If they do all this, and it sounds like they will, then it would seem that Windows will soar past Linux in security. Because Microsoft controls the entirety of their "distro" they will be able to have a robust patching mechanism that GNU/Linux with its highly custom configs wont be able to do (robustly at least). Moreover MS is mocing towards an instituinalized formal system for checking every line of code for sommon security errors like buffer overflows. Linux/GNU is dependent on developers checking theirt own code and the results will vary, and exerience will not be instituionalized.
I think you've got that backwards. M$ only has control over whatever comes on the CD (and maybe M$ produced apps). Running Windows Update doesn't update Realplayer, Netscape, WordPerfect etc but it often does find ways of breaking third party apps. With most Linux distros the distro maker has control over the core Linux stuff and most of the extras (Mozilla, Koffice, etc) the user is likely to use as well. When I run apt-get upgrade virtually every app. on my system is upgraded and the Debian folks have taken care to make sure the new versions all work well together.
In the UK the current government propaganda is that speeding is a contributing factor in one third of all accidents which other than the fact that speed is a contributing factor in all accidents is patently bullshit.
It really helps if you have a nice flexable definition of "speeding" To most people that just means driving at a speed greater than the speed limit but they could just as easily be defining it as "driving too fast for conditions". I live in the mountains and there are many days during the winter and spring where driving the speed limit would more than likely get you killed. On the other hand the nearest highway used to have a very low speed limit and at that time everyone, and I do mean everyone drove over the speed limit, but does that mean that speed contributed to every accident? How about now that the limit has gone up and most people don't speed, does that mean that speed is no longer a major contributor to accidents here even though people are still going about the same speed as they used to?
So you honestly believe removing the patents for software will make things better? Are you kidding imagine the field day companies would have stealing each others' codes
It sounds like what we really need is a law that keeps people from copying each others work but still allows them to use similar methods as long as they have been invented independantly.
Again, how would you like it if someone stole something from you, something you ALREADY developed, not something you had in mind, which someone may have beaten you to the punch with.
How would you feel if you spent 6 months creating a order entry system and getting all the little details right only to find later that someone had patented the idea of storing customer names in a database. Never mind that you just using features built into the database or your dev tools and if you were storing the names of dogs rather than the names of customers the patent wouldn't even apply. Also never mind that the entire point of a database is to store data and you've never even seen any products from the company that has the patent. You've just lost 6 months of income over something that you can't possibly have predicted or planned for.
It's a boring conversation, because there are no facts only opinions either way you cut the cake.
There are facts to be had, just go and actually read a few software patents. Most of them read like some high school kid trying to make a 10 page report out of a single paragraph from an encyclopedia. The ones I've read are no more innovative than a carpenter patenting the use of a particular nail (not invented by him) for securing a particular brand of door (also not invented by him).
Why would anyone want to do something as moronic as protest the patent laws?
This isn't about protesting patent laws, it's about protesting the EXPANSION of patent laws to cover software (and arguably business methods).
Suppose you labor extremely hard to create something, it took so much of your time, might have cost you a marriage, every single penny in your account, and someone comes and swipes it from under your feet what would you do? Without patenting there wouldn't be much you could do now could you.
In that case even with a patent you'd still probably be screwed. Do you have any idea how much costs to successfully sue for patent infringment? What are you going to do when you find out that the company you are suing has 10 other patents covering features required in order to implement your idea?
No one ever said the laws were perfect but trying to remove them is plain dangerous.
These people are not trying to get all laws removed, they are just trying to keep 1 new law from coming into existance.
A body of people asking to close their websites to protest. As if people should lose money over something that sounds rather interesting on the outside, but in-depth makes no sense?
People often choose to loose money in exchange for letting people know about an issue that they feel is important. What exactly is wrong with that?
How many times do we see stories where the author appears to have just stumbled out of bed and scralled a few un-researched paragraphs based on a headline appearing on the AP wires? This time around the author seems to have actually done a fair and ballanced TM job of reporting both sides of the issue. Nice going Business Week/CNET.
On the other hand, I just updated a machine that had the origional XP and few if any other updates and Windows Update wanted to download something like 60MB of stuff and required at least 3 reboots. And this was skipping Media Player 9.
I have at least half a dozen customers that connect to the internet via dial on demand rounters and they have all been connected continuiusly for the past 3 days or so due to all of the infected Windows machines on the Internet trying to spread their infections (and thus generating traffic and keeping the router from disconnecting). Furthermore my web server still logs dozens of hits / day from Win machines infected with Code Red variants. Clearly there are a lot of infected Win2k/XP machines out there.
But the devices in this article (the 814 and 314 at least) are intended for use with a cable or dsl connection, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to use these if you are connecting via ISDN.
Re:Quick and Dirty LIVE UPS Recharging Ideas
on
Network Blackout
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· Score: 1
I like the lawnmower idea, and would only add one thing to it - if you run the 12V output of the alternator through an inverter to create AC, then plug the UPS into the inverter you get line conditioning at the inverter inputs (because they're usually designed to run in a car, which has an alternator, which has the noisy DC), plus you don't have to hack open a perfectly good UPS.
Except that UPSs (at least some of them) don't like the power produced by inverters. I have a customer with an alternative powered home that has been through a couple of different brands without success.
The interviewee avoided the issue of why lobbyists spend billions of dollars not buying votes. If they were merely educating the politicians, it could be done for a lot less.
Sure but once you've spent all kinds of money "educating" a politician you want to make sure he/she gets re-elected so you don't have to start all over with someone new. and relitivly powerless.
I think you misunderstood his question. He didn't ask if there were too many reps. but if government as a whole is too large and trying to do too many things.
Look, every time we hear from someone who knows about lobbying we are told that these congress critters are just too busy to really research the issues and that is why they rely so much on paid lobbiests to tell them what the issues are and sometimes even write the legislation. If these folks are really too busy to read what it is they are voting for then they need to cut way back on the number of things they try to get involved in. I find it really disturbing that every time we here of a bad law coming down the pike we are told that convincing congress to just stay out of it isn't an option and our only choice is to try to convince them to pass some alternative that's not quite as bad.
As an example of the problem consider the fact that we decided to "solve" the problem of lack of communications between our federal law enforcement agencies not by consolidating and streamlining them but by creating ANOTHER agency and then tacking on even more laws for them all to enforce.
This was released over 10 days ago (I got notified on the 19th), and have already applied it to the 350+ MS servers on our network. If the lazy admin has configured auto-update they are protected as well.
And how about all of the workstation/desktop machines? One of the lessons from the last few rounds of worms is that security isn't just for servers and machines directly connected to the internet anymore.
used to feel that way too, but the problem with that point of view is that he *does* get credit.
For Stallman it's not about "personal" credit nor is it about credit among geeks. For him it's about promoting the cause of Free Software. It's not like he wants it to be called Linard or Richardix.
BTW I agree with the others that believe he's figting a loosing battle but there are good reasons for it.
Right, why are those (while being terribly disgusting for pretty much everyone) worse than say... rotten.com pics (which are not illegal under the law)?
I'm sure others will disagree but to me the difference is that with a web site it's you that is requesting the information/pictures but with email these people are sending this stuff TO you without any request on your part. I don't have any problem with rotten.com but if they started sending those same pictures to me unrequested (and especially if I had kids) I'd be pretty unhappy with them.
No, because those aren't distributed with the OS. But it WILL provide you with an updated device driver (in some cases) or with other third-party software microsoft has made arrangements to ship with its base installation.
Don't remind me, those fscking driver updates can be a real disaster when they go wrong.
That critical production software NEEDS a patch, f.e. it has a security hole, or runs on top of an OS that has a security hole. THerefor it IS already broken and thus needs patching. THere is NO excuse for not patching your software, like there is also no excuse for having security holes in your software.
That's a rather simplistic view. In practice you have to decide if the odds of being affected by the bug the patch fixes are greater than the odds of the patch screwing up the system in some unknown way. Sometimes it comes down to "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't"
On the surface, those comments seem fairly damning, but let's think outside the box for a moment, something Bruce Perens is used to doing. "IBM is smart enough not to open source other people's intellectual property," he says. "Maybe the comment about being willing to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable simply means that there is no portion of AIX that would be considered valuable by the Linux community."
Unless it turns out that IBM has the rights to do exactly that.
t's about making it so that works that the copyright holder doesn't care about anymore, lapse into public domain after 50 years.
I have to wonder how many companies would rather destroy the last remaining copy of a film/book/record than let it fall into the public domain? After all, more stuff in the public domain means more competition right?
Re:OK, let me get this straight....
on
Aimee Deep Interview
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That's an interesting point. Back when browsers still cost $ M$ had deals with ISPs where by the ISP could give their customers IE for free in exchange for refusing to support (or even talk about) competitive products. About the only real hitch I see in this is that upgrading an OS tends to be a lot harder than people think. Unless M$ does a much better job of making upgrades go smoothly they may not get far with this.
Slashdot Mirror
If they do all this, and it sounds like they will, then it would seem that Windows will soar past Linux in security. Because Microsoft controls the entirety of their "distro" they will be able to have a robust patching mechanism that GNU/Linux with its highly custom configs wont be able to do (robustly at least). Moreover MS is mocing towards an instituinalized formal system for checking every line of code for sommon security errors like buffer overflows. Linux/GNU is dependent on developers checking theirt own code and the results will vary, and exerience will not be instituionalized.
I think you've got that backwards. M$ only has control over whatever comes on the CD (and maybe M$ produced apps). Running Windows Update doesn't update Realplayer, Netscape, WordPerfect etc but it often does find ways of breaking third party apps. With most Linux distros the distro maker has control over the core Linux stuff and most of the extras (Mozilla, Koffice, etc) the user is likely to use as well. When I run apt-get upgrade virtually every app. on my system is upgraded and the Debian folks have taken care to make sure the new versions all work well together.
In the UK the current government propaganda is that speeding is a contributing factor in one third of all accidents which other than the fact that speed is a contributing factor in all accidents is patently bullshit.
It really helps if you have a nice flexable definition of "speeding" To most people that just means driving at a speed greater than the speed limit but they could just as easily be defining it as "driving too fast for conditions". I live in the mountains and there are many days during the winter and spring where driving the speed limit would more than likely get you killed. On the other hand the nearest highway used to have a very low speed limit and at that time everyone, and I do mean everyone drove over the speed limit, but does that mean that speed contributed to every accident? How about now that the limit has gone up and most people don't speed, does that mean that speed is no longer a major contributor to accidents here even though people are still going about the same speed as they used to?
America thinks that they are the world. No seriously, this isn't flamebait. How many Americans actually think Canada is a state?
Maybe 3? Seriously the people you see on "Jay Walking" arn't typical Americans. Do you really think there arn't a few idiots in Canada too?
How many know a second language, or have even travelled out-of-continent? How many have worked abroad?
See the post you were replying to.
So you honestly believe removing the patents for software will make things better? Are you kidding imagine the field day companies would have stealing each others' codes
It sounds like what we really need is a law that keeps people from copying each others work but still allows them to use similar methods as long as they have been invented independantly.
Again, how would you like it if someone stole something from you, something you ALREADY developed, not something you had in mind, which someone may have beaten you to the punch with.
How would you feel if you spent 6 months creating a order entry system and getting all the little details right only to find later that someone had patented the idea of storing customer names in a database. Never mind that you just using features built into the database or your dev tools and if you were storing the names of dogs rather than the names of customers the patent wouldn't even apply. Also never mind that the entire point of a database is to store data and you've never even seen any products from the company that has the patent. You've just lost 6 months of income over something that you can't possibly have predicted or planned for.
It's a boring conversation, because there are no facts only opinions either way you cut the cake.
There are facts to be had, just go and actually read a few software patents. Most of them read like some high school kid trying to make a 10 page report out of a single paragraph from an encyclopedia. The ones I've read are no more innovative than a carpenter patenting the use of a particular nail (not invented by him) for securing a particular brand of door (also not invented by him).
Why would anyone want to do something as moronic as protest the patent laws?
This isn't about protesting patent laws, it's about protesting the EXPANSION of patent laws to cover software (and arguably business methods).
Suppose you labor extremely hard to create something, it took so much of your time, might have cost you a marriage, every single penny in your account, and someone comes and swipes it from under your feet what would you do? Without patenting there wouldn't be much you could do now could you.
In that case even with a patent you'd still probably be screwed. Do you have any idea how much costs to successfully sue for patent infringment? What are you going to do when you find out that the company you are suing has 10 other patents covering features required in order to implement your idea?
No one ever said the laws were perfect but trying to remove them is plain dangerous.
These people are not trying to get all laws removed, they are just trying to keep 1 new law from coming into existance.
A body of people asking to close their websites to protest. As if people should lose money over something that sounds rather interesting on the outside, but in-depth makes no sense?
People often choose to loose money in exchange for letting people know about an issue that they feel is important. What exactly is wrong with that?
How many times do we see stories where the author appears to have just stumbled out of bed and scralled a few un-researched paragraphs based on a headline appearing on the AP wires? This time around the author seems to have actually done a fair and ballanced TM job of reporting both sides of the issue. Nice going Business Week/CNET.
On the other hand, I just updated a machine that had the origional XP and few if any other updates and Windows Update wanted to download something like 60MB of stuff and required at least 3 reboots. And this was skipping Media Player 9.
How's this for Anecdotal:
I have at least half a dozen customers that connect to the internet via dial on demand rounters and they have all been connected continuiusly for the past 3 days or so due to all of the infected Windows machines on the Internet trying to spread their infections (and thus generating traffic and keeping the router from disconnecting). Furthermore my web server still logs dozens of hits / day from Win machines infected with Code Red variants. Clearly there are a lot of infected Win2k/XP machines out there.
But the devices in this article (the 814 and 314 at least) are intended for use with a cable or dsl connection, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to use these if you are connecting via ISDN.
I like the lawnmower idea, and would only add one thing to it - if you run the 12V output of the alternator through an inverter to create AC, then plug the UPS into the inverter you get line conditioning at the inverter inputs (because they're usually designed to run in a car, which has an alternator, which has the noisy DC), plus you don't have to hack open a perfectly good UPS.
Except that UPSs (at least some of them) don't like the power produced by inverters. I have a customer with an alternative powered home that has been through a couple of different brands without success.
The interviewee avoided the issue of why lobbyists spend billions of dollars not buying votes. If they were merely educating the politicians, it could be done for a lot less.
Sure but once you've spent all kinds of money "educating" a politician you want to make sure he/she gets re-elected so you don't have to start all over with someone new. and relitivly powerless.
I think you misunderstood his question. He didn't ask if there were too many reps. but if government as a whole is too large and trying to do too many things.
Look, every time we hear from someone who knows about lobbying we are told that these congress critters are just too busy to really research the issues and that is why they rely so much on paid lobbiests to tell them what the issues are and sometimes even write the legislation. If these folks are really too busy to read what it is they are voting for then they need to cut way back on the number of things they try to get involved in. I find it really disturbing that every time we here of a bad law coming down the pike we are told that convincing congress to just stay out of it isn't an option and our only choice is to try to convince them to pass some alternative that's not quite as bad.
As an example of the problem consider the fact that we decided to "solve" the problem of lack of communications between our federal law enforcement agencies not by consolidating and streamlining them but by creating ANOTHER agency and then tacking on even more laws for them all to enforce.
This was released over 10 days ago (I got notified on the 19th), and have already applied it to the 350+ MS servers on our network. If the lazy admin has configured auto-update they are protected as well.
And how about all of the workstation/desktop machines? One of the lessons from the last few rounds of worms is that security isn't just for servers and machines directly connected to the internet anymore.
Getting all their applications and data moved over to the new machine is far beond what most users are capable of.
used to feel that way too, but the problem with that point of view is that he *does* get credit.
For Stallman it's not about "personal" credit nor is it about credit among geeks. For him it's about promoting the cause of Free Software. It's not like he wants it to be called Linard or Richardix.
BTW I agree with the others that believe he's figting a loosing battle but there are good reasons for it.
Oh, wait, you're absolutely right if "a lot of mileage" means over 50 or 55 mpg. That's Honda Insight territory, with an aluminum body and small size.
Wow that's about as good as a 10 year old Honda Civic HF!
Right, why are those (while being terribly disgusting for pretty much everyone) worse than say... rotten.com pics (which are not illegal under the law)?
I'm sure others will disagree but to me the difference is that with a web site it's you that is requesting the information/pictures but with email these people are sending this stuff TO you without any request on your part. I don't have any problem with rotten.com but if they started sending those same pictures to me unrequested (and especially if I had kids) I'd be pretty unhappy with them.
What makes you think these tags will be inside the product? It seems more likely they would put them in the packaging instead.
No, because those aren't distributed with the OS. But it WILL provide you with an updated device driver (in some cases) or with other third-party software microsoft has made arrangements to ship with its base installation.
Don't remind me, those fscking driver updates can be a real disaster when they go wrong.
That critical production software NEEDS a patch, f.e. it has a security hole, or runs on top of an OS that has a security hole. THerefor it IS already broken and thus needs patching. THere is NO excuse for not patching your software, like there is also no excuse for having security holes in your software.
That's a rather simplistic view. In practice you have to decide if the odds of being affected by the bug the patch fixes are greater than the odds of the patch screwing up the system in some unknown way. Sometimes it comes down to "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't"
On the surface, those comments seem fairly damning, but let's think outside the box for a moment, something Bruce Perens is used to doing. "IBM is smart enough not to open source other people's intellectual property," he says. "Maybe the comment about being willing to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable simply means that there is no portion of AIX that would be considered valuable by the Linux community."
Unless it turns out that IBM has the rights to do exactly that.
t's about making it so that works that the copyright holder doesn't care about anymore, lapse into public domain after 50 years.
I have to wonder how many companies would rather destroy the last remaining copy of a film/book/record than let it fall into the public domain? After all, more stuff in the public domain means more competition right?
It's called MARKETING!
That's an interesting point. Back when browsers still cost $ M$ had deals with ISPs where by the ISP could give their customers IE for free in exchange for refusing to support (or even talk about) competitive products. About the only real hitch I see in this is that upgrading an OS tends to be a lot harder than people think. Unless M$ does a much better job of making upgrades go smoothly they may not get far with this.
and hydro isn't even a clean power source! (Hydroelectric damns actually cause significant CO2 release,
???