I'm not a conspiracy theorist (although I have played one in meetings with upper management).
Microsoft funds SCO's lawsuit against IBM to discredit Linux after it makes significant gains in it's marketshare. This is somewhat evident from the recent "contracting of SCO products" by Microsoft. As Dr Evil would say, "Riiiiiiiiiight"
Microsoft then uses it's "contacts" within Gartner to install the idea that Windows will be a better platform while Linux's reputation is on the line. And I'm sure Microsoft does have contacts within Gartner. It would make sense... since Gartner does industry research and M$ would be someone who benefits from such research.
(Now for another cliche) Things that make you go hrmmmmmmmm......
Now if only we could find out who was ont he grassy nole.
This article states that this technology would be used on passports provided by the U.S. government. The U.S. government provides passports for U.S. citizens *only*, and does not give them out to foreigners. In the case of 9/11, the passports used by the terrorists were possibly stolen from Saudi Arabia or other arabic countries.
Try reading the article. It really helps understand what you're arguing about.
How they tie this to '9/11 fears' is curious considering the hijackers had valid paperwork.
Upon seeing this, I checked out the story in which was stated:
There's little doubt this is a US government initiative, fueled by post-9/11 terrorism fears, which is rapidly gaining momentum.
This is editorializing. They cited no source regarding the implementation of biometric passports to fight terrorism, this was only assumed by The Register's reporter John Leyden (or maybe it was an Editor who added it).
But go figure, we know that even the world's most renowned newspaper, the New York Times, can have writers on their staff making up parts of stories for their lack fo research in order to collect a paycheck.
Helping in Bosnia and Somalia in the name of security was good. Leveraging predatory trade deals and propping up dictators (*cough* Saddam *cough*) in the name of security is plus ungood.
You see the world in 2 shades, obviously... Black and White. However, the truth is, the world is a bunch of shades of grey. Perfect example of this is Afghanistan in the 1980s. While supporting the Afghani people and giving Osama Bin Laden money and weapons would prove to be disasterous, it was, at the time, seen as a necessity to stopping the spread of Communism. Likewise, supporting Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war was similarly a "shade of grey". In fact, the U.S. supported both Iraq AND Iran during the war because the administration didn't want either side to win, but to draw (which they did). Proof? Iran-Contra. This is hardly propping up a dictator, since Iraq didn't actually win the war.
The Supreme Court gave the Presidency to Bush.
This can be argued all day, but remember, it was the Democrats who took the State of Florida to court about the voting system, saying people were being "disenfranchised" by the inadequet voting system. At the same time, the Democrats were arguing that foreign ballots from military personel and non-resident citizens could not be counted for various reasons. Now who's being disenfranchised?
My point being, the Florida tally ended up on the side of GW Bush. Under Florida law, GW Bush won the election. The Supreme Court upheld Florida (and Federal Law) and did not "give" anyone anything.
Both parties in the USA look nearly identical from outside, being (demonstrably if not in rhetoric) in favour of big government, domestic surveillance, huge military, national brainwashing of children, social inequality, with cheap gas and two hundred channels of garbage TV for all.
Wow, tis is just way off in so many ways:
Big government? Liberal ideal; as liberals support socialism which means bigger government, which requires an increase in taxes. This is evident in Canada where the tax rate is near 50% because of all the social programs (most notably: social medicine).
domestic surveillance? The country leading the world in domestic surveillance is Great Britain, which btw, currently has a liberal Prime Minister and a House of Commons with mostly liberal members. Wanna know what's REAL domestic surveillance? Social programs. Welfare, unemployment, socialized medicine, public education, social security (shall I go on?) All these things supported by liberals on the governmental level which is, in effect, watching everything you do without the cameras. With cameras, they can watch where you go... with social programs, they can watch where you go, how much you spend, what doctor you use, what medicine you take, what your income is, what your social status is, etc. THAT is surveillance!
huge military, largely a conservative viewpoint. In fact, I believe a large, strong military is the *only* social service the government should provide to the people, and therefore be the only reason residents are taxed.
national brainwashing of children; liberal ideal. Most conservatives (libertarians) prefer no public education, and even more liberal conversatives at least support school vouchers. Meanwhile, liberal "scholars", publishers, and teachers have taught a liberal view of history portraying people like Joseph McCarthy as a "evil-doer fascist" as opposed to the guy who was protecting our country from enemies within. However, they do not mention the fact that liberals referred to McCarthy as a homosexual until he died. (Oh btw, one of McCarty's most noteworthy supporters was JFK.) This is brainwashing children. Get rid of public education, where the government controls what is seen by the kids, and you won't have this problem anymore.
social inequality; this one I do not understand. Why should everyone be
It's an astonishing book, but the basic premise is that constant war is a means of keeping resources scarce, purely in order to maintain class distinction.
Actually, in 1984, the government itself bombs it's own citizens as another way to brainwash them into believing that their "freedom" is in jeopardy from an outside force in order to disillusion from them seeing that it's the government is doing to oppressing.
While it's true that USKA burns up hundreds of billions of USD a year (possibly a trillion if you count the stuff that isn't counted) in moving guns, tanks and bombs around the world, the goal does seem to be global imperialism rather than domestic scarcity.
Or maybe... just maybe... it's to aide other nations and international organizations (i.e. United Nations & NATO) in providing not just domestic security, but global security. The U.S. assisted, in large part, to the security of Western Europe during the second half of the 20th century from the "menace" of the USSR. (Although, some post-WWII U.S. "officials" (later to be discovered as Soviet spies) wanted the US to stay out of Europe and "let" the USSR take it over).
But I still can't figure out what the goal is. If it's merely self preservation for the incumbent autocrats, then that's understandable but both disappointingly unimaginative and largely unncessary.
Sometimes the comparison between "today" and 1984 crosses the line, and I think this just did. In 1984, there was no democratic elections, but there are in the U.S. (make all the lame comments you want about the Supreme Court "giving" the presidency to Bush). Although it may be that 98% of congressional incumbents get re-elected, maybe it's because people like the way their representatives are doing their job. The U.S. is pretty much split between liberals and conservatives (and even in comparison to some other parts of the world, the U.S. is split between liberals and more liberals). I think this best reflects our society, hence why it exists. Of course, theories are theories.
"No matter what security measures you implement, the end users are still the weakest link in the chain."
I think it speaks for itself. Passwords can be brute forced via secure protocols as well. Passwords can be copied from stick-it notes on people's monitors, or from knowing their maiden name.
While cleartext protocols should be disabled, many places use them... a LOT. And while I know SSH can replace most of their functionality, many places have scripts that have been running for years that would need man power to rewrite (even if changing only one line) which makes it difficult for many organizations decide this is a priority.
Heck, I had a hell of a time convincing our organization to move from SSHv1 to SSHv2 due to the man-in-the-middle attacks.
Are you comparing the death penalty for a felony to a civil suit?
No, they don't put you to death for attempted murder, but they do punish you by putting you in jail.
While such a large figure seems obsurd, the $500/mo is based on what he could afford not that DirecTV would have profits for the next 30,000 years. The value of the judgement is obviously calculated and submitted to the judge for review... he cuts the "Fat", splits it in half and gives them a ruling based on that number.
Sometimes symbolic victories work. It's a deterant. Most people will now say, "hey, I could sell this device to hack DirecTV... but I just dont want to have to pay someone $500/mo for the rest of my life."
And in your case, the courts decided that hinged ailerons and wing warping were 2 different methods of performing the same result... not the same method.
However, that's not the case in this article... nor is it in the case in most of the patent issues we've been seeing lately.
There are two problems with the patent system. The first being lawyers. The second is, as far as software is concerned, what is being patented is the result and not the method. Example, Amazon 1-click... which is a result, but is not a method of implementing the result.
An inventor may not want to produce the item him/herself, but to license the patent to others to produce them.
Qualcomm, for instance, does exactly this. Qualcomm makes most of it's money from licensing it's patented technologies to other companies to actually produce and distribute the technology.
Is there anything wrong with this? No.... Qualcomm doesn't have any costs associated with maintainence or manufacturing overhead of a factory, so more money goes into research.
Haven't you people learned anything? The New York Times is obviously an untrusted news source. I mean, please, satelite imagery? Next thing you know, they'll tell us the Earth is round and the moon isn't made of cheese!
Look, if a company can spend millions in R&D on something (software or otherwise) and not make a profit, then why will they spend he millions on R&D? If you say that software can not be patentable, then no one will develop (or a better word: innovate) software since it can just be "stolen".
The problem is not that the companies can patent software, but that the patent office does not know what is worth a patent and what isn't. Something that can be written in 10 lines of perl shouldn't be patentable, but if a company develops software that does something *new* that renovates the way online purchasing is done through the specific "code", then they should be able to do it.
So therefore, just as when a mechanical device goes into the patent process, a diagram and details description is required. For software, a flowchart of processing and (maybe) even source code would need to be appended in order to make it valid. This eliminates the general "makes multiple queries and returns the result" patents, and would make something along the line of "makes multiple queries using [INSERT SOME ALGORITHM] and returns the results" which is more exact and more reflective of what should be patented (in this case, the algorithm).
This really has nothing to do with the large corporations taking over.
While it may seem this way, this is the pure fault of the government to do it's job. The original reason for patents was to protect free thought. That is, a person can come up with a new concept and profit from it. Great idea! But now anything gets through the patent system... because the patent office can't keep up with technology.
The patent office(s) need to start hiring people who know technology to review the applications. Then things will get better. Until then, we'll see more bullshit like this come through.
Most of the posts I have read have been either making fun of the article, making fun of the concept of God, or making fun of the people who believe in God. Why?
Secondly, why is it so difficult to believe in God? Science has not proven anything in the Bible to be untrue. In fact, when outrageous attempts are made to prove the Bible wrong, they end up proving it correct. An example of this is the great flood of Noah. When they discovered there actually was a layer of underwater "silt" around the period the story comes from, and when they discovered similar stories in other cultures, they only showed that the Bible was correct.
Thirdly, people say the Big Bang Theory proves God doesn't exist. How? Scientists will tell you that the theory only explains what happened from 2 seconds after the blast and forward, but does not explain what happened within that first 2 seconds... or even before that two seconds. Also, the theory believes that the universe was created by some atoms rubbing together which caused the explosion? Where did these atoms come from if there was *nothing* before the Big Bang? Finally, on this note, theories are not laws. Theories are ideas which sound plausable, but have not been proven.
Forthly, whether or not the creators of the Matrix intended for the movie to mimic any religious text or story, the fact is that anyone who writes or directs gets ideas about the story from their own life. If religion was a great part of the writers' lives growing up, it would make sense that there would be religious themes in the movie.
Fifthly (and finally)... mod me down, since it'll probably happen anyway.
Like many have already said, it's about trust... it's not about whether he is a criminal or not. Being a criminal convicted 5 times of computer related crimes makes him untrustworthy regarding computer security.
I'm sure Mr. Mitnick would be a very trustworthy chef or petroleum distribution agent (aka gas pumper). But as a security guy in a corporation? Uhhh I don't know about that one!
Now this is just dumb...
2: If you want to secure the aforementioned bank's financial DB, don't hire a hacker, and have someone looking over the shoulder of the guy you do hire. =)
Great.. now instead of hiring one consultant at $200/hr to do what he does, you have to hire a SECOND consultant at $200/hr to watch over the first guy... and, yes, you have to make sure the second guy is at LEAST as knowledgable as the first guy so therefore paying him just as much.... might as well just hire the second guy.
Might I add that Russia's state today of NOT BEING A COMMUNIST STATE is directly due to the U.S. protection of western europe for 50 years as well as maintaining a military equivalent (if not superior) to the USSR during this time?
Russia just didn't become a (somewhat lacking) Democracy overnight. Remember, the United States played a major part... so major, that following the fall of communism, the U.S. sent a lot of money to Russia and satelite states in order to maintain civil order.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a conspiracy theorist (although I have played one in meetings with upper management).
Microsoft funds SCO's lawsuit against IBM to discredit Linux after it makes significant gains in it's marketshare. This is somewhat evident from the recent "contracting of SCO products" by Microsoft. As Dr Evil would say, "Riiiiiiiiiight"
Microsoft then uses it's "contacts" within Gartner to install the idea that Windows will be a better platform while Linux's reputation is on the line. And I'm sure Microsoft does have contacts within Gartner. It would make sense... since Gartner does industry research and M$ would be someone who benefits from such research.
(Now for another cliche)
Things that make you go hrmmmmmmmm......
Now if only we could find out who was ont he grassy nole.
Again, this has nothing to do with 9/11. The U.S. didn't force the E.U. to enable this technology.
Besides, if you don't leave the country, you don't need to be "cataloged".
And then get sued by SCO for copyright infringement? I think not!
This article states that this technology would be used on passports provided by the U.S. government. The U.S. government provides passports for U.S. citizens *only*, and does not give them out to foreigners. In the case of 9/11, the passports used by the terrorists were possibly stolen from Saudi Arabia or other arabic countries.
Try reading the article. It really helps understand what you're arguing about.
Upon seeing this, I checked out the story in which was stated:
This is editorializing. They cited no source regarding the implementation of biometric passports to fight terrorism, this was only assumed by The Register's reporter John Leyden (or maybe it was an Editor who added it).
But go figure, we know that even the world's most renowned newspaper, the New York Times, can have writers on their staff making up parts of stories for their lack fo research in order to collect a paycheck.
1) Code /. you've written some C code to do what 2 lines of shell could do
2) Mention on
3) ????
4) Profit?!
You see the world in 2 shades, obviously... Black and White. However, the truth is, the world is a bunch of shades of grey. Perfect example of this is Afghanistan in the 1980s. While supporting the Afghani people and giving Osama Bin Laden money and weapons would prove to be disasterous, it was, at the time, seen as a necessity to stopping the spread of Communism. Likewise, supporting Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war was similarly a "shade of grey". In fact, the U.S. supported both Iraq AND Iran during the war because the administration didn't want either side to win, but to draw (which they did). Proof? Iran-Contra. This is hardly propping up a dictator, since Iraq didn't actually win the war.
This can be argued all day, but remember, it was the Democrats who took the State of Florida to court about the voting system, saying people were being "disenfranchised" by the inadequet voting system. At the same time, the Democrats were arguing that foreign ballots from military personel and non-resident citizens could not be counted for various reasons. Now who's being disenfranchised?
My point being, the Florida tally ended up on the side of GW Bush. Under Florida law, GW Bush won the election. The Supreme Court upheld Florida (and Federal Law) and did not "give" anyone anything.
Wow, tis is just way off in so many ways:
I will paraphrase a quote from Mr Bruce Schneier:
"No matter what security measures you implement, the end users are still the weakest link in the chain."
I think it speaks for itself. Passwords can be brute forced via secure protocols as well. Passwords can be copied from stick-it notes on people's monitors, or from knowing their maiden name.
While cleartext protocols should be disabled, many places use them... a LOT. And while I know SSH can replace most of their functionality, many places have scripts that have been running for years that would need man power to rewrite (even if changing only one line) which makes it difficult for many organizations decide this is a priority.
Heck, I had a hell of a time convincing our organization to move from SSHv1 to SSHv2 due to the man-in-the-middle attacks.
Are you comparing the death penalty for a felony to a civil suit?
No, they don't put you to death for attempted murder, but they do punish you by putting you in jail.
While such a large figure seems obsurd, the $500/mo is based on what he could afford not that DirecTV would have profits for the next 30,000 years. The value of the judgement is obviously calculated and submitted to the judge for review... he cuts the "Fat", splits it in half and gives them a ruling based on that number.
Sometimes symbolic victories work. It's a deterant. Most people will now say, "hey, I could sell this device to hack DirecTV... but I just dont want to have to pay someone $500/mo for the rest of my life."
These documents are from Area 57... they just whited out the horizontal part of the 7 so you THINK they are real!!!
And in your case, the courts decided that hinged ailerons and wing warping were 2 different methods of performing the same result... not the same method.
However, that's not the case in this article... nor is it in the case in most of the patent issues we've been seeing lately.
There are two problems with the patent system. The first being lawyers. The second is, as far as software is concerned, what is being patented is the result and not the method. Example, Amazon 1-click... which is a result, but is not a method of implementing the result.
An inventor may not want to produce the item him/herself, but to license the patent to others to produce them.
Qualcomm, for instance, does exactly this. Qualcomm makes most of it's money from licensing it's patented technologies to other companies to actually produce and distribute the technology.
Is there anything wrong with this? No.... Qualcomm doesn't have any costs associated with maintainence or manufacturing overhead of a factory, so more money goes into research.
And if you continue to read Slashdot and playing video games, you'll continue to misuse 'then' in your sentences when you should be using 'than'.
regularly could track up to five objects at a time - 30% more than non-players.
That's 3.5 objects for a non-player... hrmmm... I'd like to see that guy who only tracked half an object.
- Matrix 2
- X-Men 2
- Hulk (comic book)?
- Freddy vs Jason (god!)
- Dumb and Dumberer
- Rugrats Go Wild (tv cartoon)
- Charlie's Angels (sequel to a movie after a tv show... as if that wasn't enough)
- Bad Boys 2
- Tomb Raider 2
- Legally Blond 2
- Jeeps Creepers 2
- Spy Kids 3-D (aka Spy Kids 2)
- Terminator 3
Note: These are just the hideously obvious onesOMG IT'S THE SUMMER OF THE SEQUELS.... RUN... RUN FAR, FAR AWAY... SAVE YOURSELVES!!!
Haven't you people learned anything? The New York Times is obviously an untrusted news source. I mean, please, satelite imagery? Next thing you know, they'll tell us the Earth is round and the moon isn't made of cheese!
Software should be patentable.
Look, if a company can spend millions in R&D on something (software or otherwise) and not make a profit, then why will they spend he millions on R&D? If you say that software can not be patentable, then no one will develop (or a better word: innovate) software since it can just be "stolen".
The problem is not that the companies can patent software, but that the patent office does not know what is worth a patent and what isn't. Something that can be written in 10 lines of perl shouldn't be patentable, but if a company develops software that does something *new* that renovates the way online purchasing is done through the specific "code", then they should be able to do it.
So therefore, just as when a mechanical device goes into the patent process, a diagram and details description is required. For software, a flowchart of processing and (maybe) even source code would need to be appended in order to make it valid. This eliminates the general "makes multiple queries and returns the result" patents, and would make something along the line of "makes multiple queries using [INSERT SOME ALGORITHM] and returns the results" which is more exact and more reflective of what should be patented (in this case, the algorithm).
This really has nothing to do with the large corporations taking over.
While it may seem this way, this is the pure fault of the government to do it's job. The original reason for patents was to protect free thought. That is, a person can come up with a new concept and profit from it. Great idea! But now anything gets through the patent system... because the patent office can't keep up with technology.
The patent office(s) need to start hiring people who know technology to review the applications. Then things will get better. Until then, we'll see more bullshit like this come through.
Most of the posts I have read have been either making fun of the article, making fun of the concept of God, or making fun of the people who believe in God. Why?
Secondly, why is it so difficult to believe in God? Science has not proven anything in the Bible to be untrue. In fact, when outrageous attempts are made to prove the Bible wrong, they end up proving it correct. An example of this is the great flood of Noah. When they discovered there actually was a layer of underwater "silt" around the period the story comes from, and when they discovered similar stories in other cultures, they only showed that the Bible was correct.
Thirdly, people say the Big Bang Theory proves God doesn't exist. How? Scientists will tell you that the theory only explains what happened from 2 seconds after the blast and forward, but does not explain what happened within that first 2 seconds... or even before that two seconds. Also, the theory believes that the universe was created by some atoms rubbing together which caused the explosion? Where did these atoms come from if there was *nothing* before the Big Bang? Finally, on this note, theories are not laws. Theories are ideas which sound plausable, but have not been proven.
Forthly, whether or not the creators of the Matrix intended for the movie to mimic any religious text or story, the fact is that anyone who writes or directs gets ideas about the story from their own life. If religion was a great part of the writers' lives growing up, it would make sense that there would be religious themes in the movie.
Fifthly (and finally)... mod me down, since it'll probably happen anyway.
But who says I want someone to know that I like to listen to songs from Barney? =\
Like many have already said, it's about trust... it's not about whether he is a criminal or not. Being a criminal convicted 5 times of computer related crimes makes him untrustworthy regarding computer security.
I'm sure Mr. Mitnick would be a very trustworthy chef or petroleum distribution agent (aka gas pumper). But as a security guy in a corporation? Uhhh I don't know about that one!
Great.. now instead of hiring one consultant at $200/hr to do what he does, you have to hire a SECOND consultant at $200/hr to watch over the first guy... and, yes, you have to make sure the second guy is at LEAST as knowledgable as the first guy so therefore paying him just as much.... might as well just hire the second guy.
Or present day Middle East
Might I add that Russia's state today of NOT BEING A COMMUNIST STATE is directly due to the U.S. protection of western europe for 50 years as well as maintaining a military equivalent (if not superior) to the USSR during this time?
Russia just didn't become a (somewhat lacking) Democracy overnight. Remember, the United States played a major part... so major, that following the fall of communism, the U.S. sent a lot of money to Russia and satelite states in order to maintain civil order.