"In fact, no virus or worm has *ever* exploited a vulnerability before a critical update was released!"
Do you have any sources to back up that statement? It sounds highly dubious as there was just a trojan that exploited an unpatch vulnerability reported earlier today on Slashdot. I find it very hard to believe that there have been no worms or viruses, *ever* to exploit an unfixed vulnerability.
Regular magazine advertisements have no direct link between the advertisement and the shops selling the products, while online advertisement do.
The problem is that for a long while, web adverts were considered useful only if they gave DIRECT hits to the target website. That is highly unfair imo. Having people SEE the banner is useful enough on it's own. It helps generate brand recognition.
I think the web sites oversold the idea of clicks so much it made companies undervalue viewings of the ads. In my opinion web ads should be more expensive per square cm per viewing than regular ads, because of the added statistical information the client gets. In addition, clicks should be rewarded.
Eh.. NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT was meant to be replaced by a specific name. That is why I emphasised it.
If the Linux kernel had been released with the clause "Linus Torvalds is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" it would NOT allow any forks to upgrade the license.
.. namely the one in which you grant permission for your software to be distributed according to any future version of the GPL. I do know you are not required to include this clause, but both decisions can have consequences.
Without it, it can be hard for the licensing to adapt to new requirements if not all the copyright owners can be found.
With it, you are at the mercy of the Free Software Foundation, when it comes to new versions of the GPL. I trust the FSF completely not to have any hidden motives, but it still might be that a future version of the GPL does not suit you.
A clause of "NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" might be a better idea. This way, you CAN switch to new versions of the GPL even though you have thousands of contributors each with individual copyright on bits of the code, but you can also refuse to license the software under a future version of the GPL if it is not in your interest.
I would recommend adding to the bug and actually listing the web sites that are going to break. These sites are the equivalent of Dixons or Best Buy in their respective countries and are mainstream sites with lots of visitors.
"He's pretty much indestructable, so having him fight regular criminals makes for a pretty boring movie"
I agree. The one remaining problem for him was that he couldn't do several things at once, so he had to make a decision whether to save the world or his girlfriend. Sadly, the makers of Superman I ruined even this problem by making him capable of turning back time.
There is only so many times you can see him struggle as someone tricks him to expose himself to kryptonite.
If anyone, like me, has been programming Fortran 95 for your research, then they understand what the world would be like without GCC. Every compiler up until the newly released gfortran have been "for pay". If you have four different platforms to cover and a very low budget, then the situation was just crap. Using several different compilers is just bound to give you issues anyway.
In the world of scientific computing, gfortran still needs to prove itself, stability and accuracy-wise, but it is a bloody good start.
The single most important thing with a camera is having it with you when a photo opportunity arrives. Always carrying a camera around is normally not an option, while carrying a phone arround is perfectly fine.
Sooner or later, camera phones will have picture quality and usability that is "good enough" for point and click purposes and low end point and click cameras will see a sales drop. Low-end camera producers should look into partnerships with mobile phone companies for this reason.
Higher end cameras will always have a market as a combined high-end camera and phone would be a huge and complex monstrosity that noone would touch. High-end cameras you bring when you know you are going to take photographs anyway.
I've found that the problem is just as often the reporter. When the reporter does not understand the technical bits he/she leaves it out. It is a sensible reaction, as it saves them embarassment by putting in false information that exposes their lack of understanding.
"X1000? I thought the "X" in "X800" was there because those video cards were the generation after "9800" and "9700"... Whats next, OSX11?"
Actually I think the "X" in "X800" has more to do with it being designed for PCI-X. The same goes for the X300, which AFAIK is a much slower performer than 9800.
"(I still don't get what he problem with the universal format MP4 is. My best guess in MS didn't want a universal codec that will play on any player and has modified their 'version' of MP4 so that it doesn't work on anything. Still, you'd think it might work with WMP;-)"
Simple, MP4 is heavily patent encumbered. BBC is developing a codec which is supposed to be free of software patents. Your best guess is very, very wrong and very much against the BBC philosophy. Their codec will be open source and cross platform. They will most likely slap some form of DRM on it, but chances are they will make sure it is still cross platform.
I'm not quite sure why they couldn't just fund Ogg Theora, but there might be a good reason I'm not familiar with.
"So really, anything particularly special that Bittorrent manages to do, can't anyone else just copy it?"
The MIT license allows for closed source modifications and versions. I assume the whole part of the software which will deal with "paid for content" and content protection management will be closed source.
There is nothing stopping them from doing this, however, people need incentive to share their bandwidth and after having paid for the service I think people will not feel obliged to share anything.
"all I can say is that it can be done, and done cheaply"
That may be so in Tokyo where the population density is absolutely massive. Whether it can be done cheaply enough in the more sparsly populated areas in the west remains to be seen.
There is a reason why high population centers get these things way before the rest and I don't know if there are any more extreme population center than Tokyo.
Well, it only works on a specially prepared original, so you couldn't just change someone elses ISO into something harmful and still keep the same MD5 hash.
However, you COULD possibly release a "good" ISO first with this preparation and get people to trust that source by word of mouth, and then you could swap this ISO for a bad ISO with the same MD5 sum.
Still quite sinister, but not as easily exploitable as changing someone elses ISO.
"MSN Messenger is quite seriously a joke. Here is a service that few people really use. AOL IM stills has the majority share here as well since they were one of the original IM services. They also bought up another "original", ICQ. Yahoo, I believe is probably 2nd in the IM race and has a strong support base from its e-mail service and people who use Yahoo as a primary search tool."
MSN Messenger is by far the most used IM system in Europe. It may be behind in the US, but it is making serious inroads in other parts of the world.
So what? They are a commercial company and they provide a service which is benefitial to both the authors of the books and the public. Why shouldn't they earn money from doing so?
Google is basically connecting the public with the authors, but the authors apparently do not want to sell their books.
I've owned several web pages which Google has copied onto their servers via indexing and Google cache.
They never asked me for permission, and I'm pretty sure they all contained the footer (c) Me, All Rights Reserved.
In fact, the entire web is copyrighted by numerous authors and corporations, and I'm pretty sure Google has never asked anyone for permission.
Google can't even hide behind the mantra of not being able to micromanage automatic indexing, because the ENTIRE WEB is copyrighted in some form or another.
I'm going to completely disregard that my web pages increased in value by Google announcing their presence to the world, and rather sue them for copyright infringement. I'm also suing Microsoft, Yahoo and Altavista.
While they might legally have a point about Google having to ask for permission (IANAL), Google Print is just one huge f***** advertisement for their books.
Google is providing a useful service that allows you to find the books you want, so that you can purchase them legally from bookshops.
They are showing a little bit of content in order to let people make up their minds, analogous to be able to browse a book at a bookstore to find out if you want it or not.
This is simply taking common fair use in a bookstore (browsing) and moving it onto the digital domain.
While I agree Google should probably have asked the publishers for permission, a lawsuit is just far beyond common decency.
It is time copyright gets a huge makeover to make it more edible for consumers and work better in the new "digital reality", and I am not talking about stronger measurements and DRM.
A big problem with the traditional software distribution is that if you were to fill up your PC with legitimate commercial software from trusted (non-malicious) sources for all your purposes, you would most likely end up with a total software bill approaching a thousand dollars (Operating system, office pack, proper CD burner software, games, security software, graphics software, etc.)
Rather than making use of free software, people have gotten used to just pirating commercial software. I have yet to see a Home PC without at least a certain degree of pirated software on them.
The software vendors have started becoming increasingly anal about copy protection, trying to force people to purchase the software rather than pirate it. It is actually getting hard to just borrow a CD off a friend and install it.
The result? People will either switch to free software or download dubious chinese cracks off the Internet. Sadly, most seem to go with the last option.
The result is a sad state of affairs and it is not all down to security holes in Windows, IE or Outlook.
The first realisation for people should be that their Windows machine can be filled with nicely working and adequate free software rather than pirated commercial software. A nice security boost just there.
This works fine, but it is soooo much easier with a Linux system. The huge security boost of a newer Linux systems is NOT that they are inheritly more secure, but rather that people can get pretty much all the software they need from nice, friendly sources. Sure, they may have some security holes like all software, but they are not actively trying to screw you over.
Moreover, they are actually all updated from the Linux distributor. You do not have to chase down individual updates yourself.
If more people switched to Linux, they would simply not have to resort to crackz.com or something for their software needs. Most of it would either already be installed or require just a few mouse clicks to install.
I'm sorry, but most computer code is NOT research. It is more akin to engineering and not all engineering projects are something which is open and peer reviewed.
Open source is just open engineering projects. Not all of these actually do get proper peer review, although sometimes they do.
Besides almost all researchers does things to keep people from catching up to them by reading their papers.
If you routinely read lots of research papers you will find that it is not straightforward to follow their work. The needed information might be there, but there are probably massive amounts of intermediate steps you will have to take to redo their work. Thus there is normally quite a bit of "reverse-engineering" involved in following other people's research.
It is probably akin to releasing specs for hardware, but not providing an open source driver.
And finally, plenty of research is not open, but a trade secret. Just because it hasn't been published does not mean it is worthless. Things might actually WORK even if it isn't published you know.
Slashdot Mirror
"In fact, no virus or worm has *ever* exploited a vulnerability before a critical update was released!"
Do you have any sources to back up that statement? It sounds highly dubious as there was just a trojan that exploited an unpatch vulnerability reported earlier today on Slashdot. I find it very hard to believe that there have been no worms or viruses, *ever* to exploit an unfixed vulnerability.
.. due to an extreme focus on clicks.
Regular magazine advertisements have no direct link between the advertisement and the shops selling the products, while online advertisement do.
The problem is that for a long while, web adverts were considered useful only if they gave DIRECT hits to the target website. That is highly unfair imo. Having people SEE the banner is useful enough on it's own. It helps generate brand recognition.
I think the web sites oversold the idea of clicks so much it made companies undervalue viewings of the ads. In my opinion web ads should be more expensive per square cm per viewing than regular ads, because of the added statistical information the client gets. In addition, clicks should be rewarded.
"elf-DH downloads other malware onto infected machines changing settings in order to monitor user activity and redirect surfers onto porn sites."
So it is basically automated pr0n! From now on, you won't have to use your left hand.
A very good point that I have no answer to.
Eh.. NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT was meant to be replaced by a specific name. That is why I emphasised it.
If the Linux kernel had been released with the clause "Linus Torvalds is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" it would NOT allow any forks to upgrade the license.
.. namely the one in which you grant permission for your software to be distributed according to any future version of the GPL. I do know you are not required to include this clause, but both decisions can have consequences.
Without it, it can be hard for the licensing to adapt to new requirements if not all the copyright owners can be found.
With it, you are at the mercy of the Free Software Foundation, when it comes to new versions of the GPL. I trust the FSF completely not to have any hidden motives, but it still might be that a future version of the GPL does not suit you.
A clause of "NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" might be a better idea. This way, you CAN switch to new versions of the GPL even though you have thousands of contributors each with individual copyright on bits of the code, but you can also refuse to license the software under a future version of the GPL if it is not in your interest.
I would recommend adding to the bug and actually listing the web sites that are going to break. These sites are the equivalent of Dixons or Best Buy in their respective countries and are mainstream sites with lots of visitors.
"He's pretty much indestructable, so having him fight regular criminals makes for a pretty boring movie"
I agree. The one remaining problem for him was that he couldn't do several things at once, so he had to make a decision whether to save the world or his girlfriend. Sadly, the makers of Superman I ruined even this problem by making him capable of turning back time.
There is only so many times you can see him struggle as someone tricks him to expose himself to kryptonite.
--
Gaute
If anyone, like me, has been programming Fortran 95 for your research, then they understand what the world would be like without GCC. Every compiler up until the newly released gfortran have been "for pay". If you have four different platforms to cover and a very low budget, then the situation was just crap. Using several different compilers is just bound to give you issues anyway.
In the world of scientific computing, gfortran still needs to prove itself, stability and accuracy-wise, but it is a bloody good start.
The single most important thing with a camera is having it with you when a photo opportunity arrives. Always carrying a camera around is normally not an option, while carrying a phone arround is perfectly fine.
Sooner or later, camera phones will have picture quality and usability that is "good enough" for point and click purposes and low end point and click cameras will see a sales drop. Low-end camera producers should look into partnerships with mobile phone companies for this reason.
Higher end cameras will always have a market as a combined high-end camera and phone would be a huge and complex monstrosity that noone would touch. High-end cameras you bring when you know you are going to take photographs anyway.
"The problem is, of course, audience."
I've found that the problem is just as often the reporter. When the reporter does not understand the technical bits he/she leaves it out. It is a sensible reaction, as it saves them embarassment by putting in false information that exposes their lack of understanding.
.. is comedian Steve Nallon. The summary makes it look like it is either IBM or Alan Cox cracking the joke about the soap.
"X1000? I thought the "X" in "X800" was there because those video cards were the generation after "9800" and "9700"... Whats next, OSX11?"
Actually I think the "X" in "X800" has more to do with it being designed for PCI-X. The same goes for the X300, which AFAIK is a much slower performer than 9800.
"(I still don't get what he problem with the universal format MP4 is. My best guess in MS didn't want a universal codec that will play on any player and has modified their 'version' of MP4 so that it doesn't work on anything. Still, you'd think it might work with WMP ;-)"
Simple, MP4 is heavily patent encumbered. BBC is developing a codec which is supposed to be free of software patents. Your best guess is very, very wrong and very much against the BBC philosophy. Their codec will be open source and cross platform. They will most likely slap some form of DRM on it, but chances are they will make sure it is still cross platform.
I'm not quite sure why they couldn't just fund Ogg Theora, but there might be a good reason I'm not familiar with.
"So really, anything particularly special that Bittorrent manages to do, can't anyone else just copy it?"
The MIT license allows for closed source modifications and versions. I assume the whole part of the software which will deal with "paid for content" and content protection management will be closed source.
There is nothing stopping them from doing this, however, people need incentive to share their bandwidth and after having paid for the service I think people will not feel obliged to share anything.
"all I can say is that it can be done, and done cheaply"
That may be so in Tokyo where the population density is absolutely massive. Whether it can be done cheaply enough in the more sparsly populated areas in the west remains to be seen.
There is a reason why high population centers get these things way before the rest and I don't know if there are any more extreme population center than Tokyo.
.. before sending in a "What is so f****** funny about this? It is dangerous!" post.
Well, it only works on a specially prepared original, so you couldn't just change someone elses ISO into something harmful and still keep the same MD5 hash.
However, you COULD possibly release a "good" ISO first with this preparation and get people to trust that source by word of mouth, and then you could swap this ISO for a bad ISO with the same MD5 sum.
Still quite sinister, but not as easily exploitable as changing someone elses ISO.
"MSN Messenger is quite seriously a joke. Here is a service that few people really use. AOL IM stills has the majority share here as well since they were one of the original IM services. They also bought up another "original", ICQ. Yahoo, I believe is probably 2nd in the IM race and has a strong support base from its e-mail service and people who use Yahoo as a primary search tool."
MSN Messenger is by far the most used IM system in Europe. It may be behind in the US, but it is making serious inroads in other parts of the world.
So what? They are a commercial company and they provide a service which is benefitial to both the authors of the books and the public. Why shouldn't they earn money from doing so?
Google is basically connecting the public with the authors, but the authors apparently do not want to sell their books.
To play the devil's advocate:
Why should I as a copyright owner have to OPT OUT of Google violating my copyright?
The Authors Guild also have this opt out possibility, but they are still suing.
Shouldn't Google ask me for permission before copying my content?
I've owned several web pages which Google has copied onto their servers via indexing and Google cache.
They never asked me for permission, and I'm pretty sure they all contained the footer (c) Me, All Rights Reserved.
In fact, the entire web is copyrighted by numerous authors and corporations, and I'm pretty sure Google has never asked anyone for permission.
Google can't even hide behind the mantra of not being able to micromanage automatic indexing, because the ENTIRE WEB is copyrighted in some form or another.
I'm going to completely disregard that my web pages increased in value by Google announcing their presence to the world, and rather sue them for copyright infringement. I'm also suing Microsoft, Yahoo and Altavista.
Anyone for a class action lawsuit?
While they might legally have a point about Google having to ask for permission (IANAL), Google Print is just one huge f***** advertisement for their books.
Google is providing a useful service that allows you to find the books you want, so that you can purchase them legally from bookshops.
They are showing a little bit of content in order to let people make up their minds, analogous to be able to browse a book at a bookstore to find out if you want it or not.
This is simply taking common fair use in a bookstore (browsing) and moving it onto the digital domain.
While I agree Google should probably have asked the publishers for permission, a lawsuit is just far beyond common decency.
It is time copyright gets a huge makeover to make it more edible for consumers and work better in the new "digital reality", and I am not talking about stronger measurements and DRM.
A big problem with the traditional software distribution is that if you were to fill up your PC with legitimate commercial software from trusted (non-malicious) sources for all your purposes, you would most likely end up with a total software bill approaching a thousand dollars (Operating system, office pack, proper CD burner software, games, security software, graphics software, etc.)
Rather than making use of free software, people have gotten used to just pirating commercial software. I have yet to see a Home PC without at least a certain degree of pirated software on them.
The software vendors have started becoming increasingly anal about copy protection, trying to force people to purchase the software rather than pirate it. It is actually getting hard to just borrow a CD off a friend and install it.
The result? People will either switch to free software or download dubious chinese cracks off the Internet. Sadly, most seem to go with the last option.
The result is a sad state of affairs and it is not all down to security holes in Windows, IE or Outlook.
The first realisation for people should be that their Windows machine can be filled with nicely working and adequate free software rather than pirated commercial software. A nice security boost just there.
This works fine, but it is soooo much easier with a Linux system. The huge security boost of a newer Linux systems is NOT that they are inheritly more secure, but rather that people can get pretty much all the software they need from nice, friendly sources. Sure, they may have some security holes like all software, but they are not actively trying to screw you over.
Moreover, they are actually all updated from the Linux distributor. You do not have to chase down individual updates yourself.
If more people switched to Linux, they would simply not have to resort to crackz.com or something for their software needs. Most of it would either already be installed or require just a few mouse clicks to install.
I'm sorry, but most computer code is NOT research. It is more akin to engineering and not all engineering projects are something which is open and peer reviewed.
Open source is just open engineering projects. Not all of these actually do get proper peer review, although sometimes they do.
Besides almost all researchers does things to keep people from catching up to them by reading their papers.
If you routinely read lots of research papers you will find that it is not straightforward to follow their work. The needed information might be there, but there are probably massive amounts of intermediate steps you will have to take to redo their work. Thus there is normally quite a bit of "reverse-engineering" involved in following other people's research.
It is probably akin to releasing specs for hardware, but not providing an open source driver.
And finally, plenty of research is not open, but a trade secret. Just because it hasn't been published does not mean it is worthless. Things might actually WORK even if it isn't published you know.