I've patented the concepts of making silence through (1) not making any noise, (2) failing to record said noise, and (3) a catch-all that covers anything that might not be covered by the first two.
I asked my lawyer if I had missed anything, and when he paused for a second, I had him arrested for violating my patent. Maybe that was a bad idea?
This reminds me of a story I read a while back (several years ago) about software that would watch over your network for an attack. Upon catching one, it would automatically retaliate against the source of the attack, performing a DoS or some other damaging act. Several corporate management types were interviewed, and they all thought this was the greatest thing they'd ever heard of.
When I read the article, the first thing that came to my mind was spoofing. How hard would it be to spoof my identity while attacking one of these corporations, through either IP spoofing or bouncing an attack off an unsuspecting victim? If done right, it would be possible to make these corporate hosts launch an attack on anyone you wanted. Needless to say, this type of "counterstrike" software never caught on.
Now I see that the RIAA wants free reign to DoS P2P users. What happens if someone is able to spoof their identity and trick the RIAA (or copyright holders, etc) into attacking someone else? What are the legal ramifications of this? Now, having said that, if someone can spoof their identity to trick the RIAA into DoSing themselves, I'll gladly turn my back while I laugh my ass off.
1. Theo nor any of the posters I've seen are willing to tell us what the hell is broken. Only that we must upgrade. That just don't cut it, I won't blindly patch without an idea of what is broken. The Debian security release summed it up best.
In the world of full disclosure, it's generally considered polite to initially only notify the vendor of a product and allow them a grace period to fix the security hole. This way, when the security hole is publicized, users will (hopefully) have a patch or upgrade to secure their systems. The question here isn't whether Theo is correct in holding back the details of the exploit (which I believe he is correct in doing), but whether he should have said anything about the problem at all before releasing the full details. I think his goal was to pressure the OS vendors into helping him fix the problems in his code.
I won't say whether his choice is right or wrong, but I won't chastise him for protecting my security, either.
Ah yes. And don't forget they're a company that tries again and again to pass laws on copyrights (like SSSCA and CBDTPA) that would make Linux illegal, then they turn around and use it for production. So what happens if by chance one of their dull witted bills gets passed into law? Does that mean they'll have to abandon Linux? Or will they have a provision in it to make sure they (and no one else) can still use our beloved OS?
what he is really bellyaching about is the fact that some big rpm based distros (mandrake and redhat) don't come with free dependency management software.
I'm using Mandrake right now, and it has a free program called urpmi (User RPM Install) which works great for dependency management. It works very much like apt-get, and it's been around for years. And although I haven't seen it, doesn't Redhat's up2date handle dependencies?
Chatting online is dangerous and should be outlawed immediately (pay no attention to the fact that this message is being posted online). In addition, the following partial list of activities is also dangerous and they should be outlawed immediately:
Going to school: There are countless examples of school violence, making school a very dangerous place to be.
Riding in an automobile: Thousands of people are killed or injured in automobile accidents each year
Walking: Hundreds of children are attacked, kidnapped, etc, while walking outdoors. This makes walking unacceptable.
Bicycling: Thousands of children are injured due to bicycle accidents every year, due to either loosing balance, or worse, colliding with other objects (cars, trees, other bikers, etc).
Sports: Sports related injuries are among the most common child danger.
Sedentary lifestyle: Not exercising leads to poor health that shortens children's lifes and reduces the quality of life.
Flying: Airline accidents claim dozens of lives every year.
Listening to music: Excessive music can damage a child's ears.
Typing on a computer: Heavy use of computers can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome, a debilitating condition.
In case my point isn't clear by now, everything we do carries dangers. To outlaw something based on its negative side without considering its positives is generally not a good thing.
Re:you just dont get it
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
That's one of the ways I've envisioned it. But it raises the question of "how do you know if it works?" If I send an object back in time, it just vanishes, so how do I know it actually travelled through time and didn't just vanish? And if I send myself through time, I'll know, but how do I get back to let anyone else know? From their point of view, I just disappeared forever.
You could say the same thing about GUI versus command line. For most tasks, the command line is much faster for anyone who is familiar with it. However, GUIs are better for some things, such as graphic editing where we want to see what we're doing as we're doing it. I can see places where a pen would be better than a keyboard/mouse. For example, when I'm diagramming something, or just sketching, a pencil and paper usually work better than any computer input I've used. For cases like these, I would actually prefer the pen. However, what I don't want is a tablet where I draw one place (on the tablet) and it appears somewhere else (on the screen). That's just too unnatural.
Now I will agree that I much prefer the keyboard for many tasks, like writing documents or code.
I can represent any digital music (or anything digital for that matter) as a number. Hell, I don't even have to convert it, as its binary representation is already a number (any string of 0's and 1's is a binary number). And since it's a number, it can't be copyrighted. Seems to have as much logic as converting DNA to music for additional patent protection. Sheesh.
Under Linux, I haven't seen these problems. I've created fonts as large as 200 points and haven't seen any jaggies (as long as I use a scalable font). Also, I've done work with pasting multiple images into panoramas. For example, one I did was at 15000 x 2500 pixels, and it contained 6 layers, all of which adds up to over 600MB. It was a bit sluggish (as expected, since I only have 384MB of ram), but it was still usable, and I was able to create the panorama. All I can guess is that the Windows version of GIMP has some limitations over the Unix version.
I work for a large telecommunications company. I won't mention the name, but I'll just say that it's a 6 letter word which starts with "spr" and ends in "int". Anyway, six months after I got the job, they tried to force one of these employee agreements on me. It was filled with language that basically said that they own everything I do, past, present, or future (it said anything related to this company's current or anticipated future business, but it would be all too easy for them to say some invention of mine was an "anticipated future business idea"). I doubt such a blanket statement would be legally enforceable, but I didn't want to deal with the legal headaches.
When I got the form, I wrote back with all the changes I wanted to see in order to protect my rights without adversly affection theirs (hey, I can understand a company wanting to protect themselves, so long as they understand my desire to protect myself too). A couple weeks later, the company's lawyer came down to talk to me, trying to convince me that I was taking the document too literally and that the company would never really use it against me. Of course, if that were true, he would have had no problem changing the document as I asked, but his excuse is that this was the same document that everybody signs.
I took the document and marked it up with the changes I wanted, and added a disclaimer which basically said "my signature on this document is contingent on me being able to own my own work". Of course, I detailed what I defined as "my own work". After making these changes, I sent the document in. About two months later, I received another copy of the form in the mail with a letter saying I had never signed the document, and they wanted me to sign this one. I never did, and they haven't bothered me with it since. If they were to hassle me with it again in the future, I have no doubts I could find a better job elsewhere.
In a way, I'm at least a little bit happy to hear that they won't be conducting elections. This sounds bad at first, but consider this: the only people who would have been allowed to vote were domain name holders, and who owns most of the domains out there? Large corporations. Things are bad now, but if these corporations got to choose who to put on the ICANN board, they wouldn't get any better. No, they would vote for the candidate who would best represent their corporate interests (and screw over the little guy). There's got to be a better way.
But what's the point of having a window on your hard drive when it's tucked away inside your computer where you generally never see it? You need to create windows on your drive bays, too.
There were a lot of things in Amiga's OS design that I really liked, and for the most part, haven't seen duplicated. For example, I absolutely loved the way it handled multiple screens (it allowed you to drag them up and down to see one in front of the other). I also loved things like appicons (drop an icon onto one of these and it would perform some action on it), and the datatypes library (a directory of modules for reading all different types of input -- pictures, text, sounds, etc, and if a new format came along, add the new datatype and *all* your software would instantly support it!).
Where I work, the only thing I've ever seen people use Excel for is to write TEXT data in a tabular format. No formulas, no math, no graphs, just rows and columns of text. I see things like inventory lists, roles and responsibilities, etc. For that kind of use, HTML tables would work just as well. Based on what I see around me, I'd say Excel's features are very underutilized, and even the simplest of spreadsheets could take its place for what most people do with it.
I don't think there is an SI unit for googol. They are, as high up as I know:
kilo 10^3 (thousand)
mega 10^6 (million)
giga 10^9 (billion/thousand million)
tera 10^12 (trillion/billion)
peta 10^15 (quadrillion/thousand billion)
exa 10^18 (quintillion/million billion)
zetta 10^21 (sextillion/thousand million billion)
yotta 10^24 (septillion/trillion)
The names of the SI prefixes aren't derived from the names of the numbers. Also, in case you're wondering, the reason I have two names for some of the numbers is due to differences in naming systems. In some parts of the world (like the US), 10^9=1 billion. In other parts (like England), 10^9=1 thousand million.
I presented this once before, but here it is again. I have a formula for finding the prime factors of a number, as long as the number only has two prime factors (this is usually the case for encryption). Here it is:
Let's say r = p * q
p and q are positive prime integers. If we are given r, we can deduce p and q with the following:
p = GCD(r, floor(sqrt(r))!)
q = r/p
GCD is the "greatest common divisor" function (quickly deducible with Euclidean math). This works because if a number only has two factors, one will be less than its square root, and the other will be larger (assuming p != q). In this case, the product of all the numbers less than the square root (the factorial) will have exactly one factor in common with r, and the GCD function will extract it. There's just one problem with this formula: for numbers as large as those used in encryption, the factorial will return a number too large to handle. But if we could find a good way to simplify the above equation without fully expanding the factorial, current encryption methods would crumble.
BTW, there are types of encryption that use chaos theory that would still stand strong.
Slashdot Mirror
But, but, but ...
I've patented the concepts of making silence through (1) not making any noise, (2) failing to record said noise, and (3) a catch-all that covers anything that might not be covered by the first two.
I asked my lawyer if I had missed anything, and when he paused for a second, I had him arrested for violating my patent. Maybe that was a bad idea?
How can these clowns hope to copyright silence when I've already obtained 3 patents on it?
This reminds me of a story I read a while back (several years ago) about software that would watch over your network for an attack. Upon catching one, it would automatically retaliate against the source of the attack, performing a DoS or some other damaging act. Several corporate management types were interviewed, and they all thought this was the greatest thing they'd ever heard of.
When I read the article, the first thing that came to my mind was spoofing. How hard would it be to spoof my identity while attacking one of these corporations, through either IP spoofing or bouncing an attack off an unsuspecting victim? If done right, it would be possible to make these corporate hosts launch an attack on anyone you wanted. Needless to say, this type of "counterstrike" software never caught on.
Now I see that the RIAA wants free reign to DoS P2P users. What happens if someone is able to spoof their identity and trick the RIAA (or copyright holders, etc) into attacking someone else? What are the legal ramifications of this? Now, having said that, if someone can spoof their identity to trick the RIAA into DoSing themselves, I'll gladly turn my back while I laugh my ass off.
1. Theo nor any of the posters I've seen are willing to tell us what the hell is broken. Only that we must upgrade. That just don't cut it, I won't blindly patch without an idea of what is broken. The Debian security release summed it up best.
In the world of full disclosure, it's generally considered polite to initially only notify the vendor of a product and allow them a grace period to fix the security hole. This way, when the security hole is publicized, users will (hopefully) have a patch or upgrade to secure their systems. The question here isn't whether Theo is correct in holding back the details of the exploit (which I believe he is correct in doing), but whether he should have said anything about the problem at all before releasing the full details. I think his goal was to pressure the OS vendors into helping him fix the problems in his code.
I won't say whether his choice is right or wrong, but I won't chastise him for protecting my security, either.
Ah yes. And don't forget they're a company that tries again and again to pass laws on copyrights (like SSSCA and CBDTPA) that would make Linux illegal, then they turn around and use it for production. So what happens if by chance one of their dull witted bills gets passed into law? Does that mean they'll have to abandon Linux? Or will they have a provision in it to make sure they (and no one else) can still use our beloved OS?
what he is really bellyaching about is the fact that some big rpm based distros (mandrake and redhat) don't come with free dependency management software.
I'm using Mandrake right now, and it has a free program called urpmi (User RPM Install) which works great for dependency management. It works very much like apt-get, and it's been around for years. And although I haven't seen it, doesn't Redhat's up2date handle dependencies?
So Carnivore ate its own data? Maybe they should give it a new name. I think Cannibal would work pretty well.
Going to school: There are countless examples of school violence, making school a very dangerous place to be.
Riding in an automobile: Thousands of people are killed or injured in automobile accidents each year
Walking: Hundreds of children are attacked, kidnapped, etc, while walking outdoors. This makes walking unacceptable.
Bicycling: Thousands of children are injured due to bicycle accidents every year, due to either loosing balance, or worse, colliding with other objects (cars, trees, other bikers, etc).
Sports: Sports related injuries are among the most common child danger.
Sedentary lifestyle: Not exercising leads to poor health that shortens children's lifes and reduces the quality of life.
Flying: Airline accidents claim dozens of lives every year.
Listening to music: Excessive music can damage a child's ears.
Typing on a computer: Heavy use of computers can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome, a debilitating condition.
In case my point isn't clear by now, everything we do carries dangers. To outlaw something based on its negative side without considering its positives is generally not a good thing.
That's one of the ways I've envisioned it. But it raises the question of "how do you know if it works?" If I send an object back in time, it just vanishes, so how do I know it actually travelled through time and didn't just vanish? And if I send myself through time, I'll know, but how do I get back to let anyone else know? From their point of view, I just disappeared forever.
So why would I want a device to slow me down?
You could say the same thing about GUI versus command line. For most tasks, the command line is much faster for anyone who is familiar with it. However, GUIs are better for some things, such as graphic editing where we want to see what we're doing as we're doing it. I can see places where a pen would be better than a keyboard/mouse. For example, when I'm diagramming something, or just sketching, a pencil and paper usually work better than any computer input I've used. For cases like these, I would actually prefer the pen. However, what I don't want is a tablet where I draw one place (on the tablet) and it appears somewhere else (on the screen). That's just too unnatural.
Now I will agree that I much prefer the keyboard for many tasks, like writing documents or code.
I can represent any digital music (or anything digital for that matter) as a number. Hell, I don't even have to convert it, as its binary representation is already a number (any string of 0's and 1's is a binary number). And since it's a number, it can't be copyrighted. Seems to have as much logic as converting DNA to music for additional patent protection. Sheesh.
Under Linux, I haven't seen these problems. I've created fonts as large as 200 points and haven't seen any jaggies (as long as I use a scalable font). Also, I've done work with pasting multiple images into panoramas. For example, one I did was at 15000 x 2500 pixels, and it contained 6 layers, all of which adds up to over 600MB. It was a bit sluggish (as expected, since I only have 384MB of ram), but it was still usable, and I was able to create the panorama. All I can guess is that the Windows version of GIMP has some limitations over the Unix version.
I work for a large telecommunications company. I won't mention the name, but I'll just say that it's a 6 letter word which starts with "spr" and ends in "int". Anyway, six months after I got the job, they tried to force one of these employee agreements on me. It was filled with language that basically said that they own everything I do, past, present, or future (it said anything related to this company's current or anticipated future business, but it would be all too easy for them to say some invention of mine was an "anticipated future business idea"). I doubt such a blanket statement would be legally enforceable, but I didn't want to deal with the legal headaches.
When I got the form, I wrote back with all the changes I wanted to see in order to protect my rights without adversly affection theirs (hey, I can understand a company wanting to protect themselves, so long as they understand my desire to protect myself too). A couple weeks later, the company's lawyer came down to talk to me, trying to convince me that I was taking the document too literally and that the company would never really use it against me. Of course, if that were true, he would have had no problem changing the document as I asked, but his excuse is that this was the same document that everybody signs.
I took the document and marked it up with the changes I wanted, and added a disclaimer which basically said "my signature on this document is contingent on me being able to own my own work". Of course, I detailed what I defined as "my own work". After making these changes, I sent the document in. About two months later, I received another copy of the form in the mail with a letter saying I had never signed the document, and they wanted me to sign this one. I never did, and they haven't bothered me with it since. If they were to hassle me with it again in the future, I have no doubts I could find a better job elsewhere.
In a way, I'm at least a little bit happy to hear that they won't be conducting elections. This sounds bad at first, but consider this: the only people who would have been allowed to vote were domain name holders, and who owns most of the domains out there? Large corporations. Things are bad now, but if these corporations got to choose who to put on the ICANN board, they wouldn't get any better. No, they would vote for the candidate who would best represent their corporate interests (and screw over the little guy). There's got to be a better way.
No! Not *AGAIN* I just finished getting my computer back up and running after I got hit by this virus last time. Damn!
Cool, so someone finally created a perpetual motion machine. And it turned out to be an oversized record player! All I can say is "WOW"!
According to the article though, there will be no product until at least a year from now.
So, about 5 years before Itanium actually ships, then?
Like the way you leeched this article. Sorry, couldn't resist.
But what's the point of having a window on your hard drive when it's tucked away inside your computer where you generally never see it? You need to create windows on your drive bays, too.
There were a lot of things in Amiga's OS design that I really liked, and for the most part, haven't seen duplicated. For example, I absolutely loved the way it handled multiple screens (it allowed you to drag them up and down to see one in front of the other). I also loved things like appicons (drop an icon onto one of these and it would perform some action on it), and the datatypes library (a directory of modules for reading all different types of input -- pictures, text, sounds, etc, and if a new format came along, add the new datatype and *all* your software would instantly support it!).
Does anyone know if the name X Windows predates Microsoft Windows?
Where I work, the only thing I've ever seen people use Excel for is to write TEXT data in a tabular format. No formulas, no math, no graphs, just rows and columns of text. I see things like inventory lists, roles and responsibilities, etc. For that kind of use, HTML tables would work just as well. Based on what I see around me, I'd say Excel's features are very underutilized, and even the simplest of spreadsheets could take its place for what most people do with it.
I don't think there is an SI unit for googol. They are, as high up as I know:
kilo 10^3 (thousand)
mega 10^6 (million)
giga 10^9 (billion/thousand million)
tera 10^12 (trillion/billion)
peta 10^15 (quadrillion/thousand billion)
exa 10^18 (quintillion/million billion)
zetta 10^21 (sextillion/thousand million billion)
yotta 10^24 (septillion/trillion)
The names of the SI prefixes aren't derived from the names of the numbers. Also, in case you're wondering, the reason I have two names for some of the numbers is due to differences in naming systems. In some parts of the world (like the US), 10^9=1 billion. In other parts (like England), 10^9=1 thousand million.
I presented this once before, but here it is again. I have a formula for finding the prime factors of a number, as long as the number only has two prime factors (this is usually the case for encryption). Here it is:
Let's say r = p * q
p and q are positive prime integers. If we are given r, we can deduce p and q with the following:
p = GCD(r, floor(sqrt(r))!)
q = r/p
GCD is the "greatest common divisor" function (quickly deducible with Euclidean math). This works because if a number only has two factors, one will be less than its square root, and the other will be larger (assuming p != q). In this case, the product of all the numbers less than the square root (the factorial) will have exactly one factor in common with r, and the GCD function will extract it. There's just one problem with this formula: for numbers as large as those used in encryption, the factorial will return a number too large to handle. But if we could find a good way to simplify the above equation without fully expanding the factorial, current encryption methods would crumble.
BTW, there are types of encryption that use chaos theory that would still stand strong.
From the article:
... was revealed when a Recording Industry Ass. of America internal memo was leaked ...
Recording Industry Ass of America. I like that.