under my skin.
Any "hyperlinks" (or "links") are guaranteed to be links to goatse. In other words, poor slashbots simply can't afford to click on them. While rich, sophisticated trolls wallow in their somethingawful.com, the poor rabble that they claim to "care about" will still be clicking on lemonparty.com and hick.org. (Or tubgirl.com, seeing as these people will be living in China.) "Humor" won't help those poor people one iota because their eyeballs will be fried by it. The rest of the subhumans will still be ignorantly destroying the slashdot as before. When you see "trolls," you can think of this tagline: "Trolling. By creepy losers, for creepy losers."
Even reading the post makes it seem like these "paragraphs" are going to be nothing more than deviant giggles for jaded readers of "adequacy.org". When the denizens of these not-quite-quaint sad, pathetic subcultures are toasting each other with glasses of "certified 100% organic" urine, will they also be asking themselves, "I wonder what the poor slobs who replied to our troll posts are doing?" Despite their tired rhetoric, I would have to say, "hell, no."
BTW: The war talk is juvenile, completely off-topic, and a sign of a sort of strange obsessiveness you share with a portion of society. You'd be better off getting over it. I don't think your obsession with the war is making you happy.
He has the right to care about his country's foreign policies. He has the right to know what's going on, not to "get over it."
Your condenscending attitude and your sneer are not going to make you any friends here.
People who think that the words "liberal" or "conservative" mean anything any more have a child's view of politics. You can't reduce political philsophy down to a boolean value.
Oh no! The government will soon have the power to tax things!
Wait... that's been around for... what... 300 years now?
Incidentally, is there any remotely mainstream platform out there now that *doesn't* "auto-run" freshly inserted removable media ?
/streets/ ahead of Linux.
Mac OS doesn't. My linux install doesn't. Of course, I'm guessing from the tone of your post that you don't consider those "remotely mainstream platforms," or know that much about them.
[Hiding file extensions is] a configuration option, trivially changable - ceertainly not a design or "model" fault.
Granted, it is changeable. But it's a bad default.
[The shatter vulnerability] is at least a design issue. A pity it's a problem that's largely the responsibility of the application developers, has had workarounds developed and requires an attacker to get the user to execute code for them (at which point, it's mostly a matter of semantics).
The shatter vulnerability is a design flaw in the Win32 thread message passing API. How is that "the responsibility of the application developers"? I don't think you understand the nature of this vulnerability.
[ActiveX is the same as] any executable code you download off the internet.
Google "Java security model."
At some stage, for practicalities sake, you have to trust someone. I see no reason why trusting Microsoft is any different than trusting Red Hat, or even Linus himself.
But you explained the difference yourself: Microsoft Windows is closed-source, whereas Linux is open source. Government agencies, and large companies that want to secure their systems CAN audit the linux kernel if they want to. It may take a few months, but it can be done. This cannot be done with Windows.
Windows is far from operating systems design utopia, but it's also far from the smoldering wreck people like you would like to think it is. In terms of *design*, Windows is
What exactly do you mean by "people like me"? You have no idea who I am.
Anyway, Microsoft itself has admitted that they need to focus more on security in the future.
Your whole post demonstrates a basic lack of comprehension of basic security principles.
You claim that users are stupid, but then blame the users themselves for problems that result from bad defaults.
You don't understand why privilege escalation is a problem, or even what it is.
You don't see why ActiveX is flawed. You don't understand what a "sandbox" is... probably you have never even heard the term.
You also make some objectively false statements.
You claim that viruses and malware affect "only a tiny portion of properly configured machines and environments."
You claim that Microsoft's security models are no better or worse than anyone else's... despite the fact that Microsoft has admitted that it needs to focus on security. You obviously don't know anything about the non-MS platforms or their behavior.
I like it.
It's got a nice beat, and you can dancce to it.
How ?
You keep asking this question over and over, so I guess I'll answer you.
Microsoft's security model is fundamentally broken because of:
* Auto-run. Why should putting in a CD cause arbitrary code from that CD to be executed?
* The option to hide the extensions of file names. So users see files named "BrittanySpears.jpg.exe" as "Brittany Spears.jpg". This "small" issue (which has not been fixed) cost businesses millions of dollars. If it weren't for this problem, you could kiss Code Red, etc. goodbye.
* The Shatter vulnerability. Any application on a given desktop can send a message to any window on the same desktop, regardless of whether or not that window is owned by the sending application, and regardless of whether the target application wants to receive those messages. There is no mechanism for authenticating the source of a message; a message sent from a malicious application is indistinguishable from a message sent by the Windows kernel.
This allows so-called 'privilege escalation' where any random application can gain Administrator privileges. Microsoft has declared this vulnerability unfixable.
* ActiveX. Any Active X control downloaded over the web might be a trojan or virus. So there are websites than will shut down your computer, install software, etc.
This problem is inherent in the design of ActiveX and cannot be fixed.
* Various brain-dead network protocols and standards, like NetBui.
* Bad defaults for most security-related settings.
For example, tons and tons of potentially buggy, esoteric services are enabled by default.
* The fact that so many people run as Administrator, all the time. To be fair, Microsoft has made some effort to fix this problem, and get people to log in as regular users.
But there is still not a clear privilege separation as there is in unix.
* The fact that windows is closed-source. The code that runs at the very highest privilege level, Ring 0, cannot be viewed by you, the user.
It's impossible to audit code that you can't see. So you are basically relying on Microsoft's programmers to be honest.
Ask yourself this question: If you had to pick any one company to manage the security of your system, would it be Microsoft?
I wouldn't let those guys guard the security of my parking spot when I go on lunch break, let alone MANAGE MY ENTIRE COMPUTER.
Better re-read the OpenBSD implementation, and probably some background material too, because you got it completely wrong.
Farming produced more food per acre, but popultation density went up as well, so the average person was worse off.
Arguing that individual farmers were worse-off than individual hunters really doesn't make any sense.
Why did the farmer population go up? It went up because people had more kids that survived to adulthood.
That was because they had more resources to care for those kids. For the most part, individuals must have been better off.
If hunting and gathering had been the paradise that you describe it as, you would expect to see huge populations of hunters and gatherers-- whole flocks of them spreading over the land.
There weren't. Their population was limited-- at some point, there wasn't enough food to go around. At that point, they had to either practice birth control (yeah right), inter-tribal war (definitely), or just starvation. And that doesn't sound very happy and cheerful, does it?
Farmers could usually expand their plots of land. But at some point, there are only so many animals to go around. Don't romanticize the hunting and gathering lifestyle, just because you know so little about it.
I consider Linux, for example, to be a superior product as far as servers go, but if I had serious concerns about a new workstation's platform being at least partially abandoned by it's own maker, I'd switch to a second-favorite product in a heartbeat. This actually works against MS much of the time, as their old products aren't very scalar. Would you be inclined to buy a new workstation that you knew wouldn't work with Longhorn (screw that new name, Longhorn was a better one)?
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Do you really think Windows will continue to support obsolete platforms for longer than Linux will? Linux still compiles on "dead" architectures like the Alpha. Linux still usefully runs on old 486s and Pentiums. Microsoft, on the other hand, barely supports the slow CPUs that came out 2 years ago.
Line following is what created this industry - otherwise that nice highly-compatible x86-based platform you're on today would still be one of many, and instead of the Mac/Microsoft/Unix debate, you'd have a plurality of mutually incompatible systems and a shambles market. Microsoft owns the line followers because their business model was built on that concept. It's not a flaw - people who don't at least watch the line, let alone not follow it, usually get left in the dust no matter how great their new toy.
Line following is also what created Unix. It was a (relatively) simple system that was widely implemented (think IBM Aix, Hpux, SCO unix, DIGITAL unix, etc.) This eventually enabled it to win out over competitors like VMS.
Now the platform has been resurrected by GNU Linux, to do battle with Microsoft's new proprietary standards.
Anyway, I don't want to start a flame war here. I just thought that your implication that Windows is somehow more standard than the unices was kind of silly. Unix was around back when VMS was king, and back when Windows 3.0 was creaking along. The smart money says, it will be around after Windows XP is just a bad memory.
The parent poster was talking about other cards, not about on-board audio. Of course on-board audio is going to suck for musicians and audiophiles, since it's the lowest-end, cheapest solution.
And creative's drivers are a huge mess. I remember for the SBLive, they forced me to install about a hundred megs of useless crap in order to get at the driver. And once I finally had the driver, it was no model of stability.
Creative was also known for playing fast and loose with the PCI spec on their SBLives, which caused headaches for a lot of people, including me. Maybe they're gotten better since then, but I still wouldn't recommend them.
You can say, ``well, you're supposed to have code standards to handle that,'' and you'll be completely right. I agree with that, but that doesn't escape the technical problems associated with it. The Python parser needs to be able to handle it.
At the place where I work, tabs are always 8 spaces. There's a reason for that-- it's because we need to look at each other's code!
As far as newlines are concerned, I believe python accepts any of the popular 3 styles of newline. So that is never an issue.
I'm pretty tired of listening to people bitch about python's indentation rules. They are an elegant solution to the problem of specifying program control flow.
In contrast, bash has been sensitive to whitespace for decades, and yet you never hear anyone calling for us to move to a better shell. Why? Because bash is "the standard" and it's OLD. It seems like there's a lot of dinosaurs out there who just don't want to evolve.
I think you are confused.
Auto-indenters are just tool for re-arranging indentation based on brace structure.
If there is no brace structure, then there is no need for auto-indenters.
The fact that the same information is being represented in two ways-- as the brace structure, and as the indentation-- is the problem that auto-indenters are designed to solve. This problem does not exist in python.
When I got out of college, I was used to working only 4 or 5 hours at a time at the computer. My keyboard habits were all right, but not good enough to carry me through an 8-hour work day. At my new job, my hands started to hurt.
I experimented with several keyboard positions, and eventually found that using a keyboard tray and a wrist rest was the best one. Using high mouse sensitivity was also much better because it reduced the wrist motion I needed to move the mouse. Now I experience almost no pain at all. So I have firsthand proof that ergonomics is important.
It is really important to spend some time finding the right office configuration. You may think you can put it off, but the reality of the situation is that using the wrong ergonomic configuration, even for a day, can lead to a lot of pain.
And as for "Dr. Sarno," he sounds about as scientific as
this.
Here's a helpful hint, kids. Real researchers advertise their findings in peer-reviewed journals, not through propagandizing the public. Yes, even psychology researchers.
In many cases tried-and-true materials and machines simply are not good enough for space.
The vast pressures and temperatures experienced during re-entry, for example, are far beyond what most materials can endure. So new materials and techniques were invented for this purpose.
To consider your example-- if you invented a chip that could tolerate the extreme conditions you name, people in the manufacturing business might be interested. There's a lot of blast furnaces that need to be controlled, and maybe a chip that could withstand large temperature variations would be good for that.
The bottom line here is that any space program will generate a lot of new technology, and that will get used in other places. Even if you are not imaginative to see the applications of some of the new tech, there will be someone who is.
I'd rather see the money go into this, than go into new and more efficient ways of creating a police state (DOD projects.) But I guess nobody asked me, anyway.
Hear, hear. The Tragedy of the Commons is an excellent study of a nasty aspect of human behavior.
Let me add: for the record, Communism did an even worse job of managing Russia's natural resources than state-managed capitalism has in this country.
See:
http://www.infomanage.com/environment/russia.html
But there's always some fossilized coprolite willing to blame ideas he doesn't like on "the enemy." I bet he thinks people download mp3s because of Al Quaida.
For some reason I cannot understand, people like you want to reduce the argument to a "We know it will happen" vs. "We know it won't happen" argument. Unfortunately, neither is true. We don't know what will happen in the next hundred years or so, we know what might happen. The Earth's climate depends on a number of factors, CO2 is only one of many.
It really depends on who "we" are. If "we" is the majority of the world's scientists, then yes, "we" do know it will happen.
What do you expect [Bush] to do, make sure he remembers to turn off the lights to the Oval Office? Launch a giant mirror into orbit to reflect sunlight? If you were to actually RTFA, if their calculations are right at this point these changes are inevitable. Buying hybrid cars that get maybe ten more miles to the gallon won't do squat. Hell we were probably doomed by the 70's.
Whether you like the man or hate him, you have to admit that he has done more to increase global warming than any other president in the last two decades, maybe even the last half century. He has pushed for more drilling in formerly protected wilderness areas. He has given huge subsidies to the energy industry-- see the latest energy bill for some examples. And whatever his motivation for invading Iraq was (I'm not going to go into that) the effect has certainly been to secure a supply of petroleum for us. These are not the actions of a man who takes climate change seriously.