Why must the anti-spam community have no better support for their cause than a long-dead king who wrote ancient laws that barely apply to anything in this day and age? Why are legislators worldwide so freaking GUTLESS? It's immensely irritating that no leaders in any country of the world seem to have balls enough to write anti-spam legislation.
The perfect solution, IMHO, would be to disallow any and every email that advertises anything whatsoever, directly or indirectly, from being sent to anyone who has not specifically asked for it. There should be a site at which you register yourself to receive spam, which would allow you to select whatever types of advertisements you are interested in seeing. If you don't register, you don't get spam. If you register for "weight loss products" but not "porn", you won't get porn. Etc. Spammers would have full access to the email lists, and would be barred from using any other list for their campaigns. Spammers sending spam to those who haven't registered, or who haven't registered for the particular type of spam being sent, would face stiff financial penalties. Habitual offenders would receive increasing amounts of jail time. For maximum effectiveness, it should be put into international law, with full extradition rights for any country being spammed by a spammer in another country. The money garnered from fines should be used to fund Interpol spam investigators.
Okay, not going to happen. But dreaming is free.
The future of MRE's should be a dead-end
on
The Future of MREs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I bought some MREs off a survivalist website just to see what they were like. Most of the stuff was tasteless/bland/pure sugar, but edible. The main course in each case, however, was utterly rancid and inedible. I tried one bite of the "teriyaki beef" and nearly lost everything else I'd already eaten. That was the worst. I feel truly sorry for the armed forces having to eat this crap. No wonder the Afghanis wouldn't eat the MREs the US dropped on them.
It seems like a joke for them to try to figure out how to include eggs and such when it seems clear they have quite a bit of work to do to even make the current MREs better than dog food.
...because I cancelled my PayPal account when their problems started getting publicity. I'm not sure they deliberately screw people, but with 10 million or so subscribers, it's a guarantee that a fair total number (albeit a small percentage) of people will have very nasty experiences. I don't have an overwhelming need for PayPal's services, so I figured I'd just remove the possibility of getting screwed. The potential for agony is extremely high, considering what they can do to your bank account.
Doesn't anyone pay attention to anything? WMP gets its information from AMG (the All Music Guide). Just lookie at the little "AMG" in the media player when WMP grabs text info from MS' text info server. They use their own protocol and service, and their data comes from AMG.
Just look at the data you get from WMP and compare it to what you see on AMG's web site, and it becomes bloody obvious.
BTW, DVDs *do not* always have text info on them. In fact, they rarely do. You'd think they would have fixed the problem CDs have by actually putting useful text info on DVDs, but they didn't. Nor did they put cover art, or even a unique identifier, on the DVD. This screw-up means there will be a definite market for DVD info lookup services.
...but apparently this kid did make threats against the president on his web site. That, in and of itself, is apparently a federal offense. IANAL, but it seems like they're being rather kind to him considering that alone is enough to throw him in the slammer.
What's wrong with an open relay, if no-one has ever sent spam e-mail through it (because, perhaps, it may
have its own black list of domains that may not send mail through it)?
What's wrong with it is that, 1) when a spammer discovers it, he can send thousands of spams through it before the owner notices the problem and blocks out the spammer, 2) regardless of whether the owner has his own "blacklist", he can't possibly protect against all of the domains out there that are potential spam sources (basically *every* domain is a potential source), 3) there is no good reason, no benefit to running an open relay.
An open relay is a sign of incompetence/laziness on the part of the administrator. There are numerous safe alternatives to open relays if the admin wants to allow valid users to be able to relay from outside the site. There is no excuse.
it's like denying someone his First Amendment rights because someone else might
say something illegal...
How is it denying the right to free speech? Nobody is blocking a user from *sending* anything with a blacklist. A blacklist is only used by those who don't want to *receive* unwanted email, and they have the right to receive or block whatever they see fit. Just because you want to send email to a site containing some expression of your right to speech doesn't mean you have the right to force them to receive it. It's kind of like radio, TV or some other broadcast media. They send out information of all sorts, but people only tune into it if they care to listen. And often your local government, not you, decides which channels to carry in the first place, depending solely on their judgement. Is it abridging the Sci Fi channel's right to free speech that my local carrier has decided not to include them on my basic cable? I'm irritated by it, but I realize Sci Fi is not having any of their 1st amendment rights violated.
You might also compare it to how broadcast media is regulated. Is it violating my free speech that the FCC won't let me have my own radio station? No, because pragmatically it would make no sense to allow it. If everyone had their own radio station it would be pandemonium. I really want to send my important views to the world via radio, but I guess that's just not going to happen. So instead, I use the methods available to me, such as putting up my own website and making sure it's listed on Google - or posting to Slashdot so 500,000 people can hear what I have to say.
If someone runs an open relay, they deserve to be blacklisted. Those sites who enjoy receiving spam can choose not to use blacklist information. Those who do not like spam can use blacklists.
However, those who repent and fix their open relays should be immediately removed from any open relay blacklist they might be listed with. It's totally irresponsible to run a blacklist without provisions for keeping them up to date in near-realtime.
An example of a great service was ORBS (the Open Relay Blackhole Service), may it rest in peace. It was largely automated, and would add and remove sites simply based on observations made by their relay-checking robot. There were some manual entries (for sites who refused to be probed), and that was cause for a bit of controversy. But by and large it was quite excellent. I can see absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to complain about the creation and use of such blacklists, unless they are a spammer. I have never heard a valid reason why an open relay should be considered okay (I do *not* agree with John Gilmore, just about the only slightly credible dissenter I've heard on this topic. He's just too lazy to use one of many available alternatives to what he's trying to accomplish. See this to see what I'm talking about.)
Too bad most of the great blacklist services seem to be going away or becoming (highly overpriced) commercial endeavors.
Crack the program, disabling the product activation code.
Didn't I say in my original posting that any software can be cracked? Doesn't matter if someone figures out a keygen or obviates the actual need for one, they're both cracks. And regardless of which method is used, it still won't get around it if MS' servers verify your XP installation by comparing to a key database or algorithmically comparing.
There's no way to make a crackproof piece of software. If a user has access to software, he can crack that software. Period.
However, as the article notes, cracked software can be detected. No matter how good the cracker, there's little that can be done against online verification. If MS keeps a record of all valid keys, then anyone attempting to use online MS services of any kind with a genned key can be detected and denied/disabled.
This is an old trick for online games, etc. Crackers come out with keygens for such games almost simultaneously with the release of the games (or even before:), but these keygens only work for the offline version of the game. As soon as the someone tries to use that game online, they're denied access by the game server because their genned key isn't in the database of valid keys in the field.
So, this story has little import as far as MS' protection being faulty. I have no doubt they expected it, and I have no doubt that they don't care too much. Using Win XP w/o the ability to update or connect to certain online services safely will probably end up being more than sufficient protection from MS' viewpoint.
Not sure why it should be considered embarassing for adults to read "children's" books. I know at least as many adults as I do children that have read Harry Potter. It's definitely not just for kids. I actually have to wonder just how much it's really intended for kids, due to the sometimes-gruesome nature of the stories. For example, the ending of the last book was pretty darn nasty (no spoilers here).
...that Ebooks will never completely replace paper.
Reasons:
- Paper books don't require batteries or wall warts.
- OS crashes, hardware failures, hard disk head crashes, software rot, etc., can't affect your ability to read the book.
- Once you own a paper book, no digital "rights" management scheme can abridge or otherwise interfere with your ability to read the book where and when you want. Or to lend it to a friend.
- You don't have to back up paper books. They'll last for 100 years on their own, and they're damn hard to erase. Especially by accident.
I do think there are legitimate uses for Ebooks, however. It would be very, very nice to have all of my books in a single, small device (much like my current music collection) that can be taken anywhere. There would be a certain utility to such a device that can't be denied. Especially if you could cross-reference all your books together for easy searching, etc.
...by what companies will do in the name of the almighty dollar. What goes through people's heads in these companies when they decide to do things like spy on their users? And how do they think it's going to benefit them?
For the sake of argument, imagine that a company like Comcast decided to start monitoring everything their users did without telling anyone - and that nobody ever discovered what they were doing. They monitored and monitored for years, tracking every move every customer made on the Internet, and nobody ever caught on. Then what? Do they sell this information to market research firms? Do they use it for their own in-house market research? In the end, under the most favorable circumstances, just how much money do they think they could make off a scam like this?
And in the end they have so much more to lose than to gain. Even though they say they are no longer going to monitor their users, I will never become a Comcast customer because of this. They can't be trusted (of course, not many companies can, if any), but even moreso, they were too stupid to realize what the repercussions of monitoring their users might be. This is what utterly amazes me. How many times have companies gotten nailed for spying or other underhanded tactics like selling user information? We hear about new cases all the time. Companies such as MS, Real Networks, etc. (and now even KaZaA) have shipped spyware (and sometimes been sued for massive amounts of money) and gotten nailed. Yet idiot companies like Comcast continue to pull this crap.
I wish I was a better student of human nature. I'm afraid I'll never understand what drives people to such stupidity.
I have proven to myself that Cactus-protected discs can be ripped successfully with the right hardware and software. I have heard tons of evidence from others that corroborate my experience. It's useless protection, and serves only as a minor annoyance.
In addition, their "protection" degrades the actual audio quality over time, because they're essentially using up the error correction bits for data. You need error correction to do just that - correct errors. You waste them on something else, like correcting purposefully-inserted errors, and you end up with a disc that is much less robust and able to withstand wear and tear.
This means that you must rip and burn a new copy of any Cactus disc you buy as soon as you open the case for the first time. And you must rip with multi-pass validation to help ensure that you got the correct data off the disc.
Any claims by Midbar that their protection is just peachy are BS.
I remember reading the MS software EULA some years ago, and was flabbergasted to find that they essentially forbade the end user from running their applications on non-Microsoft operating systems. In other words, if you bought a copy of, say, MS Office, you were forbidden to run it on a Windows/DOS emulator like Wine or any of the older Unix-based DOS emulators.
Note that IANAL, but this just seemed a blatantly invalid restriction on MSes part, if not outright illegal. I don't know if their more current EULAs still have this wording. If so, I would hope this new ruling might have some bearing on their draconian restrictions. I don't see how they can be allowed to get away with something like that.
The article states:
And woe to those who don't keep good records of
what they've bought. According to Blank and Kruger,
the burden of proof is on the targeted company.
Am I missing something here, or does this violate "innocent until proven guilty"? How can they get away with this approach? I vaguely recall somewhere in hazy memory that civil law is different in this respect, and that you aren't necessarily innocent until proven guilty in a civil court. Yet, even so, I'm still perplexed how they can get away with this. How can anyone require you to save your receipts or possibly end up paying millions of dollars in penalties? This seems ludicrous.
I would really love to see the BSA countersued by someone who wrongfully gets their doors kicked in by US Marshall jackboots because they can't prove they bought something that they actually did buy.
If Miguel insists on using.NET for Gnome in the future, then it's time to branch development for Gnome. All the Gnome developers with some sanity will undoubtedly go for the non-.NET Gnome. I.e. 99% of them.
I can see why these robo-copters might be useful for certain types of recon, such as in tight spaces or places where the camera must be stationary. I can't see that these would be generally superior to the fixed-wing reconnaisance drones in use now, however. They've solved one of the drawbacks of copters - the difficulty of piloting them, especially in spots where you don't have line of sight with the remote-controlled copter itself. They haven't solved one of the main drawbacks though - fuel efficiency. Copters, especially little remote ones, don't have nearly the range of a fixed-wing aircraft. I suppose the military could build larger ones that can carry more fuel than the mini copter made by MIT, but the problem is still the there. Copters just don't have the same range for a given amount of fuel.
They're also probably a lot louder than existing drone planes.
I could see how these might be useful for, say, scouting out forested areas below the forest cover, or even going inside (large) buildings, etc. But if you want to send one into Iraq from Saudi Arabia, that's not going to happen.
Sure, more security flaws are discovered in Linux than in Windows... which is precisely the reason Linux is more secure.
Because Linux is open source, millions of eyes scan the code on a daily basis. This is where the old rule of QA applies: the number of bugs found in any piece of software is directly proportional to the amount of testing (or scrutiny) applied to that software. In other words, there is no such thing as bug-free software, and you will continue to find bugs with asymptotic frequency as long as you continue looking for bugs. You find the easy, obvious ones first, followed by ever-more-rare bugs.
Because Linux has been scrutinized so heavily, it follows that many more bugs will be found than with Windows products. That doesn't mean Windows has less bugs than Linux, it just means they haven't yet been discovered. Microsoft, despite the fact that they are a behemoth, has a finite number of engineers and testers. My guess is that a relatively small percentage of them spend any time whatsoever looking for security flaws. That leaves the bulk of the job to the security community, which doesn't have the luxury of being able to scrutinize the Windows source code. No source code makes finding security flaws significantly harder. That, in combination with the fact that there are far fewer people investigating security flaws means Windows cannot possibly be as secure as Linux or any other open-source OS.
I think the claim that MS products are more secure than Linux is just more MS propaganda.
What do you wanna bet that fuel cell-powered laptops will be banned from airlines because of their volatility and possible use as a weapon? 120 ml of methanol is enough to start a reasonable sized fire, or perhaps even enough to be used in some sort of explosive device. That would be kind of ironic, because long flights are when you'd most want the longevity provided by a fuel cell.
I think countries should be barred from selling off the rights to their country TLDs like this. Aren't those domains meant to be used for sites within or related to that country in some way? This is a bastardization of country domains. I guess it was Tuvalu's good luck that they happened to have a country code that matches the common acronym for television.
And while we're at it, I don't think any domain registrar should be allowed exclusive rights to selling *any* TLD.
When I was in college, one semester the professor teaching the course on compilers failed every single student in the class, except for a couple of them. The reason? They all "cheated". Everyone had been broken up into small teams to work together for the entire course, and in the end each student was supposed to turn in his/her brand new compiler. But because the members of each team had worked very closely together, the team members' work was quite similar (though not exactly the same).
I guess the prof got upset and failed everyone save for a small few who I think hadn't worked with any team. The students protested, having worked very hard and produced some good work, but the school sided with the professor. So an entire class went down for the count.
Now we're making software that can fail you automatically! Great idea!
Bill Gates himself announced and described this in his keynote address at CES a week ago. It's all part of the Microsoft hegemony for world domination, which de rigeur must include control of all devices in the home. Soon you won't be able to take a crap in your own networked toilet without a toilet network service license from Microsoft entitling you to do so. And don't even think of taking an unlicensed crap, or the BSA will come after you.
Can we please trade N-Sync for Jar Jar? I can live with a 60-second scene featuring N-Sync if it means no Jar Jar. I don't even need to see him die. I just need not to see him at all. Or to hear him. Especially to hear him.
Slashdot Mirror
Why must the anti-spam community have no better support for their cause than a long-dead king who wrote ancient laws that barely apply to anything in this day and age? Why are legislators worldwide so freaking GUTLESS? It's immensely irritating that no leaders in any country of the world seem to have balls enough to write anti-spam legislation.
The perfect solution, IMHO, would be to disallow any and every email that advertises anything whatsoever, directly or indirectly, from being sent to anyone who has not specifically asked for it. There should be a site at which you register yourself to receive spam, which would allow you to select whatever types of advertisements you are interested in seeing. If you don't register, you don't get spam. If you register for "weight loss products" but not "porn", you won't get porn. Etc. Spammers would have full access to the email lists, and would be barred from using any other list for their campaigns. Spammers sending spam to those who haven't registered, or who haven't registered for the particular type of spam being sent, would face stiff financial penalties. Habitual offenders would receive increasing amounts of jail time. For maximum effectiveness, it should be put into international law, with full extradition rights for any country being spammed by a spammer in another country. The money garnered from fines should be used to fund Interpol spam investigators.
Okay, not going to happen. But dreaming is free.
I bought some MREs off a survivalist website just to see what they were like. Most of the stuff was tasteless/bland/pure sugar, but edible. The main course in each case, however, was utterly rancid and inedible. I tried one bite of the "teriyaki beef" and nearly lost everything else I'd already eaten. That was the worst. I feel truly sorry for the armed forces having to eat this crap. No wonder the Afghanis wouldn't eat the MREs the US dropped on them.
It seems like a joke for them to try to figure out how to include eggs and such when it seems clear they have quite a bit of work to do to even make the current MREs better than dog food.
...because I cancelled my PayPal account when their problems started getting publicity. I'm not sure they deliberately screw people, but with 10 million or so subscribers, it's a guarantee that a fair total number (albeit a small percentage) of people will have very nasty experiences. I don't have an overwhelming need for PayPal's services, so I figured I'd just remove the possibility of getting screwed. The potential for agony is extremely high, considering what they can do to your bank account.
Doesn't anyone pay attention to anything? WMP gets its information from AMG (the All Music Guide). Just lookie at the little "AMG" in the media player when WMP grabs text info from MS' text info server. They use their own protocol and service, and their data comes from AMG. Just look at the data you get from WMP and compare it to what you see on AMG's web site, and it becomes bloody obvious.
BTW, DVDs *do not* always have text info on them. In fact, they rarely do. You'd think they would have fixed the problem CDs have by actually putting useful text info on DVDs, but they didn't. Nor did they put cover art, or even a unique identifier, on the DVD. This screw-up means there will be a definite market for DVD info lookup services.
...but apparently this kid did make threats against the president on his web site. That, in and of itself, is apparently a federal offense. IANAL, but it seems like they're being rather kind to him considering that alone is enough to throw him in the slammer.
What's wrong with an open relay, if no-one has ever sent spam e-mail through it (because, perhaps, it may have its own black list of domains that may not send mail through it)?
...
What's wrong with it is that, 1) when a spammer discovers it, he can send thousands of spams through it before the owner notices the problem and blocks out the spammer, 2) regardless of whether the owner has his own "blacklist", he can't possibly protect against all of the domains out there that are potential spam sources (basically *every* domain is a potential source), 3) there is no good reason, no benefit to running an open relay.
An open relay is a sign of incompetence/laziness on the part of the administrator. There are numerous safe alternatives to open relays if the admin wants to allow valid users to be able to relay from outside the site. There is no excuse.
it's like denying someone his First Amendment rights because someone else might say something illegal
How is it denying the right to free speech? Nobody is blocking a user from *sending* anything with a blacklist. A blacklist is only used by those who don't want to *receive* unwanted email, and they have the right to receive or block whatever they see fit. Just because you want to send email to a site containing some expression of your right to speech doesn't mean you have the right to force them to receive it. It's kind of like radio, TV or some other broadcast media. They send out information of all sorts, but people only tune into it if they care to listen. And often your local government, not you, decides which channels to carry in the first place, depending solely on their judgement. Is it abridging the Sci Fi channel's right to free speech that my local carrier has decided not to include them on my basic cable? I'm irritated by it, but I realize Sci Fi is not having any of their 1st amendment rights violated.
You might also compare it to how broadcast media is regulated. Is it violating my free speech that the FCC won't let me have my own radio station? No, because pragmatically it would make no sense to allow it. If everyone had their own radio station it would be pandemonium. I really want to send my important views to the world via radio, but I guess that's just not going to happen. So instead, I use the methods available to me, such as putting up my own website and making sure it's listed on Google - or posting to Slashdot so 500,000 people can hear what I have to say.
If someone runs an open relay, they deserve to be blacklisted. Those sites who enjoy receiving spam can choose not to use blacklist information. Those who do not like spam can use blacklists.
However, those who repent and fix their open relays should be immediately removed from any open relay blacklist they might be listed with. It's totally irresponsible to run a blacklist without provisions for keeping them up to date in near-realtime.
An example of a great service was ORBS (the Open Relay Blackhole Service), may it rest in peace. It was largely automated, and would add and remove sites simply based on observations made by their relay-checking robot. There were some manual entries (for sites who refused to be probed), and that was cause for a bit of controversy. But by and large it was quite excellent. I can see absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to complain about the creation and use of such blacklists, unless they are a spammer. I have never heard a valid reason why an open relay should be considered okay (I do *not* agree with John Gilmore, just about the only slightly credible dissenter I've heard on this topic. He's just too lazy to use one of many available alternatives to what he's trying to accomplish. See this to see what I'm talking about.)
Too bad most of the great blacklist services seem to be going away or becoming (highly overpriced) commercial endeavors.
Crack the program, disabling the product activation code.
Didn't I say in my original posting that any software can be cracked? Doesn't matter if someone figures out a keygen or obviates the actual need for one, they're both cracks. And regardless of which method is used, it still won't get around it if MS' servers verify your XP installation by comparing to a key database or algorithmically comparing.
There's no way to make a crackproof piece of software. If a user has access to software, he can crack that software. Period.
:), but these keygens only work for the offline version of the game. As soon as the someone tries to use that game online, they're denied access by the game server because their genned key isn't in the database of valid keys in the field.
However, as the article notes, cracked software can be detected. No matter how good the cracker, there's little that can be done against online verification. If MS keeps a record of all valid keys, then anyone attempting to use online MS services of any kind with a genned key can be detected and denied/disabled.
This is an old trick for online games, etc. Crackers come out with keygens for such games almost simultaneously with the release of the games (or even before
So, this story has little import as far as MS' protection being faulty. I have no doubt they expected it, and I have no doubt that they don't care too much. Using Win XP w/o the ability to update or connect to certain online services safely will probably end up being more than sufficient protection from MS' viewpoint.
BTW, that should be "embarrassing". How embarrassing.
Not sure why it should be considered embarassing for adults to read "children's" books. I know at least as many adults as I do children that have read Harry Potter. It's definitely not just for kids. I actually have to wonder just how much it's really intended for kids, due to the sometimes-gruesome nature of the stories. For example, the ending of the last book was pretty darn nasty (no spoilers here).
...that Ebooks will never completely replace paper. Reasons:
- Paper books don't require batteries or wall warts.
- OS crashes, hardware failures, hard disk head crashes, software rot, etc., can't affect your ability to read the book.
- Once you own a paper book, no digital "rights" management scheme can abridge or otherwise interfere with your ability to read the book where and when you want. Or to lend it to a friend.
- You don't have to back up paper books. They'll last for 100 years on their own, and they're damn hard to erase. Especially by accident.
I do think there are legitimate uses for Ebooks, however. It would be very, very nice to have all of my books in a single, small device (much like my current music collection) that can be taken anywhere. There would be a certain utility to such a device that can't be denied. Especially if you could cross-reference all your books together for easy searching, etc.
...by what companies will do in the name of the almighty dollar. What goes through people's heads in these companies when they decide to do things like spy on their users? And how do they think it's going to benefit them?
For the sake of argument, imagine that a company like Comcast decided to start monitoring everything their users did without telling anyone - and that nobody ever discovered what they were doing. They monitored and monitored for years, tracking every move every customer made on the Internet, and nobody ever caught on. Then what? Do they sell this information to market research firms? Do they use it for their own in-house market research? In the end, under the most favorable circumstances, just how much money do they think they could make off a scam like this?
And in the end they have so much more to lose than to gain. Even though they say they are no longer going to monitor their users, I will never become a Comcast customer because of this. They can't be trusted (of course, not many companies can, if any), but even moreso, they were too stupid to realize what the repercussions of monitoring their users might be. This is what utterly amazes me. How many times have companies gotten nailed for spying or other underhanded tactics like selling user information? We hear about new cases all the time. Companies such as MS, Real Networks, etc. (and now even KaZaA) have shipped spyware (and sometimes been sued for massive amounts of money) and gotten nailed. Yet idiot companies like Comcast continue to pull this crap.
I wish I was a better student of human nature. I'm afraid I'll never understand what drives people to such stupidity.
I have proven to myself that Cactus-protected discs can be ripped successfully with the right hardware and software. I have heard tons of evidence from others that corroborate my experience. It's useless protection, and serves only as a minor annoyance.
In addition, their "protection" degrades the actual audio quality over time, because they're essentially using up the error correction bits for data. You need error correction to do just that - correct errors. You waste them on something else, like correcting purposefully-inserted errors, and you end up with a disc that is much less robust and able to withstand wear and tear.
This means that you must rip and burn a new copy of any Cactus disc you buy as soon as you open the case for the first time. And you must rip with multi-pass validation to help ensure that you got the correct data off the disc.
Any claims by Midbar that their protection is just peachy are BS.
I remember reading the MS software EULA some years ago, and was flabbergasted to find that they essentially forbade the end user from running their applications on non-Microsoft operating systems. In other words, if you bought a copy of, say, MS Office, you were forbidden to run it on a Windows/DOS emulator like Wine or any of the older Unix-based DOS emulators.
Note that IANAL, but this just seemed a blatantly invalid restriction on MSes part, if not outright illegal. I don't know if their more current EULAs still have this wording. If so, I would hope this new ruling might have some bearing on their draconian restrictions. I don't see how they can be allowed to get away with something like that.
The article states: And woe to those who don't keep good records of what they've bought. According to Blank and Kruger, the burden of proof is on the targeted company.
Am I missing something here, or does this violate "innocent until proven guilty"? How can they get away with this approach? I vaguely recall somewhere in hazy memory that civil law is different in this respect, and that you aren't necessarily innocent until proven guilty in a civil court. Yet, even so, I'm still perplexed how they can get away with this. How can anyone require you to save your receipts or possibly end up paying millions of dollars in penalties? This seems ludicrous.
I would really love to see the BSA countersued by someone who wrongfully gets their doors kicked in by US Marshall jackboots because they can't prove they bought something that they actually did buy.
If Miguel insists on using .NET for Gnome in the future, then it's time to branch development for Gnome. All the Gnome developers with some sanity will undoubtedly go for the non-.NET Gnome. I.e. 99% of them.
I'm sure that 99% applies to Gnome users as well.
I can see why these robo-copters might be useful for certain types of recon, such as in tight spaces or places where the camera must be stationary. I can't see that these would be generally superior to the fixed-wing reconnaisance drones in use now, however. They've solved one of the drawbacks of copters - the difficulty of piloting them, especially in spots where you don't have line of sight with the remote-controlled copter itself. They haven't solved one of the main drawbacks though - fuel efficiency. Copters, especially little remote ones, don't have nearly the range of a fixed-wing aircraft. I suppose the military could build larger ones that can carry more fuel than the mini copter made by MIT, but the problem is still the there. Copters just don't have the same range for a given amount of fuel.
They're also probably a lot louder than existing drone planes.
I could see how these might be useful for, say, scouting out forested areas below the forest cover, or even going inside (large) buildings, etc. But if you want to send one into Iraq from Saudi Arabia, that's not going to happen.
Sure, more security flaws are discovered in Linux than in Windows... which is precisely the reason Linux is more secure.
Because Linux is open source, millions of eyes scan the code on a daily basis. This is where the old rule of QA applies: the number of bugs found in any piece of software is directly proportional to the amount of testing (or scrutiny) applied to that software. In other words, there is no such thing as bug-free software, and you will continue to find bugs with asymptotic frequency as long as you continue looking for bugs. You find the easy, obvious ones first, followed by ever-more-rare bugs.
Because Linux has been scrutinized so heavily, it follows that many more bugs will be found than with Windows products. That doesn't mean Windows has less bugs than Linux, it just means they haven't yet been discovered. Microsoft, despite the fact that they are a behemoth, has a finite number of engineers and testers. My guess is that a relatively small percentage of them spend any time whatsoever looking for security flaws. That leaves the bulk of the job to the security community, which doesn't have the luxury of being able to scrutinize the Windows source code. No source code makes finding security flaws significantly harder. That, in combination with the fact that there are far fewer people investigating security flaws means Windows cannot possibly be as secure as Linux or any other open-source OS.
I think the claim that MS products are more secure than Linux is just more MS propaganda.
What do you wanna bet that fuel cell-powered laptops will be banned from airlines because of their volatility and possible use as a weapon? 120 ml of methanol is enough to start a reasonable sized fire, or perhaps even enough to be used in some sort of explosive device. That would be kind of ironic, because long flights are when you'd most want the longevity provided by a fuel cell.
I think countries should be barred from selling off the rights to their country TLDs like this. Aren't those domains meant to be used for sites within or related to that country in some way? This is a bastardization of country domains. I guess it was Tuvalu's good luck that they happened to have a country code that matches the common acronym for television.
And while we're at it, I don't think any domain registrar should be allowed exclusive rights to selling *any* TLD.
The US federal gov't has larger databases than this. They just don't talk about them too much.
BTW, looks like the Wayback Machine has been slashdotted.
When I was in college, one semester the professor teaching the course on compilers failed every single student in the class, except for a couple of them. The reason? They all "cheated". Everyone had been broken up into small teams to work together for the entire course, and in the end each student was supposed to turn in his/her brand new compiler. But because the members of each team had worked very closely together, the team members' work was quite similar (though not exactly the same).
I guess the prof got upset and failed everyone save for a small few who I think hadn't worked with any team. The students protested, having worked very hard and produced some good work, but the school sided with the professor. So an entire class went down for the count.
Now we're making software that can fail you automatically! Great idea!
Bill Gates himself announced and described this in his keynote address at CES a week ago. It's all part of the Microsoft hegemony for world domination, which de rigeur must include control of all devices in the home. Soon you won't be able to take a crap in your own networked toilet without a toilet network service license from Microsoft entitling you to do so. And don't even think of taking an unlicensed crap, or the BSA will come after you.
Don't know about you, but I can't wait!
Can we please trade N-Sync for Jar Jar? I can live with a 60-second scene featuring N-Sync if it means no Jar Jar. I don't even need to see him die. I just need not to see him at all. Or to hear him. Especially to hear him.
Please?