> Linux has big problems regarding consistent audio frameworks across all distributions.
You can just say "Linux has big problems regarding audio". So many promised solutions (alsa, esound, jack, pulseaudio), and non of them works properly! Sometimes choice helps by creating alternatives (like postfix over sendmail), and sometimes it hinders by diluting resources - and the later certainly happened here.
No people with understanding of physics around, hm? Of course you use to counter-rotating flywheels to cancel the gyroscopic effects.
The real problem is in the bearings: they still have to deal with the forces, and the general concern is that they wear out faster than anything else on the care.
> At least they have released the specs out to OSS developers
Did they? Or did they only release the specs for 2D? And why is there no word of kernel based mode setting? It seems a bit silly do develop a new driver without it - after all it is clearly the correct solution, and everybody else is moving that way.
> and are working towards a accelerated solution.
Not good enough. At least 2D acceleration (Xv etc) is essential, and with a modern desktop you want at least some 3D functions, too.
> There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux.
Yes, and how is this different? Nvidia has complete acceleration support on a number of Linux architectures, while AMD has barely started working on it. Open source is certainly nice, but it has to work.
Performance wise: yes, absolutely. Despite all the claims of better javascript performance etc it feels a lot slower than IE6.
However, the rendering is pretty accurate, and that is all that web designers care for. Because a badly looking website is the designer's fault, while a slow browser is the user's problem.
> The electric motor on mine tops out at about 15mph
Yes, they do that in western countries. But I am sure the Chinese version has no artificial limit, and probably a more powerful engine, too. It may well be more like a scooter than a bicycle, and then it certainly should not be allowed in bicycle lanes.
But the real question is: is an electric scooter the (an?) answer to our transport problems? I cannot see it working for the family shopping trip, but going to work in good weather should be a breeze.
> The ability to be remotely installed, and managed is a huge feature that is unique to IE.
The remote installation is unique to IE because any other browser will happily run from a network share. If you want it locally, you just need to set up the shortcut and synchronise some files. No integration with the OS, no "installation" necessary.
The management part is true, although it also depends on the browser being linked in with the OS. So you can only ever have one version of IE installed, and it will obey the restrictions put down by policies. Other browsers can be restricted up to a point, but you could always run your own portable version from a memory stick.
> Different people can handle different levels of distraction. This is proven.
And unfortunately experience tells that the people who can handle the least distraction are most likely to be on the phone:-(
So my guess is that the law only had effect with sensible people who are unlikely to cause an accident in the first place. Boy racers probably don't care, and keep texting while speeding.
> they don't even need those tracking cookies because your browser leaves so much unique data behind it
It may be unique, but it is not constant, and therefore not as such suitable for tracing. However, if you use it in connection with other data (such as the IP and a tracing cookie) and update your database regularly, you would be able to notice changes of individual parts, including the cookie. They could just restore the cookie based on your likely identity, although that is pretty complicated.
Overall the thread to privacy through these measures is pretty low.
> The fact is, we've been preparing for the IPv6 switch for years now.
Indeed, but have we done it properly? Evidence suggests not.
What we really need is backwards compatibly, at least for the clients. Once a client on IPv6 can access a web server on IPv4, it becomes a viable option to go IPv6 only. So far every IPv6 implementation I have seen requires you to have a dual stack for proper "internet connectivity", which obviously does not solve the problem.
Of course we can also migrate all servers to IPv6, but sure as heck that is not going to happen by the end of 2011.
> It's like an insurance, and 200 million Euro is nothing compared to the cost of having a hundreds of thousands people ill with the flu.
I would have agreed, if the vaccine had arrived in time. In fact, it is way way too late: in the UK only now do they vaccinate children (which spread the virus around the country once school reopened after the summer holidays), and it is still not available to the general population.
The epidemic has already run its course, much faster than anticipated, but also with much fewer consequences. Yes, a lot of people where off work for a day or two, which is a lot of lost labor. Preventing this would have been worth while, if the vaccine had been available in the late summer or early autumn.
And yes, this could have been known, because you can just sample a cross section of the population and do virus RNA tests. 100 tests would have painted a picture, 1000 given reliable data, for less than a million. But instead politicians drove this "by night" and wasted billions.
> Effective responsible disclosure: disclose it to the vendors along with the promise to disclose it publicly on a scheduled date.
In a perfect world maybe, but in this world you get a court order with a gag and a fat legal bill as a thank you. I can perfectly understand why the guy is fed up.
However, I would prefer him to differentiate a bit. Surely not all companies out there are that evil? Microsoft for example is known to take ages to fix the bug (I think 11 years is the record), but they tend to bribe you rather than drag you to court.
> It's not illegal if the government does it. Right?
Not really. When the government does it, it is still illegal, but they usually get away with it. Just watch Dick Cheney - last time I looked he was still a free man. Any CEO would be in deep trouble for what he did.
But the real question is how good or stupid the law is. Was taking X-rays of children illegal all those years, and nobody noticed? Bummer if you have to decide whether to help and break the law, or be a good citizen and watch someone die.
Re:idiocy? Incompetence?
on
Y2.01K
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
> At the Bank of Germany, we're not happy until you're not happy.
Indeed. They even said if the cache machine in your branch did not work and you had to get money from a competitor, you will not get the fee reimbursed at most banks. So far only one bank has promised to pay them back.
> Especially when there is no spare money to procure a wholly new reactor type.
Well that is the problem - and it is mainly because of safety regulations - which are a political area. We all know that the conventional nuclear reactor has a lot of safety issues, but it is certified! Getting a Thorium reactor to the same level of documentation and acceptance would be an expensive and lengthy process. As long as most countries have a de facto moratorium on nuclear reactor construction, there is no money in pushing new technology.
And man - on a technical level Thorium is so much superior that there is really no contest at all.
>...because atheism isn't a religion. Being atheist is simply the state of being without a belief in a god or gods.
I don't think that is quite accurate. Atheism is the belief that there is no god - and that is something very different from not having any belief (which is called Agnostic). I don't see why Atheism (maybe combined with a bit Adam Smith etc) could not be a viable religion.
> The combination of money lost due to wasted time otherwise plus the fact that developers are going to cause less harm
Sometimes it is just about trust. But if you don't trust you developers, you should not trust the software they write either...
Plus a good developer will know how to get around standard security barriers anyway, so giving them admin rights does not actually make a different security wise.
> Sometimes they are not smart enough to question the agenda.
That is a really good point. You will not believe how many times I have been told not to question the agenda - from friends, relatives, teachers, professors, professional trainers etc. Come to think about it, the whole western culture is built on not questioning the agenda - you only look at your bottom line.
This is of course where suicide terrorists get short changed. That may also explain why they all seem to be third grade at best... the really bright terrorists are way too smart to blow themselves up.
> I'm skeptical about any risk from flash. Flash apps run in a sandbox.
Flash apps should run in a sandbox - but the recent vulnerabilities are ways to break out of the sandbox.
Of course any plugin should run in a sandbox, but I think only Google Chrome actually does that. It may be a consequence of the Radioactive X disaster - just download and execute anything - which Microsoft introduced in the late 90s.
> I would like to think that the public will eventually get wise and call, globally, for the use of cryptographic algorithms that are more genuinely secure, even against government intrusion, but I know that this is next to impossible.
If you have truly sensitive content, you should use end-to-end security, and not trust the network. That is also because the network is always controlled by the government in some way, so it will not protect you from governmental "supervision".
> Virtualization will allow them to run a "work phone" environment on their personal phone. Reported advantage is that it eliminates the need to carry two phones while still firewalling off work data from the "personal phone" environment.
Except that it does not. It will (if implemented properly) shield the private phone from the work phone, but not the other way around. Or, in short: trusting an untrustworthy platform is a bad idea. So if your work data is so important, it needs to run on a work phone.
> If you don't need color, and are in a metro area, you can probably find a decent HP-4, -5, or -6 cheap at a thrift shop
I absolutely agree. For year I was using an old HP 4, and now I have moved on to an HP 6. Windows 7 still has the right drivers (!), and it is working like clockwork. The toner lasts a few thousand pages (still going strong), and a replacement costs less on ebay than your average ink cartridge.
Slashdot Mirror
> Linux has big problems regarding consistent audio frameworks across all distributions.
You can just say "Linux has big problems regarding audio". So many promised solutions (alsa, esound, jack, pulseaudio), and non of them works properly! Sometimes choice helps by creating alternatives (like postfix over sendmail), and sometimes it hinders by diluting resources - and the later certainly happened here.
No people with understanding of physics around, hm? Of course you use to counter-rotating flywheels to cancel the gyroscopic effects.
The real problem is in the bearings: they still have to deal with the forces, and the general concern is that they wear out faster than anything else on the care.
> At least they have released the specs out to OSS developers
Did they? Or did they only release the specs for 2D? And why is there no word of kernel based mode setting? It seems a bit silly do develop a new driver without it - after all it is clearly the correct solution, and everybody else is moving that way.
> and are working towards a accelerated solution.
Not good enough. At least 2D acceleration (Xv etc) is essential, and with a modern desktop you want at least some 3D functions, too.
> There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux.
Yes, and how is this different? Nvidia has complete acceleration support on a number of Linux architectures, while AMD has barely started working on it. Open source is certainly nice, but it has to work.
> IE8 sucks.
Performance wise: yes, absolutely. Despite all the claims of better javascript performance etc it feels a lot slower than IE6.
However, the rendering is pretty accurate, and that is all that web designers care for. Because a badly looking website is the designer's fault, while a slow browser is the user's problem.
> The electric motor on mine tops out at about 15mph
Yes, they do that in western countries. But I am sure the Chinese version has no artificial limit, and probably a more powerful engine, too. It may well be more like a scooter than a bicycle, and then it certainly should not be allowed in bicycle lanes.
But the real question is: is an electric scooter the (an?) answer to our transport problems? I cannot see it working for the family shopping trip, but going to work in good weather should be a breeze.
> The ability to be remotely installed, and managed is a huge feature that is unique to IE.
The remote installation is unique to IE because any other browser will happily run from a network share. If you want it locally, you just need to set up the shortcut and synchronise some files. No integration with the OS, no "installation" necessary.
The management part is true, although it also depends on the browser being linked in with the OS. So you can only ever have one version of IE installed, and it will obey the restrictions put down by policies. Other browsers can be restricted up to a point, but you could always run your own portable version from a memory stick.
> Different people can handle different levels of distraction. This is proven.
And unfortunately experience tells that the people who can handle the least distraction are most likely to be on the phone :-(
So my guess is that the law only had effect with sensible people who are unlikely to cause an accident in the first place. Boy racers probably don't care, and keep texting while speeding.
4b) fraudster comes round and beats you up
> they don't even need those tracking cookies because your browser leaves so much unique data behind it
It may be unique, but it is not constant, and therefore not as such suitable for tracing. However, if you use it in connection with other data (such as the IP and a tracing cookie) and update your database regularly, you would be able to notice changes of individual parts, including the cookie. They could just restore the cookie based on your likely identity, although that is pretty complicated.
Overall the thread to privacy through these measures is pretty low.
> The fact is, we've been preparing for the IPv6 switch for years now.
Indeed, but have we done it properly? Evidence suggests not.
What we really need is backwards compatibly, at least for the clients. Once a client on IPv6 can access a web server on IPv4, it becomes a viable option to go IPv6 only. So far every IPv6 implementation I have seen requires you to have a dual stack for proper "internet connectivity", which obviously does not solve the problem.
Of course we can also migrate all servers to IPv6, but sure as heck that is not going to happen by the end of 2011.
> It's like an insurance, and 200 million Euro is nothing compared to the cost of having a hundreds of thousands people ill with the flu.
I would have agreed, if the vaccine had arrived in time. In fact, it is way way too late: in the UK only now do they vaccinate children (which spread the virus around the country once school reopened after the summer holidays), and it is still not available to the general population.
The epidemic has already run its course, much faster than anticipated, but also with much fewer consequences. Yes, a lot of people where off work for a day or two, which is a lot of lost labor. Preventing this would have been worth while, if the vaccine had been available in the late summer or early autumn.
And yes, this could have been known, because you can just sample a cross section of the population and do virus RNA tests. 100 tests would have painted a picture, 1000 given reliable data, for less than a million. But instead politicians drove this "by night" and wasted billions.
> Effective responsible disclosure: disclose it to the vendors along with the promise to disclose it publicly on a scheduled date.
In a perfect world maybe, but in this world you get a court order with a gag and a fat legal bill as a thank you. I can perfectly understand why the guy is fed up.
However, I would prefer him to differentiate a bit. Surely not all companies out there are that evil? Microsoft for example is known to take ages to fix the bug (I think 11 years is the record), but they tend to bribe you rather than drag you to court.
> It's not illegal if the government does it. Right?
Not really. When the government does it, it is still illegal, but they usually get away with it. Just watch Dick Cheney - last time I looked he was still a free man. Any CEO would be in deep trouble for what he did.
But the real question is how good or stupid the law is. Was taking X-rays of children illegal all those years, and nobody noticed? Bummer if you have to decide whether to help and break the law, or be a good citizen and watch someone die.
> At the Bank of Germany, we're not happy until you're not happy.
Indeed. They even said if the cache machine in your branch did not work and you had to get money from a competitor, you will not get the fee reimbursed at most banks. So far only one bank has promised to pay them back.
> If you agree, the "on" setting sticks for subsequent documents, until you go into the menu and turn it off again.
And I think each update also turns it on again automatically. I wonder when they will start a more frequent update cycle...
> Especially when there is no spare money to procure a wholly new reactor type.
Well that is the problem - and it is mainly because of safety regulations - which are a political area. We all know that the conventional nuclear reactor has a lot of safety issues, but it is certified! Getting a Thorium reactor to the same level of documentation and acceptance would be an expensive and lengthy process. As long as most countries have a de facto moratorium on nuclear reactor construction, there is no money in pushing new technology.
And man - on a technical level Thorium is so much superior that there is really no contest at all.
> ...because atheism isn't a religion. Being atheist is simply the state of being without a belief in a god or gods.
I don't think that is quite accurate. Atheism is the belief that there is no god - and that is something very different from not having any belief (which is called Agnostic). I don't see why Atheism (maybe combined with a bit Adam Smith etc) could not be a viable religion.
> There is certainly no law that states a company cannot cooperate with police without a search warrant.
Maybe not in American, but here there certainly is :-).
> The combination of money lost due to wasted time otherwise plus the fact that developers are going to cause less harm
Sometimes it is just about trust. But if you don't trust you developers, you should not trust the software they write either...
Plus a good developer will know how to get around standard security barriers anyway, so giving them admin rights does not actually make a different security wise.
> Sometimes they are not smart enough to question the agenda.
That is a really good point. You will not believe how many times I have been told not to question the agenda - from friends, relatives, teachers, professors, professional trainers etc. Come to think about it, the whole western culture is built on not questioning the agenda - you only look at your bottom line.
This is of course where suicide terrorists get short changed. That may also explain why they all seem to be third grade at best... the really bright terrorists are way too smart to blow themselves up.
> I'm skeptical about any risk from flash. Flash apps run in a sandbox.
Flash apps should run in a sandbox - but the recent vulnerabilities are ways to break out of the sandbox.
Of course any plugin should run in a sandbox, but I think only Google Chrome actually does that. It may be a consequence of the Radioactive X disaster - just download and execute anything - which Microsoft introduced in the late 90s.
> I would like to think that the public will eventually get wise and call, globally, for the use of cryptographic algorithms that are more genuinely secure, even against government intrusion, but I know that this is next to impossible.
If you have truly sensitive content, you should use end-to-end security, and not trust the network. That is also because the network is always controlled by the government in some way, so it will not protect you from governmental "supervision".
> Virtualization will allow them to run a "work phone" environment on their personal phone. Reported advantage is that it eliminates the need to carry two phones while still firewalling off work data from the "personal phone" environment.
Except that it does not. It will (if implemented properly) shield the private phone from the work phone, but not the other way around. Or, in short: trusting an untrustworthy platform is a bad idea. So if your work data is so important, it needs to run on a work phone.
> If you don't need color, and are in a metro area, you can probably find a decent HP-4, -5, or -6 cheap at a thrift shop
I absolutely agree. For year I was using an old HP 4, and now I have moved on to an HP 6. Windows 7 still has the right drivers (!), and it is working like clockwork. The toner lasts a few thousand pages (still going strong), and a replacement costs less on ebay than your average ink cartridge.
> In what way? During the brief period I tried Bing, I was thoroughly unimpressed.
Me too, but they can learn if they want to. And competition can only be good for the search engine market, assuming it happens on a decent level.