For example, they have to remove stupid spam, and highly offensive posts. They have no choice - the boards would become unsuable otherwise.
Sadly that's the price you pay when you allow any schmuck off the street post a message. Anyone that thinks sticking an idiot on a computer network is going to turn them into some sort of intellectual is gravely mistaken.
There's four ways to deal with this:
Do nothing Sure the you have to wade through "GEHNGIS KHAN NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!" and "ALL group ARE NAZZZZISS!&*%^#^&%@%", but you've proven yourself as a common carrier. More importantly you've proven to the the group that you support free speech in all it's forms.
Unilaterally Select stuff to be removed (aka censor) One starts out by telling yourself you're doing this to create a better place. In reality, you're simply covering your own ass. You don't want to be sued by "Big Co." or by the "Save the Children League" so you censor. ("Gee this guy said that Big Co.'s Romaine Lettuce and Vinegrette, is actually lead paint and motor oil.{*] Well we don't know if that's true or not, but Big Co. says they're going to sue us if we don't pull it. We better pull it.") So instead of the government censoring you, you have those with money censoring you. Which is a much more insidious and worrying form of censorship in my book.
Let individuals filter Everyone sees everything, but you install you're own personal filters to screen out what you don't want. In my opinion, this is the best solution because it puts the power in each individual's hand. If you didn't read "Surf Nazis Must Die!@#!@#!!@"[+] or "$$$$$$MAKE MONEY FA5T!!#@@!@!@$$$$", that's because you filtered it out. If you only want to read about pyramid schemes, then you can. The choice is yours.
The Group Censors This is the way/. works. Random people from the group get to mark stuff up or down. That way the group as a whole influences the discussion, however if you do want to read, "MALDA NAKED AND PETRIFIED WITH A BURNING TORCH UP HIS ASS" you can. I find this choice also acceptable, because I don't have to wade through shit posts, but if I want to go slumming, I still can.
Sure it's their servers, and they can do what ever they want, but that doesn't mean we have to support them. Personally I'd like to see everyone boycot Yahoo's message boards, and anyone else that unilaterally censors. I find their actions morally repugnant.
[*]Kudos to whoever first posted that analogy on/. defending truth in advertising laws. [+] Fun movie
Well for one thing GSM operates at 900Mhz which is the same frequency of cordless phones in the US. That and the US got embroiled in a standards war, tried to make a new standard that was backwards compatable, and got embroiled in yet another standards war. Meanwhile, the Europeans got together and decided to design a digital system the Right way from the start.
a phone with this chip can support all these standards? OW, will I be able to switch from a TDMA to CDMA provider and back again? Or does it just simplify matters for the phone manufacturers?
There's ALOT of software involved with supporting just one standard. To support three different standards, you'd need three times the software, in addition to the standard detection and switching software.
Basically this chips allows for a common platform for all of (M)'s subscriber units. So you'll see cheaper phones.
Kind of having two karmas (one for posting and one for moderating) or a karma that could be influenced by the meta-moderation (now that would be great).
Karma is already influenced through m2. Your kara can be influenced +/-10 points through people meta-moderating your moderations.
(netscape crashed and as a sideeffect submitted my comment while editting)
a) There ought be a page that showed users ranked by karma. Or put a users rank on his page. Or at least show the percentile.... Still, if people started treating it like a competition meta-moderating would get them, so it couldn't really hurt.
No! I'm already too affected by karma, sometimes too willing to post stupid comments that I suspect the moderators will like it, or reluctant to be honest on some controversial subjects (like what I really felt about the killing of the two spammers) because it would harm my karma. A ranking would just make it worse.
Ranking would just aggravate the problem. There's already some poeple here that post WAY too much (i.e. signal11) Also this would simply encourage the disreputable game of "Beat the Moderators" Frankly, posting what you think is the "correct" thing to post is Wrong and serves no purpose. Those that do that contribute nothing, and simply demonstrate their spinelessness and tendencies for conformity.
Apropos karma, I believe that too many gets an automatic 2. It is hard to find those articles which are moderated up because they contain a gem, among those articles that start with a high score because the posters sometimes in the past have said something smart. Maybe the karma should be based on some kind of weighted average, rather than a straight sum. That would help the problems that most of the hyperactive posters have an automatic score bonus.
A better solution would be to have the posters have to opt-in to the +1 bonus rather than opt-out. Most of the +1 comments don't deserve the bonus, and it should only be used when the poster thinks that his comment should be moderated up.
b) I'm bothered by "off-topic" and "redundant" moderating deep down in the discussions. There is no harm in people straying from the topic when its not in the main thread.
Yeah, agreed, I usually leave them alone when meta-moderating. Because most often the articles in question are redundant or off-topic. So this is a suggestion to the moderators, be a litle more lenient of these deep down in the discussion.
ARGGH! I ALWAYS mark those as unfair. During the DragonBall processor article, someone went in and marked the entire thread about treating PalmPilots like the DragonBalls from "DragonBall Z" as off-topic. OH COME ON!!! Off topic should be for "FIRST POST" and "Every 5 minutes a child dies..." posts. Most of the other stuff makes sense if you actually read the thread.
"Redundant" is a worthless moderation catagory. Half the posts here are "redundant".
One more thing about the moderators. They've taken to moderating up posts that simply repeat whatever news article posted as "5 Informative". My God! The poster did nothing! Any moderator that actually read the article would realize this. Perhaps before you can moderate a discussion you should have to actually have to read the article in question. (a wrapper script with a cookie would do nicely)
b) I'm bothered by "off-topic" and "redundant" moderating deep down in the discussions. There is no harm in people straying from the topic when its not in the main thread.
Yeah, agreed, I usually leave them alone when meta-moderating. Because most often the articles in question are redundant or off-topic. So this is a suggestion to the moderators, be a litle more lenient of these deep down in the discussion.
c) I see the "don't get +1" option has disappeared from below this window. Have the rules for getting +1 changed, or has the option been taken out? Why? To what?
yes it ran on the C=64, but it was a stipped down version. almost no color, no choice in power plants. no graphics to speak of. It pretty much sucked compare to the PC version.
Tech Review did an article on Lord Bill's Boys-in-the-Back-Room back in January. (Same issue they covered linux.) (Alas, no link to the M$ article.)
Basically the article pointed out that The-Boys-From-Redmond are the only software house with a research arm (remember Xerox is fundamentally a hardware company.), M$ has beaucoup bucks, and a lot of big name people, but still has yet to create any sort of breakthrough. (compare to XeroxPARC that created the GUI in only a few years)
The article suggests that the reason is that M$ is too secure in its position, and thus won't take the risks needed to motivate an R&D lab. Also the lab is too product driven and thus doesn't have the freedom just to go off and play.
However, M$ Research has contributed to pretty much every recent major M$ product. Such contributions include data compression, and speech recognition. Oh yeah, you know that inference engine help uses in Office? M$ Research did that.
Quote For You!
M$ Research Director Dan Ling on where M$ needs to do more research (pg49): "The amount of time and effort that goes into testing software and getting the bugs out is enormous. And yet there are still bugs, and people still complain and say nasty things. We're trying to think about breakthroughs that we can make to dramtically improve the quality of software."
Actually when I went to Comdex-Chicago back in March, the Linux Global Summit had an open bar. (Provided by our good friends at Caldera!) I was 22 at the time, and they didn't even ask for an ID. So yes, you can get Heinegin(sp), and both red and white wine at Comdex. (no mixed drinks though:( )
Back in college, I had a job righting software controlling a 3D positioning platform, the MatSci department. Kind cool job to have in college, and I learned ALOT about just general software engineering.
I knew from the this project was going to be a death march as soon as they said, "We'd like to do this under Windows." Uhhh...OK. I had never even made a GUI app before then, let alone coded for windows.
My impression with MFC was that it was a good idea, but just an extremely kludged hack. (Inconsistancies galore!)
I had to scrap my code about 8 times writing that thing. I couldn't decide which I hated more, the MFC, or VC++. They both suck ass. (I will say that autogeneration of code for a GUI app is good thing. Afterall it's what 200+ lines of code just to get a blank window? And of course no one wants to design dialog boxes with a text editor ("Uhh the OK button is too close to the CANCEL button. *edit* *recompile* *run* Uhh still too close...."))
Now VC++ is supposed to let you say, "Insert TaskBar" and it will stick the code in to do that for you. Nice that it does that, but you really need to know what it's doing. Having 50 lines of mystery code appear isn't a good thing. Of course I wanted to add something that I knew you could do (a DialogBar) but you couldn't simply have MFC to add it for you. I had to write code (no problem yet), outside the VC++ autogeneration enviroment and import in the classes. VC++ didn't like that. It would either not see the class, or see the class and think it had only a constructor and a destructor. If VC++ didn't import the class properly, I couldn't compile it.
Until that day, I thought that if you made a deal with the Devil to get a job as a software engineer, you'd be coding in Cobol. (Afterall the Devil always gives you what you want, just in an extremely perverted fashion.) Then I saw the light, the Devil's software enviorment is MFC and VC++.
I will consider my career a success if I never have to deal with windows again.
I was stoked about getting one of these sets until I really looked at it (I too was going to make a lego AT-AT.). I thought I would need about 6 motors, (4 legs, 2 head) but the brick only has 3 motor outputs. If this book can tell me how to get more outputs (i.e. multiple bricks) it will be worth it. (Of course building my own board might be cool too.)
Isn't debian already 100% Free? I know for a fact that if you buy debian money goes to the FSF. It's cool that RedHat is doing this, but I kind of wonder what the point is since there already is a distro that does this.
Let's put this in historical perspective shall we? Jobs et. al. get a look at all the goodies at Xerox PARC. Yes they they saw the Forth graphics engine. Yes they saw smalltalk (and in the general sense OOP), and a lots of other things that were going to be important in a few years that they didn't capitalize on. And what treasure did Jobs take out this little raid? What idea would epitimize Jobs "just not getting it?" The GUI.
One revolutionized the way poeple used computers, and the other, well is kind of neat if you like that sort of stuff.
One Of the Many ACs writes: I don't think so. For any operating system it is impossible to track all of the patches for every single program for that one operating system in one place, but a good place to start would be: http://www.securityfocus.com/ (aka: BUGTRAQ)
ZDnet has a point here. I have they same problem they have when keeping my boxen secure. (Of course nothing is more secure than off (Hey, it would be left on if I wasn't on dialup.)) BUGTRAQ is very good, but what they (and I) would like to have would be a freshmeat of security patches. (Call it rancidmeat (it all about bugs, get it? Oh I crack myself up sometimes (but not this time).).) It could be run just like freshmeat, nothing actually there, just links to the patches. Have it summerize BUGTRAQ and several other official and "unoffical" security sites, and provide links to the patches. Sure it's work (so is freshmeat), but certainly it's doable. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying this ficitional site would be perfect, but it would be better than what we have now which is a hodgepodge of several different sites. I ceratainly would like to take part in something like this.)
M$ Propaganda^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HZDnet writes: The hackpcweek.com site also showed us that some simple security measures, such as complex passwords, are great in theory but nearly impossible in practice. The hackpcweek site comprised six servers. Imagine how difficult it was to remember passwords such as [Athl!g. We couldn't...
Ahh geez, and they wonder why they had security problems. I"m sorry but this is just stupidity on their part. I have a minimum of 12 different passwords each as arcane as theirs and I have no problem. (For "added security" none of them are based on any sort of mneumonic phrase). Of course if they actually used the passwords on a daily basis, then they would remember them and wouldn't have to have them written down. (Eventually you'll "forget" the password when typing them in becomes automatic. ("What's your password?" "Uhhh... *goes to a keyboard and types* apparently Ghj3$/f."))
I bought a talking South Park Desk Organizer (Kenny for all of you who are wondering). It was located in the toy section in the store, even though it plainly said on the top of the box:
The two Slackware Tuxen b("Bobbed" Tux and Tux as Bob (Sorry, don't have a URL, but it's Tux with Bob's pipe. I only know it exists because I have button with it on it from this year's COMDEX-Chicago.))
Demon Linux Project (Using the Linux kernel with a BSD style setup) (An evil looking Tux with curved horns)
I saw a bunch of Barbie HP InkJets at BestBuy a while back. (They're pink, come with stickers, and on sale!) So full fledged PCs couldn't be that far behind.
I wonder howmany families will buy 2 printers because Jimmy simply refuses to use a "Girls's" printer.
Re:Too much of a price to pay?
on
Dear Mr. Straw
·
· Score: 1
The problem is that any mechanism that allows the cops to intercept your communications and use them against you as part of a valid law enforcement effort may also be used by non-police.
That's not exactly true. I can't tap phone calls.
What's to stop me from alleging that a business communication from one of my competitors contains evidence of illegal activity, then bribing the law enforcement officials to disclose the contents to me, thus gaining a competitive advantage?
That is HIGHLY illegal, and anti-corruption laws already exist to keep you from attempting to do this, and for the police from fullfilling your request.
Would Nixon have needed to send burgulars into the Watergate Hotel if he could simply tell the NSA to retreive the DNC's keys from key escrow, and intercept all their communications?
Again, that's corruption, and abuse of power. Anyway the whole point of the burgulry was to hide the fact that the Whitehouse was involved.
Yes, the act of not cooperating would be obstruction of justice/contempt.
The conspiracy charge was only hypothetical if the Government decided, "Aw hell. We can't get him with on this with out the evidence. Let's see what we can charge him with....how about conspiracy?"
Of course it's MUCH more likely that they'd just let you rot in jail until you gave in. (Whether you're in jail for 20 years for contempt of court, or 20 years for the actual crime, it doesn't much matter to the Government. (Of course if you do cave in 20 years, they'll be more than happy to keep you in the can for 20 more years because of the original crime.)
*BZZZT* sorry. Here have some Rice-a-Roni (The San Fransico Treat).
(I already stated this a previous post, but let's recap)
Say you kill your wife and kids and stash their dismembered corpses in The Shed Out Back. Since you don't want Lil' Jimmy to come by and open the shed and be covered by an avalanche of dismembered arms and legs, you put a lock on the shed door. (One of those REALLY good locks. Like a Kryptonite-Master super lock. (Takes 6 years to break through with a hacksaw and you can put a bullet through it, without breaking.)
The neighbors get noisey (afterall they're neighbors) and eventually call the police syaing your wife and children have been missing ever since that night of screaming, gunshots, and buzzsaws. So the cops drop by with a search warrant and say, "Hey, open up the shed." and you say, "Fuck you pig! If I did that I'd be self-incriminating me!" Then the courts hold you in contempt until you comply, or the cops finish sawing the lock off in 6 years, whichever breaks first.
First off, I'm an American, so I don't know jack about the civil rights one has in the UK. I do know this, they're not enumerated and can be withdrawn by an act of parlament. (Just one of the many grievences that led to the American Revolution.)
Since I've already admitted that I'm not qualified to speak about British law, let's suppose that this law was passed in the United States. (Which isn't unlikely.) This law would be perfectly legal. When the government suppeanas information from you via a search warrant, you have to give it.
Turning over a crypto-key is no different than turning over the key to you shed where you stashed the dismembered corpses of your wife and children. (Claiming privacy for stashing a body doesn't cut it, and it doesn't for encrypting a document either.) It doesn't violate the 5th amendment (Freedom from self-incrimination, for all our non-American friends) because it's evidence gathering, not testamony.
Imprisonment for not retrieving the key is where American and UK law start to diverge. INAL, but I belive the governement can still imprison you under some sort of conspiracy law, but I'm not sure. (I really don't know alot about conspiracy law, except that they only have to prove intent, which has a very low threshhold. Also they don't need physical evidence, (thus the "Conspiracty to ______" charge rather than for "_______ing".)
I understand law enforcement's predicament when it comes to crypto, but it's no different than any other civil-rights vs. law-enforcement issue. Basically the crypto-issue reduces down to Search. Sure having cops rabndomly raid someone's home will prevent crime, but is it to much of a price to pay? Sure key-escrow/recovery will allow the cops to evesdrop on you and the criminals, but is it too much of a price to pay?
It's a classic predicament, and there isn't an easy answer. A long time ago, society decided "No, you can't let the cops barge in and search. They need warrant to do that." Later society decided, "No, you can't just let the cops evesdrop on phone conversations, they need a warrant to do that." Sure the cops should be able to gather evidence, but they should have a warrant first. (The easy of getting a warrant is another issue, that deals with judical oversight (or lack there of).)
Personally I have no problem with the cops forcing me to decrypt a message. I don't like it, but it's no different than forcing me to unlock a safe. (However. I would kind of like to see the FBI crack the crypto.) I also feel the US crypto-export laws should be repealed, because they're completly ineffective against curbing the spread of strong crypto, and only serves to hold back the software industry and e-commerce.
I like the idea of an balistic missle defense system. However I don't think the technology exists (yet) to make one effective.
Detonating a warhead in front of the main warhead force would either destroy or at least blind every satelite in the area. Encasing the warheards in liquid nitrogen colling them to evade IR detection. Hell even inflating a metalic balloon would cause radar wave to be deflected. (Remember, Echo (The first communication satelite) launched by the US back in the '50s was simply a balloon.)
If you were content with a bio-chem attack, you could overwhelm the defensive screen with lots of little mini-warheads and use those to distribute Anthrax, or Beubonic Plauge, or whatever.
If you made the warheads manuverable you could get them to evade incomming anti-missles.
Until these shortfalls can be overcome (and I'm sure they will be) we shouldn't give ourselves a feeling of false security. Afterall, MAD has worked so far. (I kind of wonder about how effective it will be in the future. Afterall death isn't a deterant for a suicide bomber (but that's tact-nukes which this doesn't defend against.)or a country's leadership with a suicide bomber mentality.)
(FYI: The US has signed a treaty stating that it would not develop a missle defense program back in '70s.)
References: "Why National Missile Defense Won't Work" Scientific American August, 1999
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly that's the price you pay when you allow any schmuck off the street post a message. Anyone that thinks sticking an idiot on a computer network is going to turn them into some sort of intellectual is gravely mistaken.
There's four ways to deal with this:
Sure the you have to wade through "GEHNGIS KHAN NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!" and "ALL group ARE NAZZZZISS!&*%^#^&%@%", but you've proven yourself as a common carrier. More importantly you've proven to the the group that you support free speech in all it's forms.
One starts out by telling yourself you're doing this to create a better place. In reality, you're simply covering your own ass. You don't want to be sued by "Big Co." or by the "Save the Children League" so you censor. ("Gee this guy said that Big Co.'s Romaine Lettuce and Vinegrette, is actually lead paint and motor oil.{*] Well we don't know if that's true or not, but Big Co. says they're going to sue us if we don't pull it. We better pull it.") So instead of the government censoring you, you have those with money censoring you. Which is a much more insidious and worrying form of censorship in my book.
Everyone sees everything, but you install you're own personal filters to screen out what you don't want. In my opinion, this is the best solution because it puts the power in each individual's hand. If you didn't read "Surf Nazis Must Die!@#!@#!!@"[+] or "$$$$$$MAKE MONEY FA5T!!#@@!@!@$$$$", that's because you filtered it out. If you only want to read about pyramid schemes, then you can. The choice is yours.
This is the way
Sure it's their servers, and they can do what ever they want, but that doesn't mean we have to support them. Personally I'd like to see everyone boycot Yahoo's message boards, and anyone else that unilaterally censors. I find their actions morally repugnant.
[*]Kudos to whoever first posted that analogy on
[+] Fun movie
Well for one thing GSM operates at 900Mhz which is the same frequency of cordless phones in the US. That and the US got embroiled in a standards war, tried to make a new standard that was backwards compatable, and got embroiled in yet another standards war. Meanwhile, the Europeans got together and decided to design a digital system the Right way from the start.
a phone with this chip can support all these standards? OW, will I be able to switch from a TDMA to CDMA provider and back again? Or does it just simplify matters for the phone manufacturers?
There's ALOT of software involved with supporting just one standard. To support three different standards, you'd need three times the software, in addition to the standard detection and switching software.
Basically this chips allows for a common platform for all of (M)'s subscriber units. So you'll see cheaper phones.
Kind of having two karmas (one for posting and one for moderating) or a karma that could be influenced by the meta-moderation (now that would be great).
Karma is already influenced through m2. Your kara can be influenced +/-10 points through people meta-moderating your moderations.
(netscape crashed and as a sideeffect submitted my comment while editting)
... Still, if people started treating it like a competition meta-moderating would get them, so it couldn't really hurt.
a) There ought be a page that showed users ranked by karma. Or put a users rank on his page. Or at least show the percentile.
No! I'm already too affected by karma, sometimes too willing to post stupid comments that I suspect the moderators will like it, or reluctant to be honest on some controversial subjects (like what I really felt about the killing of the two spammers) because it would harm my karma. A ranking would just make it worse.
Ranking would just aggravate the problem. There's already some poeple here that post WAY too much (i.e. signal11) Also this would simply encourage the disreputable game of "Beat the Moderators" Frankly, posting what you think is the "correct" thing to post is Wrong and serves no purpose. Those that do that contribute nothing, and simply demonstrate their spinelessness and tendencies for conformity.
Apropos karma, I believe that too many gets an automatic 2. It is hard to find those articles which are moderated up because they contain a gem, among those articles that start with a high score because the posters sometimes in the past have said something smart. Maybe the karma should be based on some kind of weighted average, rather than a straight sum. That would help the problems that most of the hyperactive posters have an automatic score bonus.
A better solution would be to have the posters have to opt-in to the +1 bonus rather than opt-out. Most of the +1 comments don't deserve the bonus, and it should only be used when the poster thinks that his comment should be moderated up.
b) I'm bothered by "off-topic" and "redundant" moderating deep down in the discussions. There is no harm in people straying from the topic when its not in the main thread.
Yeah, agreed, I usually leave them alone when meta-moderating. Because most often the articles in question are redundant or off-topic. So this is a suggestion to the moderators, be a litle more lenient of these deep down in the discussion.
ARGGH! I ALWAYS mark those as unfair. During the DragonBall processor article, someone went in and marked the entire thread about treating PalmPilots like the DragonBalls from "DragonBall Z" as off-topic. OH COME ON!!! Off topic should be for "FIRST POST" and "Every 5 minutes a child dies..." posts. Most of the other stuff makes sense if you actually read the thread.
"Redundant" is a worthless moderation catagory. Half the posts here are "redundant".
One more thing about the moderators. They've taken to moderating up posts that simply repeat whatever news article posted as "5 Informative". My God! The poster did nothing! Any moderator that actually read the article would realize this. Perhaps before you can moderate a discussion you should have to actually have to read the article in question. (a wrapper script with a cookie would do nicely)
b) I'm bothered by "off-topic" and "redundant" moderating deep down in the discussions. There is no harm in people straying from the topic when its not in the main thread.
Yeah, agreed, I usually leave them alone when meta-moderating. Because most often the articles in question are redundant or off-topic. So this is a suggestion to the moderators, be a litle more lenient of these deep down in the discussion.
c) I see the "don't get +1" option has disappeared from below this window. Have the rules for getting +1 changed, or has the option been taken out? Why? To what?
Yeah, this really should be back.
yes it ran on the C=64, but it was a stipped down version. almost no color, no choice in power plants. no graphics to speak of. It pretty much sucked compare to the PC version.
Tech Review did an article on Lord Bill's Boys-in-the-Back-Room back in January. (Same issue they covered linux.) (Alas, no link to the M$ article.)
Basically the article pointed out that The-Boys-From-Redmond are the only software house with a research arm (remember Xerox is fundamentally a hardware company.), M$ has beaucoup bucks, and a lot of big name people, but still has yet to create any sort of breakthrough. (compare to XeroxPARC that created the GUI in only a few years)
The article suggests that the reason is that M$ is too secure in its position, and thus won't take the risks needed to motivate an R&D lab. Also the lab is too product driven and thus doesn't have the freedom just to go off and play.
However, M$ Research has contributed to pretty much every recent major M$ product. Such contributions include data compression, and speech recognition. Oh yeah, you know that inference engine help uses in Office? M$ Research did that.
Quote For You!
M$ Research Director Dan Ling on where M$ needs to do more research (pg49):
"The amount of time and effort that goes into testing software and getting the bugs out is enormous. And yet there are still bugs, and people still complain and say nasty things. We're trying to think about breakthroughs that we can make to dramtically improve the quality of software."
(2 weeks later M$ "innovates" lint.)
Actually when I went to Comdex-Chicago back in March, the Linux Global Summit had an open bar. (Provided by our good friends at Caldera!) I was 22 at the time, and they didn't even ask for an ID. So yes, you can get Heinegin(sp), and both red and white wine at Comdex. (no mixed drinks though :( )
Back in college, I had a job righting software controlling a 3D positioning platform, the MatSci department. Kind cool job to have in college, and I learned ALOT about just general software engineering.
I knew from the this project was going to be a death march as soon as they said, "We'd like to do this under Windows." Uhhh...OK. I had never even made a GUI app before then, let alone coded for windows.
My impression with MFC was that it was a good idea, but just an extremely kludged hack. (Inconsistancies galore!)
I had to scrap my code about 8 times writing that thing. I couldn't decide which I hated more, the MFC, or VC++. They both suck ass. (I will say that autogeneration of code for a GUI app is good thing. Afterall it's what 200+ lines of code just to get a blank window? And of course no one wants to design dialog boxes with a text editor ("Uhh the OK button is too close to the CANCEL button. *edit* *recompile* *run* Uhh still too close...."))
Now VC++ is supposed to let you say, "Insert TaskBar" and it will stick the code in to do that for you. Nice that it does that, but you really need to know what it's doing. Having 50 lines of mystery code appear isn't a good thing. Of course I wanted to add something that I knew you could do (a DialogBar) but you couldn't simply have MFC to add it for you. I had to write code (no problem yet), outside the VC++ autogeneration enviroment and import in the classes. VC++ didn't like that. It would either not see the class, or see the class and think it had only a constructor and a destructor. If VC++ didn't import the class properly, I couldn't compile it.
Until that day, I thought that if you made a deal with the Devil to get a job as a software engineer, you'd be coding in Cobol. (Afterall the Devil always gives you what you want, just in an extremely perverted fashion.) Then I saw the light, the Devil's software enviorment is MFC and VC++.
I will consider my career a success if I never have to deal with windows again.
I was stoked about getting one of these sets until I really looked at it (I too was going to make a lego AT-AT.). I thought I would need about 6 motors, (4 legs, 2 head) but the brick only has 3 motor outputs. If this book can tell me how to get more outputs (i.e. multiple bricks) it will be worth it. (Of course building my own board might be cool too.)
Isn't debian already 100% Free? I know for a fact that if you buy debian money goes to the FSF. It's cool that RedHat is doing this, but I kind of wonder what the point is since there already is a distro that does this.
Good lord! NOTHING is more oppressive than silence to me. Except maybe those "study carrels"
you see in school libraries.
That and I don't really think at all when I code. It's pretty damn easy for me.
My CD collection at work tends to consists of
:)
Nine Inch Nails
Marilyn Manson
Rage Against The Machine
Stabbing Westward
Also appearing:
Violent Femmes
Revrend Horton Heat
Chemical Brothers
Vast
Local H
And of course: "Space Ghost's Musical BBQ" and "Space Ghost's Surf and Turf"
Let's put this in historical perspective shall we? Jobs et. al. get a look at all the goodies at Xerox PARC. Yes they they saw the Forth graphics engine. Yes they saw smalltalk (and in the general sense OOP), and a lots of other things that were going to be important in a few years that they didn't capitalize on. And what treasure did Jobs take out this little raid? What idea would epitimize Jobs "just not getting it?" The GUI.
One revolutionized the way poeple used computers, and the other, well is kind of neat if you like that sort of stuff.
One Of the Many ACs writes:
."))
I don't think so. For any operating system it is impossible to track all of the patches for every single program for that one operating system in one place, but a good place to start would be:
http://www.securityfocus.com/ (aka: BUGTRAQ)
ZDnet has a point here. I have they same problem they have when keeping my boxen secure. (Of course nothing is more secure than off (Hey, it would be left on if I wasn't on dialup.)) BUGTRAQ is very good, but what they (and I) would like to have would be a freshmeat of security patches. (Call it rancidmeat (it all about bugs, get it? Oh I crack myself up sometimes (but not this time).).) It could be run just like freshmeat, nothing actually there, just links to the patches. Have it summerize BUGTRAQ and several other official and "unoffical" security sites, and provide links to the patches. Sure it's work (so is freshmeat), but certainly it's doable. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying this ficitional site would be perfect, but it would be better than what we have now which is a hodgepodge of several different sites. I ceratainly would like to take part in something like this.)
M$ Propaganda^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HZDnet writes:
The hackpcweek.com site also showed us that some simple security
measures, such as complex passwords, are great in theory but nearly impossible in practice. The hackpcweek site comprised six servers. Imagine how difficult it was to remember passwords such as [Athl!g. We couldn't...
Ahh geez, and they wonder why they had security problems. I"m sorry but this is just stupidity on their part. I have a minimum of 12 different passwords each as arcane as theirs and I have no problem. (For "added security" none of them are based on any sort of mneumonic phrase). Of course if they actually used the passwords on a daily basis, then they would remember them and wouldn't have to have them written down. (Eventually you'll "forget" the password when typing them in becomes automatic. ("What's your password?" "Uhhh... *goes to a keyboard and types* apparently Ghj3$/f
I bought a talking South Park Desk Organizer (Kenny for all of you who are wondering). It was located in the toy section in the store, even though it plainly said on the top of the box:
WARNING: This is NOT a toy
And of course the Linux Image Montage Project has lots of logos there, including their very own Tux.
"If management didn't give you engineers early deadlines, you'd never get work done."
I saw a bunch of Barbie HP InkJets at BestBuy a while back. (They're pink, come with stickers, and on sale!) So full fledged PCs couldn't be that far behind.
I wonder howmany families will buy 2 printers because Jimmy simply refuses to use a "Girls's" printer.
The problem is that any mechanism that allows the cops to intercept your communications and use them against you as part of a valid law enforcement effort may also be used by non-police.
That's not exactly true. I can't tap phone calls.
What's to stop me from alleging that a business communication from one of my competitors contains evidence of illegal activity, then bribing the law enforcement officials to disclose the contents to me, thus gaining a competitive advantage?
That is HIGHLY illegal, and anti-corruption laws already exist to keep you from attempting to do this, and for the police from fullfilling your request.
Would Nixon have needed to send burgulars into the Watergate Hotel if he could simply tell the NSA to retreive the DNC's keys from key escrow, and intercept all their communications?
Again, that's corruption, and abuse of power. Anyway the whole point of the burgulry was to hide the fact that the Whitehouse was involved.
Yes, the act of not cooperating would be obstruction of justice/contempt.
The conspiracy charge was only hypothetical if the Government decided, "Aw hell. We can't get him with on this with out the evidence. Let's see what we can charge him with....how about conspiracy?"
Of course it's MUCH more likely that they'd just let you rot in jail until you gave in. (Whether you're in jail for 20 years for contempt of court, or 20 years for the actual crime, it doesn't much matter to the Government. (Of course if you do cave in 20 years, they'll be more than happy to keep you in the can for 20 more years because of the original crime.)
*BZZZT* sorry. Here have some Rice-a-Roni (The San Fransico Treat).
(I already stated this a previous post, but let's recap)
Say you kill your wife and kids and stash their dismembered corpses in The Shed Out Back. Since you don't want Lil' Jimmy to come by and open the shed and be covered by an avalanche of dismembered arms and legs, you put a lock on the shed door. (One of those REALLY good locks. Like a Kryptonite-Master super lock. (Takes 6 years to break through with a hacksaw and you can put a bullet through it, without breaking.)
The neighbors get noisey (afterall they're neighbors) and eventually call the police syaing your wife and children have been missing ever since that night of screaming, gunshots, and buzzsaws. So the cops drop by with a search warrant and say, "Hey, open up the shed." and you say, "Fuck you pig! If I did that I'd be self-incriminating me!" Then the courts hold you in contempt until you comply, or the cops finish sawing the lock off in 6 years, whichever breaks first.
First off, I'm an American, so I don't know jack about the civil rights one has in the UK. I do know this, they're not enumerated and can be withdrawn by an act of parlament. (Just one of the many grievences that led to the American Revolution.)
Since I've already admitted that I'm not qualified to speak about British law, let's suppose that this law was passed in the United States. (Which isn't unlikely.) This law would be perfectly legal. When the government suppeanas information from you via a search warrant, you have to give it.
Turning over a crypto-key is no different than turning over the key to you shed where you stashed the dismembered corpses of your wife and children. (Claiming privacy for stashing a body doesn't cut it, and it doesn't for encrypting a document either.) It doesn't violate the 5th amendment (Freedom from self-incrimination, for all our non-American friends) because it's evidence gathering, not testamony.
Imprisonment for not retrieving the key is where American and UK law start to diverge. INAL, but I belive the governement can still imprison you under some sort of conspiracy law, but I'm not sure. (I really don't know alot about conspiracy law, except that they only have to prove intent, which has a very low threshhold. Also they don't need physical evidence, (thus the "Conspiracty to ______" charge rather than for "_______ing".)
I understand law enforcement's predicament when it comes to crypto, but it's no different than any other civil-rights vs. law-enforcement issue. Basically the crypto-issue reduces down to Search. Sure having cops rabndomly raid someone's home will prevent crime, but is it to much of a price to pay? Sure key-escrow/recovery will allow the cops to evesdrop on you and the criminals, but is it too much of a price to pay?
It's a classic predicament, and there isn't an easy answer. A long time ago, society decided "No, you can't let the cops barge in and search. They need warrant to do that." Later society decided, "No, you can't just let the cops evesdrop on phone conversations, they need a warrant to do that." Sure the cops should be able to gather evidence, but they should have a warrant first. (The easy of getting a warrant is another issue, that deals with judical oversight (or lack there of).)
Personally I have no problem with the cops forcing me to decrypt a message. I don't like it, but it's no different than forcing me to unlock a safe. (However. I would kind of like to see the FBI crack the crypto.) I also feel the US crypto-export laws should be repealed, because they're completly ineffective against curbing the spread of strong crypto, and only serves to hold back the software industry and e-commerce.
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The following was just random line noise.
I like the idea of an balistic missle defense system. However I don't think the technology exists (yet) to make one effective.
Detonating a warhead in front of the main warhead force would either destroy or at least blind every satelite in the area. Encasing the warheards in liquid nitrogen colling them to evade IR detection. Hell even inflating a metalic balloon would cause radar wave to be deflected. (Remember, Echo (The first communication satelite) launched by the US back in the '50s was simply a balloon.)
If you were content with a bio-chem attack, you could overwhelm the defensive screen with lots of little mini-warheads and use those to distribute Anthrax, or Beubonic Plauge, or whatever.
If you made the warheads manuverable you could get them to evade incomming anti-missles.
Until these shortfalls can be overcome (and I'm sure they will be) we shouldn't give ourselves a feeling of false security. Afterall, MAD has worked so far. (I kind of wonder about how effective it will be in the future. Afterall death isn't a deterant for a suicide bomber (but that's tact-nukes which this doesn't defend against.)or a country's leadership with a suicide bomber mentality.)
(FYI: The US has signed a treaty stating that it would not develop a missle defense program back in '70s.)
References: "Why National Missile Defense Won't Work" Scientific American August, 1999