First, if an alias was purely a file-system-level object, I don't see why you think it would work across file systems. The native file system of Apple OSes is HFS or HFS+; SMB is another animal altogether. Even if HFS implemented aliases in the manner you imagine, it still wouldn't work via SMB, just as symlinks don't work on SMB, since SMB doesn't provide support for either mechanism. If it was a native file-system object it would limited by the scope and functions of the file system on which it was contained.
That's not to say aliases aren't tied into the file system -- they contain information native to whatever file system(s) they reference, and in that respect are part of the file system. But their scope is wider, so they cannot be considered native objects, as an single file system may not contain sufficient information to resolve them. They are however, a native part of the VFS on Apple OSes, so from the perspective of anyone using an Apple OS, they are a native object, just as symlinks are part of the linux VFS and therefore can be used even on file systems that do not natively support such an object.
Aliases do "just work" over SMB, so long as the system mounting the SMB file system supports aliases. You can make aliases to files and folders on an SMB share, or store aliases on an SMB share, and any system that knows how to read aliases will happily resolve them for you. But aliases are not a native part of SMB sharing, so simply having an SMB client implementation is not sufficient to resolve aliases.
Aliases are not superior in all cases to symlinks or hard links, but they are very useful for users creating links to files or folders, particularly if you may not have all the appropriate paths mounted, as is often true with remote disks or disk images. They are similar to the new system Vista is providing, but they are resolved at runtime in a manner that can transparently resolve changes in file paths and disk locations and names.
Aliases should work via SMB, so long as you've still got the resource fork and are accessing it from another Mac. They don't work from Windows for obvious reasons -- Windows has never implemented a volume-ID to path resolution required systems, as is required by the alias structure.
I'll give you that this makes aliases less flexible, but aliases give you the ability to make a link to a file on a disk image on a remote disk -- and rename any of the files, disks, or folders involved -- while still being able to double-click to open. All of the necessary mounting and name correction just happens; it's like a hard-link but without the need for the file to be on the same disk (or even local).
If you get ripped at online gambling, there is no way currently to know it happened.
That's exactly my point. If you can't tell that it's fraud, then it isn't fraud, it's just you giving someone money. And you can tell it happens -- if you are told you have a 40% chance of winning, then after placing 1000 bets you should have won very nearly 400 of them. I'll grant you it may be impractical to undertake that kind of study as an individual, but it's hardly impossible. I also fail to see how this is any different than casino gambling; how do I prove the casino is screwing me, other than through a statistical study or inspection of their gaming equipment (which isn't a privilege allowed to the general public)?
I don't think outside getting code certified and sealing servers and inspecting often along with registration of winners anything could be done.
What else do you need? What else do real-world casinos provide beyond certification of fair playing equipment and monitoring of winners? What's so different about having a gaming machine be in a rack rather than on a casino floor?
It would need to be a regulated government approved source that conforms to laws within the lands of the person gambling too.
I specifically said that the regulating body would be organized by the government. I presumed that to include the authority of law in prosecuting persons and organizations that fail to comply. I don't see why that means that the regulation system must be compulsory -- is it really so hard to click the link that goes to the www.gaming.gov website and shows that "www.gamblingsite.com" is in fact in compliance? Then both gamblers and gambling sites have a choice in the level of regulation under which they choose to operate.
Just because people's expectations for return in gambling are lower than they are with retail items is not evidence it's easier to defraud them; I would argue that the same lower expectations raise the threshold for fraud, as people are not expecting a specific good in return for their payment. They're buying entertainment, which at least in theory is unrelated to the outcome of the game.
But even if you assume it's easier to defraud people with gambling, couldn't you solve the problem with voluntary, publicly-supervised registration and regulation rather than a ban or manditory regulation? Couldn't the government establish a regulation body which ensures that voluntarily-registered gaming sites are fairly run and include sufficient safegaurds to protect gamblers from malicious peers? The body could even be entirely self-funded. Then you as a gambler could choose not to gamble at unregistered sites. Or you could choose to gamble more cheaply at unregistered sites, with the knowledge that the site is unregistered and therefore unregulated.
It's not a scam if you know you're being taken. It is gambling after all.
I don't see how this is any different than say, selling socks online. If my website tells you that you'll get 4 pairs of socks for $9.99 and I don't give you 4 pairs of socks, or if I charge you more than $9.99, it's fraud. If my website says that no one at the table has knowledge of other players hands, and that turns out not to be true, it's still fraud. Why does gambling need its own special laws?
You can, but your view of the world is limited. You can't see any non-static elements except those right around your body. You can explore the map a a ghost, but that's about it.
You don't need the output from the machine to be paper. If the machine copied a plain-text, cryptographically-signed copy of your ballot to say, your PDA/USB drive/cell phone/etc., that would provide an out-of-band, voter-verifiable record of the transaction, with superior tamper resistance than a plain paper ballot. It would even allow voters to take home a copy of their vote, and to verify election results independently of the official count, which cannot be done with paper balots.
Of course, not everyone carries a device appropriate for such a transfer, and so paper is a reasonable choice at this point. But the concept of paperless voting is not unreasonable -- just the concept of receipt-less voting.
If only we could build a cable where the signal was transmitted on a wire totally encased by an EM shield -- with the interior signal wire running down the central axis of the exterior shield. That would be handy for stopping stray EM on the cable network.
Windows is backwards compatible, but that it isn't a unique attribute.
Ignoring the difference in age (1984-2006), almost any Mac program should still work. I run several ancient games -- shareware that I frist played on my 512k (Non-Enhanced) circa 1985 -- on a semi-regular basis on my G5.
Now you can nitpick about how the second processor family switch broke that compatibility, but Windows doesn't transparently support any processor family switches, and both Intel and PPC Mac supports at least one (either 68k->PPC or PPC->x86).
Any Mac program that doesn't make assumptions about address length and that follows the standard event processing model works fine. I have run across programs that require 24-bit addressing (which was never recommended; the 68k was 32-bit internally), and programs that don't draw windows or otherwise break when run in a MutliFinder environment (again, never recommended), but for the most part things work correctly. Even things like Desk Accessories, which were never meant to run in a MultiFinder environment, still run without issue.
Maybe because their customers expect to be able to connect more than one machine to the Internet and are willing to pay for their ISP for such services? I know it's complicated, but even unmitigated greed requires that you encourage people to give you money; giving them a good or service for more than it's worth to you is an easy way to do that, and is in fact the basis of most ISP's business plans.
Some of us have discovered that the iPod can be charged away from the computer. I use my iPod almost exclusively in the car, and since there's an electrical system there, I also charge my iPod in the car. In fact, the most common reason I take my iPod out of the car is to sync it with my computer. I personally would consider syncing from the garage useful. I can see why you wouldn't, but it's a bit ego-centric to say that there is no reasonable use for a feature exists simply because you can't think of anything interesting to do with that feature.
And your CC argument is just FUD. ITMS currently works by linking your purchases to an Apple ID, which is linked to your credit card. The CC number is already stored in their computers; you log in to your Apple account from iTunes (which stays logged in for a fairly long period) and they charge your CC when that account makes purchases. Presumably you'd have to log the iPod into the ITMS (either directly or via iTunes) before you were authorized to purchase music from it. Such an iPod is no more or less a risk than a laptop that's logged in to the ITMS.
Cameras and police offers are no different. Neither should be allowed to track me all day long as I move around the city without due cause.
And while the government certainly does have authority, it does not have rights. Rights are inherent and, while they can be violated, cannot be removed (though society can influence what we consider to be a right). Authority exists only when a person or group grants it to another. Authority can likewise be denied by anyone who chooses to do so (though there may be consequences for doing so).
Police officers are very rarely in a position to actually stop an eminent crime, nor are they terribly effective in stopping a crime when they are present. They exist to enforce and investigate, and in that sense to serve as a passive deterrent, but not to actively rescue you from a crime in progress. Take a look at places like London, that already have a lot of surveillance cameras. The installation of cameras has done wonders for conviction rates, but has done nothing to reduce the crime rate.
Those are all valid points. I never suggested that google was comparable to WoW in terms of complexity, just that the comparision was over-simplified to the point of absurdity when google became nothing more than a web interface and a database.
If you're going to ignore all the application logic in google you should do the same for WoW -- it's basically just a RPC interface and a database, albeit an incredibly advanced one.
To be fair, someone other country would first have to "feel it has the right" to put such things up there. Space stations and spy satalites are mostly harmless, but military space ships are inherently dangerous. Wouldn't you expect to be shot at if you overflew a non-allied nation in a military jet? While orbital mechanics make space trickier, I don't see why it's inherently different.
I bought Apple stock back in 2001. Unfortunately I was a poor college student so I only bought 4 shares (8 now after the split). If I had a few grand at the time it would have paid for my college education.
You're aware that you can re-map both the hard and soft buttons arbitrarily, right? If it knows a command to make disks change, you can make any button you like send that command.
Maybe your desktop boots quickly, but if you've got a real machine hardware init can take several minutes. Since the hardware didn't change with the library upgrade, that seems like wasted time. There can also be several minutes of driver loading and hardware discovery/coalescence depending on what you do between kernel init and standard operation (like say, getting your SAN back online), which again, is totally unrelated to the library upgrade.
And it's trivial to have init kill and restart all its children, which would accomplish the same thing in terms of library loading without all the hardware init time and driver re-loading.
Re:The security/paranoid in me says...
on
USB To Go Wireless
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· Score: 1
If you're worried about that you could encrypt the channel with no extra bandwidth requirements. It's not necessary to either A) do a bi-direction key exchange or B) to do it in-band, so encryption shouldn't change the comm requirements much at all.
It's worth noting that your display itself is already broadcasting the displayed image, which makes me think that encrypting a video transmission with an effective range of ~30 feet is not a big deal. I'm not sure it's an issue with LCDs, but it certainly is with CRTs -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking.
You only have to go through the "lengthy process" once. On all future occasions you must simply be in range. The benefit is that you can leave your flash drive in you pocket and still access or files. Or in your briefcase across the room.
You're also assuming that people only use computers at desks, and to a lesser degree, usually at the same desk. I agree that in such situations wireless devices are of limited usefulness. But for those of us that don't always have a desk when we use our computers, there's a real benefit to not having to find a cable and someplace to set our phone just to get online. Or to access files from a device still in our briefcase. Or to balance our laptop on an undersized shelf and use a real mouse on another surface (or lap). Also, in the case of mobile users, batteries are a non-issue -- every device we have already runs on batteries, otherwise it wouldn't be mobile.
Why are people so afraid of low-level EM radiation? Humans have been bombarded by much higher level of EM radiation for thousands of years. It's not magic that makes the sun shine, it's EM radiation, and it's been irradiating your ancestors since the dawn of humanity. I'm not just talking about optical wavelengths either. The atmosphere stops being an effective shield around UV wavelengths (with some exceptions: the microwave/IR boundary has pretty high absorption at ground level for example).
Seriously, if you aren't worried about the 200 Watts per square meter annual mean surface irradiance -- that's something like 6 kWh per day per square meter -- then you shouldn't be worried about a 100 mW transmitter on your desk.
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Just include a copy of `file` on the disk.
First, if an alias was purely a file-system-level object, I don't see why you think it would work across file systems. The native file system of Apple OSes is HFS or HFS+; SMB is another animal altogether. Even if HFS implemented aliases in the manner you imagine, it still wouldn't work via SMB, just as symlinks don't work on SMB, since SMB doesn't provide support for either mechanism. If it was a native file-system object it would limited by the scope and functions of the file system on which it was contained.
That's not to say aliases aren't tied into the file system -- they contain information native to whatever file system(s) they reference, and in that respect are part of the file system. But their scope is wider, so they cannot be considered native objects, as an single file system may not contain sufficient information to resolve them. They are however, a native part of the VFS on Apple OSes, so from the perspective of anyone using an Apple OS, they are a native object, just as symlinks are part of the linux VFS and therefore can be used even on file systems that do not natively support such an object.
Aliases do "just work" over SMB, so long as the system mounting the SMB file system supports aliases. You can make aliases to files and folders on an SMB share, or store aliases on an SMB share, and any system that knows how to read aliases will happily resolve them for you. But aliases are not a native part of SMB sharing, so simply having an SMB client implementation is not sufficient to resolve aliases.
Aliases are not superior in all cases to symlinks or hard links, but they are very useful for users creating links to files or folders, particularly if you may not have all the appropriate paths mounted, as is often true with remote disks or disk images. They are similar to the new system Vista is providing, but they are resolved at runtime in a manner that can transparently resolve changes in file paths and disk locations and names.
Aliases should work via SMB, so long as you've still got the resource fork and are accessing it from another Mac. They don't work from Windows for obvious reasons -- Windows has never implemented a volume-ID to path resolution required systems, as is required by the alias structure.
I'll give you that this makes aliases less flexible, but aliases give you the ability to make a link to a file on a disk image on a remote disk -- and rename any of the files, disks, or folders involved -- while still being able to double-click to open. All of the necessary mounting and name correction just happens; it's like a hard-link but without the need for the file to be on the same disk (or even local).
If you get ripped at online gambling, there is no way currently to know it happened.
That's exactly my point. If you can't tell that it's fraud, then it isn't fraud, it's just you giving someone money. And you can tell it happens -- if you are told you have a 40% chance of winning, then after placing 1000 bets you should have won very nearly 400 of them. I'll grant you it may be impractical to undertake that kind of study as an individual, but it's hardly impossible. I also fail to see how this is any different than casino gambling; how do I prove the casino is screwing me, other than through a statistical study or inspection of their gaming equipment (which isn't a privilege allowed to the general public)?
I don't think outside getting code certified and sealing servers and inspecting often along with registration of winners anything could be done.
What else do you need? What else do real-world casinos provide beyond certification of fair playing equipment and monitoring of winners? What's so different about having a gaming machine be in a rack rather than on a casino floor?
It would need to be a regulated government approved source that conforms to laws within the lands of the person gambling too.
I specifically said that the regulating body would be organized by the government. I presumed that to include the authority of law in prosecuting persons and organizations that fail to comply. I don't see why that means that the regulation system must be compulsory -- is it really so hard to click the link that goes to the www.gaming.gov website and shows that "www.gamblingsite.com" is in fact in compliance? Then both gamblers and gambling sites have a choice in the level of regulation under which they choose to operate.
Just because people's expectations for return in gambling are lower than they are with retail items is not evidence it's easier to defraud them; I would argue that the same lower expectations raise the threshold for fraud, as people are not expecting a specific good in return for their payment. They're buying entertainment, which at least in theory is unrelated to the outcome of the game.
But even if you assume it's easier to defraud people with gambling, couldn't you solve the problem with voluntary, publicly-supervised registration and regulation rather than a ban or manditory regulation? Couldn't the government establish a regulation body which ensures that voluntarily-registered gaming sites are fairly run and include sufficient safegaurds to protect gamblers from malicious peers? The body could even be entirely self-funded. Then you as a gambler could choose not to gamble at unregistered sites. Or you could choose to gamble more cheaply at unregistered sites, with the knowledge that the site is unregistered and therefore unregulated.
It's not a scam if you know you're being taken. It is gambling after all.
I don't see how this is any different than say, selling socks online. If my website tells you that you'll get 4 pairs of socks for $9.99 and I don't give you 4 pairs of socks, or if I charge you more than $9.99, it's fraud. If my website says that no one at the table has knowledge of other players hands, and that turns out not to be true, it's still fraud. Why does gambling need its own special laws?
You can, but your view of the world is limited. You can't see any non-static elements except those right around your body. You can explore the map a a ghost, but that's about it.
Not ready, sure. Unworkable, not so much.
You don't need the output from the machine to be paper. If the machine copied a plain-text, cryptographically-signed copy of your ballot to say, your PDA/USB drive/cell phone/etc., that would provide an out-of-band, voter-verifiable record of the transaction, with superior tamper resistance than a plain paper ballot. It would even allow voters to take home a copy of their vote, and to verify election results independently of the official count, which cannot be done with paper balots.
Of course, not everyone carries a device appropriate for such a transfer, and so paper is a reasonable choice at this point. But the concept of paperless voting is not unreasonable -- just the concept of receipt-less voting.
Well, if it's from BSD it probably uses the BSD license not the MIT license. But other than the East coast vs. West coast mismatch you are correct.
If only we could build a cable where the signal was transmitted on a wire totally encased by an EM shield -- with the interior signal wire running down the central axis of the exterior shield. That would be handy for stopping stray EM on the cable network.
I stand corrected.
Windows is backwards compatible, but that it isn't a unique attribute.
Ignoring the difference in age (1984-2006), almost any Mac program should still work. I run several ancient games -- shareware that I frist played on my 512k (Non-Enhanced) circa 1985 -- on a semi-regular basis on my G5.
Now you can nitpick about how the second processor family switch broke that compatibility, but Windows doesn't transparently support any processor family switches, and both Intel and PPC Mac supports at least one (either 68k->PPC or PPC->x86).
Any Mac program that doesn't make assumptions about address length and that follows the standard event processing model works fine. I have run across programs that require 24-bit addressing (which was never recommended; the 68k was 32-bit internally), and programs that don't draw windows or otherwise break when run in a MutliFinder environment (again, never recommended), but for the most part things work correctly. Even things like Desk Accessories, which were never meant to run in a MultiFinder environment, still run without issue.
Maybe because their customers expect to be able to connect more than one machine to the Internet and are willing to pay for their ISP for such services? I know it's complicated, but even unmitigated greed requires that you encourage people to give you money; giving them a good or service for more than it's worth to you is an easy way to do that, and is in fact the basis of most ISP's business plans.
Some of us have discovered that the iPod can be charged away from the computer. I use my iPod almost exclusively in the car, and since there's an electrical system there, I also charge my iPod in the car. In fact, the most common reason I take my iPod out of the car is to sync it with my computer. I personally would consider syncing from the garage useful. I can see why you wouldn't, but it's a bit ego-centric to say that there is no reasonable use for a feature exists simply because you can't think of anything interesting to do with that feature.
And your CC argument is just FUD. ITMS currently works by linking your purchases to an Apple ID, which is linked to your credit card. The CC number is already stored in their computers; you log in to your Apple account from iTunes (which stays logged in for a fairly long period) and they charge your CC when that account makes purchases. Presumably you'd have to log the iPod into the ITMS (either directly or via iTunes) before you were authorized to purchase music from it. Such an iPod is no more or less a risk than a laptop that's logged in to the ITMS.
Cameras and police offers are no different. Neither should be allowed to track me all day long as I move around the city without due cause.
And while the government certainly does have authority, it does not have rights. Rights are inherent and, while they can be violated, cannot be removed (though society can influence what we consider to be a right). Authority exists only when a person or group grants it to another. Authority can likewise be denied by anyone who chooses to do so (though there may be consequences for doing so).
Police officers are very rarely in a position to actually stop an eminent crime, nor are they terribly effective in stopping a crime when they are present. They exist to enforce and investigate, and in that sense to serve as a passive deterrent, but not to actively rescue you from a crime in progress. Take a look at places like London, that already have a lot of surveillance cameras. The installation of cameras has done wonders for conviction rates, but has done nothing to reduce the crime rate.
Those are all valid points. I never suggested that google was comparable to WoW in terms of complexity, just that the comparision was over-simplified to the point of absurdity when google became nothing more than a web interface and a database.
If you're going to ignore all the application logic in google you should do the same for WoW -- it's basically just a RPC interface and a database, albeit an incredibly advanced one.
It is. And I wouldn't challenge non-allied contries right to shoot at it.
To be fair, someone other country would first have to "feel it has the right" to put such things up there. Space stations and spy satalites are mostly harmless, but military space ships are inherently dangerous. Wouldn't you expect to be shot at if you overflew a non-allied nation in a military jet? While orbital mechanics make space trickier, I don't see why it's inherently different.
I bought Apple stock back in 2001. Unfortunately I was a poor college student so I only bought 4 shares (8 now after the split). If I had a few grand at the time it would have paid for my college education.
You're aware that you can re-map both the hard and soft buttons arbitrarily, right? If it knows a command to make disks change, you can make any button you like send that command.
Maybe your desktop boots quickly, but if you've got a real machine hardware init can take several minutes. Since the hardware didn't change with the library upgrade, that seems like wasted time. There can also be several minutes of driver loading and hardware discovery/coalescence depending on what you do between kernel init and standard operation (like say, getting your SAN back online), which again, is totally unrelated to the library upgrade.
And it's trivial to have init kill and restart all its children, which would accomplish the same thing in terms of library loading without all the hardware init time and driver re-loading.
If you're worried about that you could encrypt the channel with no extra bandwidth requirements. It's not necessary to either A) do a bi-direction key exchange or B) to do it in-band, so encryption shouldn't change the comm requirements much at all.
It's worth noting that your display itself is already broadcasting the displayed image, which makes me think that encrypting a video transmission with an effective range of ~30 feet is not a big deal. I'm not sure it's an issue with LCDs, but it certainly is with CRTs -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking.
You only have to go through the "lengthy process" once. On all future occasions you must simply be in range. The benefit is that you can leave your flash drive in you pocket and still access or files. Or in your briefcase across the room.
You're also assuming that people only use computers at desks, and to a lesser degree, usually at the same desk. I agree that in such situations wireless devices are of limited usefulness. But for those of us that don't always have a desk when we use our computers, there's a real benefit to not having to find a cable and someplace to set our phone just to get online. Or to access files from a device still in our briefcase. Or to balance our laptop on an undersized shelf and use a real mouse on another surface (or lap). Also, in the case of mobile users, batteries are a non-issue -- every device we have already runs on batteries, otherwise it wouldn't be mobile.
Why are people so afraid of low-level EM radiation? Humans have been bombarded by much higher level of EM radiation for thousands of years. It's not magic that makes the sun shine, it's EM radiation, and it's been irradiating your ancestors since the dawn of humanity. I'm not just talking about optical wavelengths either. The atmosphere stops being an effective shield around UV wavelengths (with some exceptions: the microwave/IR boundary has pretty high absorption at ground level for example).
Seriously, if you aren't worried about the 200 Watts per square meter annual mean surface irradiance -- that's something like 6 kWh per day per square meter -- then you shouldn't be worried about a 100 mW transmitter on your desk.