This is something we have to answer and answer well in the coming year, and I mean the next couple, not the next ten.
Why? What will happen if Mozilla stagnates? Will people stop working on it in their free time?
My point is that the beauty of Open Source is that you really don't have any competition. If you're doing it for free, nobody can run you out of business.
This is why when asked about Microsoft, Linus generally responds that he doesn't give a shit what they do.
You are correct that the methods you list are effective at fighting spam. However, effective does not mean practical.
For example, how does a site's webmaster (for instance - you) seperate legitimate mail from spam. Obviously because it has to be posted on the Internet, it's going to be deluged with spam. Yet it also must be read. So your failsafe rules for eliminating spam fall flat on their face.
The real solution to spam is upgrading SMTP to require authentication before accepting mail. Booting spammers (and later, enforcing anti-spam legislation) would be a lot easier if mail headers couldn't be forged.
No, that's what tapes are for. Writable optical random-access media happen to do well for short-term backups (they don't have the shelf-life for long-term)
1) Big tape drives are slow and very expensive. Most home users don't do tape backups.
2) Tapes are absolutely not good long-term storage. They use magnetic recording and the signals will fade. Granted, in it's current incarnation CD-RW won't hold up in the long term either, but at least the technology has some potential. Magnetic media will never be an acceptable long term solution.
it took about 15 years before consumers were ready to buy DVD players.
Actually, it took about 15 years for the industry to produce a replacement. I'm pretty sure that if there were $150 DVD players and all new releases were on DVD in 1990, consumers would have bought in just as quickly then.
Also, we don't want to give Hollywood and the DVDCCA another shot at locking us out.
That's a pretty silly policy - avoiding progress because of potential risks. Besides, who's to say that Congress won't have finally hammered out some decent fair-use legislation by then?
Microsoft wasn't preventing java from running on their os, they simple did not BUNDLE a competing product. What the hell? I don't see the problem.
The problem is that Microsoft was using its operating system monopoly to elbow.NET into Sun's territory. Bundling a bastardized/defunct version of Java with Windows was extremely damaging to Java on the desktop.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal, it's using your monopoly to force your way into other markets that is supposed to piss off the DoJ.
For this reason, I suggest we start doing what we can to help xiph.org finish up with theora [theora.org], which has a 1.0 release currently scheduled in June, 2003.
Right - what's the point? Ogg Vorbis still hasn't made an appearance in any consumer hardware that I know of, and the file format specifications have been frozen for a very long time.
I've got several gigs of MP3s and continue to rip my CDs to MP3 for one simple reason - my Rio Volt doesn't support Ogg. Surely Xiph understands that none of their formats are going to go anywhere without substantial hardware support. These guys should be doing whatever it takes to convince the chip companies to support Ogg (and its video counterpart).
Any signal that's actually going to get anywhere would either: be optical, [...]
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would an optical beacon be any easier to detect than radio? It's not like we can outshine our own sun in visible light either. Furthermore, they're both electromagnetic radiation and intrinsically the same.
Heh. Well, the real explanation is that I need to do more research.;-)
The problem is that when you press the hot-key combo with CMD.EXE active, Vitrite never receives the keyboard message. I suspect that CMD.EXE is intercepting nearly all keyboard messages and passing them on to whatever process it is running. At this point I'm not sure if there's anything I can do about it. If you can shed any light on the subject I'd be interested.
If true, that is undoubtedly a very unfortunate situation for "Tom". However, what would you propose as a solution? It's one person's word against another. What if Tom had asked her to have sex with him?
Complaining about the system without suggesting a solution is useless.
Because they have no evidence of any such interference, or theoretical possiblity of such
They're not concerned about 802.11b, that operates in the 2.4 Ghz band. They're talking about 802.11a and any other WiFi technologies that use 5 Ghz. Anytime two techs use the same frequency in the same area you are obviously going to have a potential for interference. No doubt about it.
there are political and commercial objectives in suppressing WiFi, what they are doing is FUD -- intentional spreading of misinformation and leading questions to an advantageous end -- for them.
Get serious. Nobody in Washington could give two shits about WiFi, and for good reason - WiFi isn't threatening anybody's business model. Name one 802.11b based ISP that is actually pulling in a profit.
In its current form (802.11b/a) WiFi just doesn't work well in a widescale (citywide) deployment. It's too damn sloppy and prone to interference. Any WiFi tech that uses an unlicensed part of the spectrum is going to suffer from the same affliction. You can't base a business on selling what is essentially public property.
There is a reason that WiFi areas are called "hotspots" - because they're small. 802.11a/b will never be useful as a metropolitan networking medium for a large number of people.
If the military and commercial forces keep their hands off of consumer-grade self-built 802.11x networks, the only people using it will be civilian enthusiasts. If a script kiddy brings down a segment, no big woof. Why should this be a government matter?
You're missing the point. Regardless of who owns the networks, if they allow anonymous access they are a very dangerous tool. I'm not talking about the script kiddie bringing down the wireless network, I'm talking about them launching attacks across the Internet from an untraceable IP address.
What is to prevent me from downloading every script out there to my laptop and then driving to the nearest public access point and attacking every web site on the Internet? I could be as sloppy as I want and nobody will be able to track me down. Right now, if I launched that kind of attack from my cable modem I'd have the feds knocking on my door in 24 hours. That's why the DoD cares.
Re:Typical Military BS
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Choice quotes: "might cause interence", "not right now, but maybe in the future"... This is the Pentagon spreading FUD
You're right - because we all know that heading off problems before they happen is a bad idea. Exactly what is wrong with a state agency issuing a statement that there is the potential for interference and that further investigation is warranted?
and knowing the predilictions of the current administration, it all bodes very ill for wireless in general and WiFi in particular
Huh? George Bush hates WiFi? WTF are you talking about? Lemme guess - you're referencing this article. In case you didn't read it, it basically says (according to Wired no less) that the Department of Defense thinks that open wireless networks have the potential to be dangerous. Guess what, they're right. Do you know how much damage even the lamest script kiddie can do from an open WiFi network? The danger comes from the fact that they're utterly anonymous. If he gets caught fucking up someone's network all he has to do is start his car and *poof* he's untraceable. That's pretty dangerous.
Re:And you sir, are a prime example of. . .
on
Googling For Dates?
·
· Score: 1
When you're sitting on death row praying for some DNA evidence to show up that clears you, you might understand.
What a crock of shit. I don't anticipate being on death row, and for good reason. The likelyhood of that happening to a law-abiding citizen is very, very low. Of course, under your philosophy, guilty criminals will be set free quite often, and the likelyhood of them interacting in your life is considerably higher.
Hypothetically speaking - when determining a criminal's guilt, I would rather have a system with 0 false negatives and a few false positives than one with 0 false positives and a number of false negatives.
Furthermore, the United States' criminal justice system is already similarly aligned. In a criminal trial the jury is instructed to find the accused guilty if the evidence presented is enough to remove "reasonable doubt". Not all doubt, but reasonable doubt.
Why do you have to wait for a known threat to make sure your children are safe?
Are you serious? You don't escalate your defenses in the presence of a known threat? Let me ask you - if there were an axe murderer creeping up behind you would you want me to tell you? <sarcasm>Why? Aren't you already trying to keep yourself from being killed by axe murderers? Why should you need me to warn you?</sarcasm>
Your arguments are utterly impractical. In the real world you can't have a justice system that catches every criminal and clears every innocent. It'd be nice, but it's not possible. Also, implying that parents who have their children abducted/molested are not doing an adequate job of parenting is both incorrect and insensitive.
Re:And you sir, are a prime example of. . .
on
Googling For Dates?
·
· Score: 2
You sir, are a prime example of the impossibilty of seperating the 'victims' of Megan's law from its intended 'perps.'
I'm not trying to troll here, honest, but the question is: Would you rather have a few innocents locked up and deter a number of crimes, or would you rather have no innocents harmed and not deter any?
I would hardly think that Megan's law results in more harrassed innocents than correct matches. So I would argue that despite this man's unfortunate run-in, it is still a good law. If a convicted child molester moves into my neighborhood - I WANT TO KNOW.
Okay, go ahead and give me that "-1 Troll".
Re:solution for one of the problems..
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 2
The reason why we hear people on slashdot say this so much is that they know a system like this will never happen with the current RIAA. Instead they decide to use it as a poor moral justification to their illegal music swapping habit.
An interesting note: it was a trip to the Library of Congress that sealed this decision: vinyl, unlike tape and CD is impervious to time and will not break down if it is protected from damage, unlike magnetic and optical formats
Hmmm - I have a little trouble believing this one. I know that magnetic media fade, and I don't doubt that CD-R and CD-RW could possibly degrade after time. But to say that grooves etched in vinyl are more permanent than pressed aluminum discs encased in plastic? Other than intense electromagnetic radiation (e.g. a microwave:-), exactly what process would degrade mass-produced CDs yet leave vinyl LPs unharmed?
Ahh, nothing like a zealot PHB to fuck up one's work life. I'm sure the poor schmuck just trying to do his job appreciated your insipid political antics.
You should keep your personal battles out of the workplace. You wouldn't like it if your employer involved itself in your personal life.
Slashdot Mirror
This is something we have to answer and answer well in the coming year, and I mean the next couple, not the next ten.
Why? What will happen if Mozilla stagnates? Will people stop working on it in their free time?
My point is that the beauty of Open Source is that you really don't have any competition. If you're doing it for free, nobody can run you out of business.
This is why when asked about Microsoft, Linus generally responds that he doesn't give a shit what they do.
Will the government officials who enacted the USA PATRIOT act ever have to really be subjected to the same things they allowed to be done to us?
Wbat's this us stuff? You got a turd in your pocket?
You are correct that the methods you list are effective at fighting spam. However, effective does not mean practical.
For example, how does a site's webmaster (for instance - you) seperate legitimate mail from spam. Obviously because it has to be posted on the Internet, it's going to be deluged with spam. Yet it also must be read. So your failsafe rules for eliminating spam fall flat on their face.
The real solution to spam is upgrading SMTP to require authentication before accepting mail. Booting spammers (and later, enforcing anti-spam legislation) would be a lot easier if mail headers couldn't be forged.
It's true he stole credit card numbers but he never did anything with them. He just stole them to see if he could do it.
So what - if I broke into your house just to see if I could, would you mind?
No, that's what tapes are for. Writable optical random-access media happen to do well for short-term backups (they don't have the shelf-life for long-term)
1) Big tape drives are slow and very expensive. Most home users don't do tape backups.
2) Tapes are absolutely not good long-term storage. They use magnetic recording and the signals will fade. Granted, in it's current incarnation CD-RW won't hold up in the long term either, but at least the technology has some potential. Magnetic media will never be an acceptable long term solution.
[...] George W. Bush, and John Ashcroft.
You do realize that both the DMCA and SSSCA were introduced by Democratic congressmen.
I don't WANT more on DVDs. I want bigger HARD DRIVES.
Where are you going to back up all this data? That's what these big ass DVDs are for.
Thing is, I don't want to have hundreds of stupid little plastic discs in their stupid little plastic boxes lining shelves in my place.
Again, if you have 1.5 TB DVD's you aren't going to have hundreds of little plastic discs laying everywhere. That's what you have now.
it took about 15 years before consumers were ready to buy DVD players.
Actually, it took about 15 years for the industry to produce a replacement. I'm pretty sure that if there were $150 DVD players and all new releases were on DVD in 1990, consumers would have bought in just as quickly then.
Also, we don't want to give Hollywood and the DVDCCA another shot at locking us out.
That's a pretty silly policy - avoiding progress because of potential risks. Besides, who's to say that Congress won't have finally hammered out some decent fair-use legislation by then?
Microsoft wasn't preventing java from running on their os, they simple did not BUNDLE a competing product. What the hell? I don't see the problem.
.NET into Sun's territory. Bundling a bastardized/defunct version of Java with Windows was extremely damaging to Java on the desktop.
The problem is that Microsoft was using its operating system monopoly to elbow
Being a monopoly isn't illegal, it's using your monopoly to force your way into other markets that is supposed to piss off the DoJ.
Get off the high horse guys, whether its binary or XML is irrelevant, making something XML doesn't make it open.
You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.
For this reason, I suggest we start doing what we can to help xiph.org finish up with theora [theora.org], which has a 1.0 release currently scheduled in June, 2003.
Right - what's the point? Ogg Vorbis still hasn't made an appearance in any consumer hardware that I know of, and the file format specifications have been frozen for a very long time.
I've got several gigs of MP3s and continue to rip my CDs to MP3 for one simple reason - my Rio Volt doesn't support Ogg. Surely Xiph understands that none of their formats are going to go anywhere without substantial hardware support. These guys should be doing whatever it takes to convince the chip companies to support Ogg (and its video counterpart).
Any signal that's actually going to get anywhere would either: be optical, [...]
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would an optical beacon be any easier to detect than radio? It's not like we can outshine our own sun in visible light either. Furthermore, they're both electromagnetic radiation and intrinsically the same.
Heh. Well, the real explanation is that I need to do more research. ;-)
The problem is that when you press the hot-key combo with CMD.EXE active, Vitrite never receives the keyboard message. I suspect that CMD.EXE is intercepting nearly all keyboard messages and passing them on to whatever process it is running. At this point I'm not sure if there's anything I can do about it. If you can shed any light on the subject I'd be interested.
If true, that is undoubtedly a very unfortunate situation for "Tom". However, what would you propose as a solution? It's one person's word against another. What if Tom had asked her to have sex with him?
Complaining about the system without suggesting a solution is useless.
Because they have no evidence of any such interference, or theoretical possiblity of such
They're not concerned about 802.11b, that operates in the 2.4 Ghz band. They're talking about 802.11a and any other WiFi technologies that use 5 Ghz. Anytime two techs use the same frequency in the same area you are obviously going to have a potential for interference. No doubt about it.
there are political and commercial objectives in suppressing WiFi, what they are doing is FUD -- intentional spreading of misinformation and leading questions to an advantageous end -- for them.
Get serious. Nobody in Washington could give two shits about WiFi, and for good reason - WiFi isn't threatening anybody's business model. Name one 802.11b based ISP that is actually pulling in a profit.
In its current form (802.11b/a) WiFi just doesn't work well in a widescale (citywide) deployment. It's too damn sloppy and prone to interference. Any WiFi tech that uses an unlicensed part of the spectrum is going to suffer from the same affliction. You can't base a business on selling what is essentially public property.
There is a reason that WiFi areas are called "hotspots" - because they're small. 802.11a/b will never be useful as a metropolitan networking medium for a large number of people.
If the military and commercial forces keep their hands off of consumer-grade self-built 802.11x networks, the only people using it will be civilian enthusiasts. If a script kiddy brings down a segment, no big woof. Why should this be a government matter?
You're missing the point. Regardless of who owns the networks, if they allow anonymous access they are a very dangerous tool. I'm not talking about the script kiddie bringing down the wireless network, I'm talking about them launching attacks across the Internet from an untraceable IP address.
What is to prevent me from downloading every script out there to my laptop and then driving to the nearest public access point and attacking every web site on the Internet? I could be as sloppy as I want and nobody will be able to track me down. Right now, if I launched that kind of attack from my cable modem I'd have the feds knocking on my door in 24 hours. That's why the DoD cares.
Choice quotes: "might cause interence", "not right now, but maybe in the future"... This is the Pentagon spreading FUD
You're right - because we all know that heading off problems before they happen is a bad idea. Exactly what is wrong with a state agency issuing a statement that there is the potential for interference and that further investigation is warranted?
and knowing the predilictions of the current administration, it all bodes very ill for wireless in general and WiFi in particular
Huh? George Bush hates WiFi? WTF are you talking about? Lemme guess - you're referencing this article. In case you didn't read it, it basically says (according to Wired no less) that the Department of Defense thinks that open wireless networks have the potential to be dangerous. Guess what, they're right. Do you know how much damage even the lamest script kiddie can do from an open WiFi network? The danger comes from the fact that they're utterly anonymous. If he gets caught fucking up someone's network all he has to do is start his car and *poof* he's untraceable. That's pretty dangerous.
When you're sitting on death row praying for some DNA evidence to show up that clears you, you might understand.
What a crock of shit. I don't anticipate being on death row, and for good reason. The likelyhood of that happening to a law-abiding citizen is very, very low. Of course, under your philosophy, guilty criminals will be set free quite often, and the likelyhood of them interacting in your life is considerably higher.
Hypothetically speaking - when determining a criminal's guilt, I would rather have a system with 0 false negatives and a few false positives than one with 0 false positives and a number of false negatives.
Furthermore, the United States' criminal justice system is already similarly aligned. In a criminal trial the jury is instructed to find the accused guilty if the evidence presented is enough to remove "reasonable doubt". Not all doubt, but reasonable doubt.
Why do you have to wait for a known threat to make sure your children are safe?
Are you serious? You don't escalate your defenses in the presence of a known threat? Let me ask you - if there were an axe murderer creeping up behind you would you want me to tell you? <sarcasm>Why? Aren't you already trying to keep yourself from being killed by axe murderers? Why should you need me to warn you?</sarcasm>
Your arguments are utterly impractical. In the real world you can't have a justice system that catches every criminal and clears every innocent. It'd be nice, but it's not possible. Also, implying that parents who have their children abducted/molested are not doing an adequate job of parenting is both incorrect and insensitive.
How much would you sell *your* privacy for?
Oooh 50 bucks!!! That was an offer, right?
You sir, are a prime example of the impossibilty of seperating the 'victims' of Megan's law from its intended 'perps.'
I'm not trying to troll here, honest, but the question is: Would you rather have a few innocents locked up and deter a number of crimes, or would you rather have no innocents harmed and not deter any?
I would hardly think that Megan's law results in more harrassed innocents than correct matches. So I would argue that despite this man's unfortunate run-in, it is still a good law. If a convicted child molester moves into my neighborhood - I WANT TO KNOW.
Okay, go ahead and give me that "-1 Troll".
Sounds like you're looking for this.
I have limited faith in the potential of table-based PCs for one simple reason: I write like a fucking kindergartener.
The reason why we hear people on slashdot say this so much is that they know a system like this will never happen with the current RIAA. Instead they decide to use it as a poor moral justification to their illegal music swapping habit.
*Ding ding ding ding ding*
Folks, we have a winner.
An interesting note: it was a trip to the Library of Congress that sealed this decision: vinyl, unlike tape and CD is impervious to time and will not break down if it is protected from damage, unlike magnetic and optical formats
:-), exactly what process would degrade mass-produced CDs yet leave vinyl LPs unharmed?
Hmmm - I have a little trouble believing this one. I know that magnetic media fade, and I don't doubt that CD-R and CD-RW could possibly degrade after time. But to say that grooves etched in vinyl are more permanent than pressed aluminum discs encased in plastic? Other than intense electromagnetic radiation (e.g. a microwave
If you violate a law in the Kingdom of Tuva, I wouldn't recommend visiting it anytime soon. That was Sklyrov's mistake.
Ahh, nothing like a zealot PHB to fuck up one's work life. I'm sure the poor schmuck just trying to do his job appreciated your insipid political antics.
You should keep your personal battles out of the workplace. You wouldn't like it if your employer involved itself in your personal life.