...would be powered armor suits, much like they had in Starship Troopers (no, not the movie, the book by Heinlein).
Re:What the hell is wrong with the Judiciary
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
·
· Score: 1
No, actually, you do need to have certain qualifications to serve as a judge. You can't just pay a lot of money to be appointed. You see, there are these silly thing we have here called laws the prevent that from happening.
Re:What the hell is wrong with the Judiciary
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Would you calm down? Put a paper bag over your mouth and breathe deeply. OK, now read this:
This was a case that was dismissed due to the fact that the EFF was suing the RIAA over the RIAA's threatening to sue Felten. Even the (obviously biased) press release was unable to obscure this basic fact. Mind you, this wasn't a suit that would result in penalties for Felten, either criminal or civil. The judge simply made a determination that this was a frivolous law suit. IMHO, the EFF should be spending their donor's money in more responsible manners, and they could probably start by waiting for a clear cut case to come along against one of the people they plan on defending.
Is there any way we can start a campaign to get idiots like this off the bench?
Is there any way we can start a campaign to keep ill-reasoned hotheads like you from posting to Slashdot? Judges get to where they are through being throughly qualified for the position, such as having a law degree and serving as a lawyer for a number of years. Being lawyers, they are quite adept at understanding the facts of a situation, a skill that you sorely lack.
Honestly, they aren't defending people out of the goodness of their hearts. They are defending people in cases where they hope to forward their political agenda. The parent to your post was pointing out that they are doing so incompently. If you want to concentrate on defending people, why don't you study law and become a public defender?
Whoo hoo! Not only do you probabaly get a monster connection to the internet, but you could probably get on it really easy considering that wireless ethernet has almost no access controls.
You know, some people go to Disney World to meet Mickey Mouse, others go for the rides. I think I'll go for the killer Quake III experience;)
Why they would even post a question like this on Slashdot leaves me to wonder whether it isn't just a slow news day. Obviously, it would be better to use a GPL license for your media codecs, because then derivative works of the codec couldn't be used to take away your freedom.
Concievably, a company like micro$oft would be able to take a BSD-licensed codec and incorporate it into Media Player to take away the freedom of the viewer in both the form of a restrictive EULA and also a content "protection" system that revokes the fair-use rights that the user has been promised.
Did you really expect more? Do you really think your single computer (yes, even an athlon 1.4ghz) could do in real time, what it takes a full server farm to do in many many months of rendering?
No, you moron. I was using this as an example to demonstrate that PC hardware has a long way to go before it starts having superfluous amounts of graphical power. Did you even read my post?
If you don't have it already, go out and buy Max Payne. I'm running a 1.4Ghz Athlon processor with DDR SDRAM and a GeForce3, and even then the framerate gets a little choppy with all graphics options on full throttle (4-pass AA, anisotropic filtering, 1024x768@32bit). And I'll tell you something else: despite the fact that Max Payne is graphically stunning in this day and age of live-rendered action games, it looks like crap compared to digitally-generated movies like Final Fantasy.
Just remember, every time you play a game, you have to realize that a lot of artists had to make an effort to reduce the graphical detail and limit the polygon count. If you lose sight of this, then of course you can always go out and see a CGI movie that will probably be in theaters (there's always one). Then compare the realism there with the games you play at home. This way you will get an idea of how far PC hardware has to go before you can even begin to question whether it has superfluous amounts of power.
3. Collisions can be generated in MD5's hash algorithm (Dobbertin, 1996).
According to RSA Security's website, while Dobbertin's work did find weaknesses in the compression function of MD5, it did not provide collisions for the hash function in its entirety. This seems to be at odds with your first statement, but you are welcome to take that one up with RSA Labs if you feel like it.
Oh please. Let's be realistic. Think about what you're saying, it could easily be paraphrased as thus:
For all you know, they have less than 257 virus signatures on file, and everybody knows that there are no where near even half as many in existence
Does that sound a little stupid to you? Also, you have to consider that these anti-virus products have some pretty big clients whose networks they have to protect. Do you really think that they are going to just have some piddly hashing algorithm to match up viruses when millions of dollars and potential lawsuits are on the line? Have you seen this happen in the past? Because I haven't.
For people who a) like or need IRC and b) prefer free software to shareware / guiltware / payware, xchat is also quite nice to have, though Mozilla's IRC capabilities are getting quite nice. (private msg's are handled much better by xchat, though.)
Actually, if I recall correctly, BitchX is available for OSX. BitchX being free and all, you would probably agree that it is worth using.
Also, why are you so opposed to paying for software that people have obviously put a lot of effort into? If I really felt like editing images and being a digital artist in general, I would go out an shell out cash for Photoshop. Isn't it kind of hypocritical to diss commercial software on this site and then go off and offer people "subscriptions" to Slashdot, which you and the other editors have obviously worked (kind of) very hard on?
Yes, that's all well and good that it runs faster than OSX, but the question is, what do you do with it? I mean, with the availability of a huge number of quality applications for OSX (like Office XP over, oh c'mon, StarOffice) should make it infinitly more attractive. It isn't even decent for web surfing, I can't even get Konquerer to render a lot of web pages right, let alone a slow mess of code like Mozilla, while on OSX the latest version of Internet Explorer (which, when I last checked, still rendered every page I have visited correctly, which is what makes it superior, because everyone designs around it) is available for free.
I suppose you could some kind of budget artist like timothy, in which case you would be using GIMP in preference to pricy Photoshop, but other than that, I can't fathom why you'd do it.
I'm sorry, mod me down as flamebait if you must, but I can't let this idiocy go on any longer. So...
YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE UP A VIRUS THAT WILL MATCH ANOTHER VIRUS'S SIGNATURE!. If any one of you had even a lick of sense, you would know that even a basic MD5-hash would be computationally infeasible to replicate with a different document. That is, there are roughly 2^128 possible MD5 hashes, and, according to Bruce Schnier's excellent book, Applied Cryptography:
Assume that a one-way hash function is secure and the best way to attack it is by using brute force. It produces an m-bit output. Finding a message that hashes to a given hash value would require hashing 2^m random messages.
(Applied Cryptography, pg. 166)(the emphasis on "random" was mine).
Now, with that little bit of information in mind, how long do you think it would take to find a random text message assuming your processor could hash messages at 1 million/second? Approximately 1,200,000 years, if my calculations are accurate. Mind you, this is for a random message. Writing a real, functioning virus that still matches the same signature would be, well, impossible for all intents and purposes.
So grab a paper bag, put it to your face, and breathe deeply. There, that wasn't so bad, now was it?
Why in the world would someone want to go to the trouble of installing Linux on a weird architecture when they have the awesome UNIX power of OSX available to them? I mean, if I had any nice PPC hardware, I would be running OSX. Oh well, I guess there are just masochists in every group...
I think that I speak for many when I voice my concerns over China in space. This is the same country that constantly threatens to invade Taiwan and is very militaristic in general. What happens when they militarize space? Do we let them hang out with a bunch of nukes hanging over our heads?
I thought I'd never say this, but Bush's missle defense plan is looking better and better every day...
I think you misplaced a zero there. Given the current cost of PCs and considering the kind of hardware most schools need, they will probably buying machines in the $500 range rather than the $100 range. That's 500,000, not 1 millionn.
Why does everyone here think that schools everywhere are just burning to install Linux on all their computers? It's not like there has been something like paying for a site license that was standing in the way of them installing it before.
In other words, if they had wanted to install Linux for education (thereby crippling the majority of children who would have to go on and work with MS software in their jobs anyway), wouldn't they have done so already?
Today, we've got $100 heat sinks, and $250 watercooled cases at a time where overclocking no longer yields significant percentages in processing power and where more than just the processor is a bottleneck.
Exactly. What has happened here is that the market has awakened to the fact that geeks are a demographic with lots of spending money, little imagination, and emptiness in their lives that they fill with expensive gadgets. With that in mind, it is easy to see why there is such a preponderance of overclocking kits despite the fact that overclocking is essentially pointless in this day and age.
Perhaps because virtually every gaming benchmark shows that it performs better in games than the Athlon? Granted, not at the same clockspeed, but do you see a 2Ghz Athlon anywhere? Hmm?
I remember them reviewing a case like this a while ago, and they absolutely hated it. But that's besides the point. What I really want to ask is:
Is it really worth the risk?
I mean, you are putting tubes full of running water right next to your expensive circuitry. This is a recipe for disaster. I know many people who have experimented with water cooling for overclocking, only to ruin their motherboard and processor when either:
a. Something in the cooling system fails and stops cooling the hardware, frying it in the process.
OR...
b. Something in the cooling system fails, causing massive coolant leakage right onto the motherboard, processor, and sometimes even expansion cards. Disaster is an understatement.
Considering that there is nearly nothing on the market these days that would financially justify overclocking as opposed to just buying a faster processor, I would hardly consider buying a water cooling system due to the risk involved.
Can't they just leave the poor man alone? You can't just go and take this guy's unfinished art and publish it to the world, because he had his reasons for not publishing it yet. In most of the writing classes I have taken in the course of my schooling, I have learned that its not only OK but almost expected to have your drafts look and read like absolute shit.
Taking bits and pieces of a creative process and trying to publish them as a finished product is almost certainly not what Mr. Adams wanted.
Business books?!
on
Good to Great
·
· Score: 0, Troll
We don't need no stinkin' business books, we're OSS programmers! We can get along just fine in the market place without learning about conventional wisdom in business. As you can see, we've already turned conventional wisdom on its head by giving away our software for free, so I doubt that the rest of it would still apply.
Slashdot Mirror
...would be powered armor suits, much like they had in Starship Troopers (no, not the movie, the book by Heinlein).
No, actually, you do need to have certain qualifications to serve as a judge. You can't just pay a lot of money to be appointed. You see, there are these silly thing we have here called laws the prevent that from happening.
This was a case that was dismissed due to the fact that the EFF was suing the RIAA over the RIAA's threatening to sue Felten. Even the (obviously biased) press release was unable to obscure this basic fact. Mind you, this wasn't a suit that would result in penalties for Felten, either criminal or civil. The judge simply made a determination that this was a frivolous law suit. IMHO, the EFF should be spending their donor's money in more responsible manners, and they could probably start by waiting for a clear cut case to come along against one of the people they plan on defending.
Is there any way we can start a campaign to get idiots like this off the bench?
Is there any way we can start a campaign to keep ill-reasoned hotheads like you from posting to Slashdot? Judges get to where they are through being throughly qualified for the position, such as having a law degree and serving as a lawyer for a number of years. Being lawyers, they are quite adept at understanding the facts of a situation, a skill that you sorely lack.
Honestly, they aren't defending people out of the goodness of their hearts. They are defending people in cases where they hope to forward their political agenda. The parent to your post was pointing out that they are doing so incompently. If you want to concentrate on defending people, why don't you study law and become a public defender?
Perhaps you're referring to the event horizon?
You know, some people go to Disney World to meet Mickey Mouse, others go for the rides. I think I'll go for the killer Quake III experience ;)
Concievably, a company like micro$oft would be able to take a BSD-licensed codec and incorporate it into Media Player to take away the freedom of the viewer in both the form of a restrictive EULA and also a content "protection" system that revokes the fair-use rights that the user has been promised.
No, you moron. I was using this as an example to demonstrate that PC hardware has a long way to go before it starts having superfluous amounts of graphical power. Did you even read my post?
Just remember, every time you play a game, you have to realize that a lot of artists had to make an effort to reduce the graphical detail and limit the polygon count. If you lose sight of this, then of course you can always go out and see a CGI movie that will probably be in theaters (there's always one). Then compare the realism there with the games you play at home. This way you will get an idea of how far PC hardware has to go before you can even begin to question whether it has superfluous amounts of power.
According to RSA Security's website, while Dobbertin's work did find weaknesses in the compression function of MD5, it did not provide collisions for the hash function in its entirety. This seems to be at odds with your first statement, but you are welcome to take that one up with RSA Labs if you feel like it.
For all you know, they have less than 257 virus signatures on file, and everybody knows that there are no where near even half as many in existence
Does that sound a little stupid to you? Also, you have to consider that these anti-virus products have some pretty big clients whose networks they have to protect. Do you really think that they are going to just have some piddly hashing algorithm to match up viruses when millions of dollars and potential lawsuits are on the line? Have you seen this happen in the past? Because I haven't.
Actually, if I recall correctly, BitchX is available for OSX. BitchX being free and all, you would probably agree that it is worth using.
Also, why are you so opposed to paying for software that people have obviously put a lot of effort into? If I really felt like editing images and being a digital artist in general, I would go out an shell out cash for Photoshop. Isn't it kind of hypocritical to diss commercial software on this site and then go off and offer people "subscriptions" to Slashdot, which you and the other editors have obviously worked (kind of) very hard on?
I suppose you could some kind of budget artist like timothy, in which case you would be using GIMP in preference to pricy Photoshop, but other than that, I can't fathom why you'd do it.
YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE UP A VIRUS THAT WILL MATCH ANOTHER VIRUS'S SIGNATURE!. If any one of you had even a lick of sense, you would know that even a basic MD5-hash would be computationally infeasible to replicate with a different document. That is, there are roughly 2^128 possible MD5 hashes, and, according to Bruce Schnier's excellent book, Applied Cryptography:
Now, with that little bit of information in mind, how long do you think it would take to find a random text message assuming your processor could hash messages at 1 million/second? Approximately 1,200,000 years, if my calculations are accurate. Mind you, this is for a random message. Writing a real, functioning virus that still matches the same signature would be, well, impossible for all intents and purposes.
So grab a paper bag, put it to your face, and breathe deeply. There, that wasn't so bad, now was it?
Why in the world would someone want to go to the trouble of installing Linux on a weird architecture when they have the awesome UNIX power of OSX available to them? I mean, if I had any nice PPC hardware, I would be running OSX. Oh well, I guess there are just masochists in every group...
I thought I'd never say this, but Bush's missle defense plan is looking better and better every day...
I think you misplaced a zero there. Given the current cost of PCs and considering the kind of hardware most schools need, they will probably buying machines in the $500 range rather than the $100 range. That's 500,000, not 1 millionn.
In other words, if they had wanted to install Linux for education (thereby crippling the majority of children who would have to go on and work with MS software in their jobs anyway), wouldn't they have done so already?
This story is a glaring repeat of a story that was posted here just two days ago. Honestly, shouldn't you be taking Ritalin or something?
Exactly. What has happened here is that the market has awakened to the fact that geeks are a demographic with lots of spending money, little imagination, and emptiness in their lives that they fill with expensive gadgets. With that in mind, it is easy to see why there is such a preponderance of overclocking kits despite the fact that overclocking is essentially pointless in this day and age.
Perhaps because virtually every gaming benchmark shows that it performs better in games than the Athlon? Granted, not at the same clockspeed, but do you see a 2Ghz Athlon anywhere? Hmm?
Is it really worth the risk?
I mean, you are putting tubes full of running water right next to your expensive circuitry. This is a recipe for disaster. I know many people who have experimented with water cooling for overclocking, only to ruin their motherboard and processor when either:
a. Something in the cooling system fails and stops cooling the hardware, frying it in the process.
OR...
b. Something in the cooling system fails, causing massive coolant leakage right onto the motherboard, processor, and sometimes even expansion cards. Disaster is an understatement.
Considering that there is nearly nothing on the market these days that would financially justify overclocking as opposed to just buying a faster processor, I would hardly consider buying a water cooling system due to the risk involved.
DAMN IT!
Taking bits and pieces of a creative process and trying to publish them as a finished product is almost certainly not what Mr. Adams wanted.
We don't need no stinkin' business books, we're OSS programmers! We can get along just fine in the market place without learning about conventional wisdom in business. As you can see, we've already turned conventional wisdom on its head by giving away our software for free, so I doubt that the rest of it would still apply.