RealNetworks: We won't, you see, patch the product. But we have the next best thing! All you need to do is not click on or load any malicious software!
A knowledge of history is almost always a Good Thing. I wonder how many programmers have never heard of Charles Babbage? ("Analytical Engine? What?") You should at least have a decent knowledge of the history of your craft. Call me old-fashioned, but my love of computer science isn't limited by EnterpriseJavaBeans and BiCapitalizedMumboJumbo and whatever buzzword happens to be out today. There's more to it than that.
The problem with this article is that it has this idea that more tech = good. That's not the case. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. There's no reason for me to get rid of my 1.44 MB floppy when I need it to put a small file on it (as I needed to copy the linux-wlan-ng source a few days ago). There's no reason to get rid of mechanical watches for a similar reason: good watches are an example of brilliant engineering and craftsmanship. I have a self-winding Rolex that's "powered" by the movement of my wrist. No electricity needed. I don't need to wind it, I don't need to replace a battery. I just wear it, and it winds.
To put that in a geek context, that's excellent programming. It's the difference between clean code and Features Galore. Features Galore might be nifty, but simplicity is usually the Right Thing(TM).
"Programming today is a race between software engineers, trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe, trying to build bigger and better idiots."
Is it just me, or is the government going out of its way to come up with the most idiotic names for all these programs? Seriously, even the names of some things send chills down your spine. I mean, honestly, do you want your government using a program called CARNIVORE on you? MATRIX? The Matrix has practically become a cultural icon with extremely negative connotations. What are these people thinking?
ast fall, a group of civic-minded students at Swarthmore College received a sobering lesson in the future of political protest. They had come into possession of some 15,000 e-mail messages and memos -- presumably leaked or stolen -- from Diebold Election Systems, the largest maker of electronic voting machines in the country. The memos featured Diebold employees' candid discussion of flaws in the company's software and warnings that the computer network was poorly protected from hackers. In light of the chaotic 2000 presidential election, the Swarthmore students decided that this information shouldn't be kept from the public. Like aspiring Daniel Ellsbergs with their would-be Pentagon Papers, they posted the files on the Internet, declaring the act a form of electronic whistle-blowing.
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Unfortunately for the students, their actions ran afoul of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), one of several recent laws that regulate intellectual property and are quietly reshaping the culture. Designed to protect copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible for an Internet service provider to be liable for the material posted by its users -- an extraordinary burden that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. Under the law, if an aggrieved party (Diebold, say) threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid liability simply by removing the offending material. Since the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare most providers into submission, the law effectively gives private parties veto power over much of the information published online -- as the Swarthmore students would soon learn.
Not long after the students posted the memos, Diebold sent letters to Swarthmore charging the students with copyright infringement and demanding that the material be removed from the students' Web page, which was hosted on the college's server. Swarthmore complied. The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process.
After persistent challenges by the students -- and a considerable amount of negative publicity for Diebold -- in November the company agreed not to sue. To the delight of the students' supporters, the memos are now back on their Web site. But to proponents of free speech on the Internet, the story remains a chilling one.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at New York University, calls anecdotes like this ''copyright horror stories,'' and there have been a growing number of them over the past few years. Once a dry and seemingly mechanical area of the American legal system, intellectual property law can now be found at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences and -- as in the Diebold case -- politics. Recent cases have involved everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's book ''The Wind Done Gone'' (which tells the story of Mitchell's ''Gone With the Wind'' from a slave's perspective) to corporations like Celera Genomics filing for patents for human genes. The most publicized development came in September, when the Recording Industry Association of America began suing music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as 12. And in November, a group of independent film producers went to court to fight a ban, imposed this year by the Motion Picture Association of America, on sending DVD's to those who vote for annual film awards.
Indeed. The vast majority of all cellphone ringers are horrendously annoying. Every time I sit in a room and one of these dumb MIDI ringtones plays (and, mind you, they play loudly), I want to strangle someone.
What's wrong with keeping your phone on vibrate? If I'm having a conversation with you, I don't need to stop and wait for you to answer your phone and chit-chat for several minutes and say "I need to go, I'll call you back later." That's what voicemail is for. Keep it on vibrate, let it forward callers to voicemail.
Seriously, we need to enforce some cell phone etiquette. And they call us not socially adjusted.
I was diagnosed with ADD (with Hyperactivity) as a grammar school child. I always had problems socially, in school, etc (probably why I became a hacker).
I have to say, I do NOT recommend medication. I took Ritalin for a little over a year while I was in 6th through the beginning of 8th grade. Certainly it made me feel (and act) calmer, but I also felt less creative.
I mean, think about it. You're giving your kid a medication which is chemically similar to speed. If you crush it up and snort it, you get high. If you go off it after taking it for several years you have horrible withdrawls. And kids who take Ritalin have much higher rates of drug addiction in their later years than kids who do not.
And one final thing: as some previous posters noted, ADD is not necessarily a "disorder" as much as it's a different way of thinking. ADD kids tend to be very intelligent and creative. They tend to have strong verbal abilities. Part of growing up, for me, has been learning to deal with ADHD. Yes, I'm easily distracted, yes, I have high test scores and a low GPA, but I've learned to deal with my condition as something that has pros and cons, but isn't necessarily "worse" than anything else.
I'm now a senior in high school, and all in all, I'm glad I never took Ritalin for any extended length of time. It's probably like Lobotomy(TM) for hackers to be.
NO ONE thinks, "Hey I'll become a painter and gets lots of money."
Which would, of course, explain why books, paintings, music, and software are sold, right?
Or do you expect artists to simply live off of thin air for the sake of your anti-capitalism? For God's sake man, what are these artists going to eat? Are you honestly asserting that artists do not have the right to profit from their intellectual property?
(On a semi-related note, this is why I oppose such things as copyright infringement on music: you're depriving the artist of royalties.)
Real artists make art because they are compelled to do so, and simply love creating. Real artists do NOT include entertainers such as Britney Spears or the like.
And what, praytell, is a "REAL artist?" Why is Britney Spears not an artist, while, say, Mozart is? Is it that you just don't like the popularization of art? Or are you simply too elitist to appreciate the "non-real art" that those (*shudder*) uneducated common folks listen to/watch/use/observe?
Again its very sad to see people viewing art through a very narrow capitolistic frame.
Again, it's very sad to see people who think artists don't have to eat.
Two years ago, at my high school, several students had "compromised" several passwords, including those of teachers.
Thing is, these passwords were found in an unprotected text file using that handy-dandy "search" feature. The students (I was not one of them, but knew several) were expelled. Their offence read, no joke, "...using the advanced coding of the Windows search feature." Uh...yeah.
I'm not for obtaining (and distributing!) passwords, but they weren't obtaining information in a manner which, by any definition, constitutes "hacking."
(By the way, I have to give props to the students. At least they used this for something useful--like getting tests ahead of time!)
<i>Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.</i><br><br> In light of the granparent post (and yours), your.sig seems oddly fitting.
About a year ago, California Computer News did an interview with Michio Kaku on this very subject. You may find it interesting:
http://www.ccnmag.com/index.php?sec=mag&id=123
As I set my threshold to 5, I'm missing a lot of stuff, but as far as I can tell, you're all missing the point.
"Science" is a philosophy. It accepts, without any real evidence, its own tenets, foremost among them being scientific naturalism. Any "scientific" claim that rejects scientific naturalism is uh....not scientific.
Let me elaborate. Science is simply a way to view the world (a view, in my opinion, exactly equivalent to any other from a philosophic point of view). By its very nature, it must postulate objective reality, it must postulate deductive reasoning, and it must postulate naturalism. Granted, it's an excellent tool within its own contexts, but you can't philosophically justify its universiality.
Now, what advantage does "science" have over "religion?" From a viewpoint outside of both, none:
The scientist declares, "We scientists cannot accept divine interference in the natural realm because we see no evidence for it." Well, yes, but now you're using circular reasoning. You can't assume scientific naturalism, and then justify it with itself. Does it appear to work? Yes. Does it prove anything? Not really.
And then when you get into (admittedly valid) postmodern criticisms, using science as a universal worldview kinda goes straight out the window.
What's the great summation? I guess just that science is only valid within it's own contexts. ID isn't "scientific," but that means exactly jack, really.
My 'default' state is entropy: My desk is cluttered with everything from tapes to betteries, to The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates to the Franck Muller watch catalog to my assortment of O'Reilly books to random notes and calculators and schedules and burnt CDs (labeled and otherwise) watches and so forth. I've got a DSL modem and a wireless router and ethernet cable strewn over my room, clothes lying about. Moreover, my schedule defaults to chaos and randomness that any cryptographer would envy: I pull those A papers at 3 AM, have no clue what I'm going to be doing that day; it's all kind of spur-of-the-moment.
That is, until recently.
Lately, I've been trying to take control of my time management and procrastination. And I've discovered that the main problem is the general lack of order in my life. Now, I have ADD fairly severely, and I live in a sort of chaos, so this may not be the case for you, but as I've been ordering the various parts of my life, my study skills and time management has been falling into place.
For instance, every day I get up and organize my desk (and it does indeed need it every day). I put all my little miscellaneous files into subdirectories in ~. All those clothes lying around? Wash 'em, hang 'em up. That stack of papers and books over there? Categorize it by topic.
Another thing that I've noticed that helps is having a schedule. I wake up at the same time every day, and briskly walk for an hour. For one, I need the exercise. Secondly, it helps me start the day with a little bit of energy. Thirdly, it gives me some sense of concreteness in my life. Want to go do something? Check the schedule.
In a nutshell, it's my experience that the more ordered you make your life in general, the more it will become natural to be productive. Granted, it's just a way bring a little order in the chaos, and I still do those 3 AM papers--but I have one, or maybe two papers to do at 3 AM, as opposed to like, five.
Slashdot Mirror
RealNetworks: We won't, you see, patch the product. But we have the next best thing! All you need to do is not click on or load any malicious software!
Oh, wait...
A new book was just released which is based on a new concept - teaching computer science through assembly language
I didn't know The Art of Computer Programming was a new book.
A knowledge of history is almost always a Good Thing. I wonder how many programmers have never heard of Charles Babbage? ("Analytical Engine? What?") You should at least have a decent knowledge of the history of your craft. Call me old-fashioned, but my love of computer science isn't limited by EnterpriseJavaBeans and BiCapitalizedMumboJumbo and whatever buzzword happens to be out today. There's more to it than that.
The problem with this article is that it has this idea that more tech = good. That's not the case. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. There's no reason for me to get rid of my 1.44 MB floppy when I need it to put a small file on it (as I needed to copy the linux-wlan-ng source a few days ago). There's no reason to get rid of mechanical watches for a similar reason: good watches are an example of brilliant engineering and craftsmanship. I have a self-winding Rolex that's "powered" by the movement of my wrist. No electricity needed. I don't need to wind it, I don't need to replace a battery. I just wear it, and it winds.
To put that in a geek context, that's excellent programming. It's the difference between clean code and Features Galore. Features Galore might be nifty, but simplicity is usually the Right Thing(TM).
"Programming today is a race between software engineers, trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe, trying to build bigger and better idiots."
Is it just me, or is the government going out of its way to come up with the most idiotic names for all these programs? Seriously, even the names of some things send chills down your spine. I mean, honestly, do you want your government using a program called CARNIVORE on you? MATRIX? The Matrix has practically become a cultural icon with extremely negative connotations. What are these people thinking?
"Universal Plug an Play" [slashdot.org]
/. post.
here with the Lindows [lindows.com] distribution
porn browsers such as Pornzilla [netscape.com].
It's things like these that let you know the parent post is copied from another
Here's the text of the article:
The Tyranny of Copyright?
By ROBERT S. BOYNTON
Published: January 25, 2004
ast fall, a group of civic-minded students at Swarthmore College received a sobering lesson in the future of political protest. They had come into possession of some 15,000 e-mail messages and memos -- presumably leaked or stolen -- from Diebold Election Systems, the largest maker of electronic voting machines in the country. The memos featured Diebold employees' candid discussion of flaws in the company's software and warnings that the computer network was poorly protected from hackers. In light of the chaotic 2000 presidential election, the Swarthmore students decided that this information shouldn't be kept from the public. Like aspiring Daniel Ellsbergs with their would-be Pentagon Papers, they posted the files on the Internet, declaring the act a form of electronic whistle-blowing.
Advertisement
Unfortunately for the students, their actions ran afoul of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), one of several recent laws that regulate intellectual property and are quietly reshaping the culture. Designed to protect copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible for an Internet service provider to be liable for the material posted by its users -- an extraordinary burden that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. Under the law, if an aggrieved party (Diebold, say) threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid liability simply by removing the offending material. Since the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare most providers into submission, the law effectively gives private parties veto power over much of the information published online -- as the Swarthmore students would soon learn.
Not long after the students posted the memos, Diebold sent letters to Swarthmore charging the students with copyright infringement and demanding that the material be removed from the students' Web page, which was hosted on the college's server. Swarthmore complied. The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process.
After persistent challenges by the students -- and a considerable amount of negative publicity for Diebold -- in November the company agreed not to sue. To the delight of the students' supporters, the memos are now back on their Web site. But to proponents of free speech on the Internet, the story remains a chilling one.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at New York University, calls anecdotes like this ''copyright horror stories,'' and there have been a growing number of them over the past few years. Once a dry and seemingly mechanical area of the American legal system, intellectual property law can now be found at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences and -- as in the Diebold case -- politics. Recent cases have involved everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's book ''The Wind Done Gone'' (which tells the story of Mitchell's ''Gone With the Wind'' from a slave's perspective) to corporations like Celera Genomics filing for patents for human genes. The most publicized development came in September, when the Recording Industry Association of America began suing music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as 12. And in November, a group of independent film producers went to court to fight a ban, imposed this year by the Motion Picture Association of America, on sending DVD's to those who vote for annual film awards.
Not long ago, the Interne
Indeed. The vast majority of all cellphone ringers are horrendously annoying. Every time I sit in a room and one of these dumb MIDI ringtones plays (and, mind you, they play loudly), I want to strangle someone.
What's wrong with keeping your phone on vibrate? If I'm having a conversation with you, I don't need to stop and wait for you to answer your phone and chit-chat for several minutes and say "I need to go, I'll call you back later." That's what voicemail is for. Keep it on vibrate, let it forward callers to voicemail.
Seriously, we need to enforce some cell phone etiquette. And they call us not socially adjusted.
Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet.
Slashdot. News for pervs. Stuff that matters.
Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet.
:-)
So, now we're marketing Linux to the sexually repressed teenager crowd?
You could charge them $699 for use of your code...
I was diagnosed with ADD (with Hyperactivity) as a grammar school child. I always had problems socially, in school, etc (probably why I became a hacker).
I have to say, I do NOT recommend medication. I took Ritalin for a little over a year while I was in 6th through the beginning of 8th grade. Certainly it made me feel (and act) calmer, but I also felt less creative.
I mean, think about it. You're giving your kid a medication which is chemically similar to speed. If you crush it up and snort it, you get high. If you go off it after taking it for several years you have horrible withdrawls. And kids who take Ritalin have much higher rates of drug addiction in their later years than kids who do not.
And one final thing: as some previous posters noted, ADD is not necessarily a "disorder" as much as it's a different way of thinking. ADD kids tend to be very intelligent and creative. They tend to have strong verbal abilities. Part of growing up, for me, has been learning to deal with ADHD. Yes, I'm easily distracted, yes, I have high test scores and a low GPA, but I've learned to deal with my condition as something that has pros and cons, but isn't necessarily "worse" than anything else.
I'm now a senior in high school, and all in all, I'm glad I never took Ritalin for any extended length of time. It's probably like Lobotomy(TM) for hackers to be.
NO ONE thinks, "Hey I'll become a painter and gets lots of money."
Which would, of course, explain why books, paintings, music, and software are sold, right?
Or do you expect artists to simply live off of thin air for the sake of your anti-capitalism? For God's sake man, what are these artists going to eat? Are you honestly asserting that artists do not have the right to profit from their intellectual property?
(On a semi-related note, this is why I oppose such things as copyright infringement on music: you're depriving the artist of royalties.)
Real artists make art because they are compelled to do so, and simply love creating. Real artists do NOT include entertainers such as Britney Spears or the like.
And what, praytell, is a "REAL artist?" Why is Britney Spears not an artist, while, say, Mozart is? Is it that you just don't like the popularization of art? Or are you simply too elitist to appreciate the "non-real art" that those (*shudder*) uneducated common folks listen to/watch/use/observe?
Again its very sad to see people viewing art through a very narrow capitolistic frame.
Again, it's very sad to see people who think artists don't have to eat.
Two years ago, at my high school, several students had "compromised" several passwords, including those of teachers.
Thing is, these passwords were found in an unprotected text file using that handy-dandy "search" feature. The students (I was not one of them, but knew several) were expelled. Their offence read, no joke, "...using the advanced coding of the Windows search feature." Uh...yeah.
I'm not for obtaining (and distributing!) passwords, but they weren't obtaining information in a manner which, by any definition, constitutes "hacking."
(By the way, I have to give props to the students. At least they used this for something useful--like getting tests ahead of time!)
<i>Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.</i><br><br> .sig seems oddly fitting.
In light of the granparent post (and yours), your
Great. Now RMS is gonna have a new mantra: "Unlimited. As in beer."
About a year ago, California Computer News did an interview with Michio Kaku on this very subject. You may find it interesting: http://www.ccnmag.com/index.php?sec=mag&id=123
Uh...that's the point. RT*P (post).
As I set my threshold to 5, I'm missing a lot of stuff, but as far as I can tell, you're all missing the point.
"Science" is a philosophy. It accepts, without any real evidence, its own tenets, foremost among them being scientific naturalism. Any "scientific" claim that rejects scientific naturalism is uh....not scientific.
Let me elaborate. Science is simply a way to view the world (a view, in my opinion, exactly equivalent to any other from a philosophic point of view). By its very nature, it must postulate objective reality, it must postulate deductive reasoning, and it must postulate naturalism. Granted, it's an excellent tool within its own contexts, but you can't philosophically justify its universiality.
Now, what advantage does "science" have over "religion?" From a viewpoint outside of both, none:
The scientist declares, "We scientists cannot accept divine interference in the natural realm because we see no evidence for it." Well, yes, but now you're using circular reasoning. You can't assume scientific naturalism, and then justify it with itself. Does it appear to work? Yes. Does it prove anything? Not really.
And then when you get into (admittedly valid) postmodern criticisms, using science as a universal worldview kinda goes straight out the window.
What's the great summation? I guess just that science is only valid within it's own contexts. ID isn't "scientific," but that means exactly jack, really.
The guy's got a changelog on his site. Surely he must use *nix!
My 'default' state is entropy: My desk is cluttered with everything from tapes to betteries, to The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates to the Franck Muller watch catalog to my assortment of O'Reilly books to random notes and calculators and schedules and burnt CDs (labeled and otherwise) watches and so forth. I've got a DSL modem and a wireless router and ethernet cable strewn over my room, clothes lying about. Moreover, my schedule defaults to chaos and randomness that any cryptographer would envy: I pull those A papers at 3 AM, have no clue what I'm going to be doing that day; it's all kind of spur-of-the-moment.
That is, until recently.
Lately, I've been trying to take control of my time management and procrastination. And I've discovered that the main problem is the general lack of order in my life. Now, I have ADD fairly severely, and I live in a sort of chaos, so this may not be the case for you, but as I've been ordering the various parts of my life, my study skills and time management has been falling into place.
For instance, every day I get up and organize my desk (and it does indeed need it every day). I put all my little miscellaneous files into subdirectories in ~. All those clothes lying around? Wash 'em, hang 'em up. That stack of papers and books over there? Categorize it by topic.
Another thing that I've noticed that helps is having a schedule. I wake up at the same time every day, and briskly walk for an hour. For one, I need the exercise. Secondly, it helps me start the day with a little bit of energy. Thirdly, it gives me some sense of concreteness in my life. Want to go do something? Check the schedule.
In a nutshell, it's my experience that the more ordered you make your life in general, the more it will become natural to be productive. Granted, it's just a way bring a little order in the chaos, and I still do those 3 AM papers--but I have one, or maybe two papers to do at 3 AM, as opposed to like, five.
Come on, mod this up: you know it was Insightful.
We all have videos floating around of stupid things we have done,
Yes. Next we're going to see esr's Quick Draw McGraw routine...
Except that you're depriving the original artist of royalties. It's kinda the same idea as...you know...stealing books from a bookstore.