It _has_ to require talent beyond the everyday, doesn't it?
Says who? Jackson Pollock was regularly derided for doing abstract work that people claimed their children could do better. Pollock's works sell in the millions when they sell.
Any Warhol painted soup cans.
Art is in the eye of the beholder, and is almost entirely subjective. People who try to define what constitutes are are mostly missing the point -- you don't have to like it, get it, appreciate it, or respect it. There is no uniform definition of it.
At the end of the day, what you and I think constitutes "art" is irrelevant. People have sold cans of shit before -- and the last time that sold, it was over 100,000 pounds.
testing in for wussies anyway" is the computer equivalent of teaching a noob that the foreign equivalent of "nice rack, wanna F" actually translates in English to "thank you"
Do you seriously believe the NSA would give a flying fig about the GPL?
I'm quite sure they could cite any number of "national security" reasons and tell you to go screw off.
That, of course, presumes you'd get any respond other than "no comment" on your inquiries.
Seriously, playing "what if" about how to force the NSA to disclose code under the GPL is kind of a pointless exercise. You'd be stonewalled to the point of being ignored.
I personally don't (like I said, I only ever launch them by accident and then close them)... but for all I know thousands of actually useful apps are out there that people would be sad if went away. And, no, I have no idea of what they'd be.:-P
I was just pointing out that asking why someone would want Java on their phone is a little late since it's been there for years already. My Motorola Razr had it back in '02 or so I think, my Krazr had it, my LG phone has it.
I skimmed the article and couldn't find mention of what it's going to be calculating.
Well, it's a center for supercomputing -- so likely many different things.
It doesn't sound like it's built for a specific purpose, but the many things people use supercomputers for -- fancy physics simulations and the like seem popular. I'm sure some grad student will use it for something goofy now and then. No doubt industry will pay to get some time on it to solve some specific problems.
Because, like anything, if you were there for it, you might have some nostalgia for it. It's something you did that most people can't even imagine having to do -- like programming in assembly, or walking to school (uphill, both ways).
I had a prof in university who used to wistfully tell me about toggling in the boot sequence with the buttons on the front of the machine. Hell, he once gave me the manual for the Winchester ST-506 hard-drive controller, and had me write the metal-up code to handle the HD -- about as bare metal as you can get as you shoved a byte into a register and wait for an interrupt to happen to respond to it. I still think that was kind of cool, but it's not something everybody wants to do. But, I gotta say, writing my own cat, ls, rm, mv etc in DOS going straight into the FAT filesystem, and knowing there wasn't a single line of code between me and the hardware I didn't write was fun and rewarding.
I bet most people using computers never had to deal with IRQ assignments for hardware to make them all work together. It was a pain in the ass, but we all fought through it.
And, finally, like so many of these technology projects "because I can" is sometimes all the reasoning you need. People do all sorts of stuff in their spare time, and one person's "shiny fun toy" is another person's "WTF would you do that for?".
OK, this is really cool... but how many people still have decks of punch cards?
The closest I've been to them is a box we had of them we used for notes.
Though, given the level of technology pack-rats we likely have on Slashdot, I expect several people to say they still have some cool program or another tied up neatly waiting for just such a thing.:-P
Why would you want a desktop app on a phone anyway?
I don't know about you, but my cell phones have had stuff on them for years that say "powered by Java" (which mostly I launch by accident, and then close after waiting for the damned thing to start up).
Java is used for much more than just desktops. The Micro Edition has been around a long time.
As you said, local search has been around forever, but a single interface for simultaneous local and online searches is a newer thing, and Apple seems to think they own it.
Sadly, if they have been granted a patent to it -- they effectively do.
Which is the most annoying thing about all of these lawsuits; they've all been granted ridiculous patents, that mostly seem to cover an idea, they all overlap, and the only thing corporations seem to understand now is to sue.
I honestly don't see a way out of this, unless companies just decide amongst themselves to play nice -- but with billions in product revenue at stake, everybody would rather sue everybody else to make sure nobody else sells a product like their.
Blame software patents. That's what is fundamentally broken here -- the companies are just looking out for their own interests, even if that means they're spending so much time in court.
The hacker has (in his picture for the Forbes article) unkempt hair and a T-shirt that says "It's Fun To Use Learning For Evil!". I realize Black Hat has this whole counterculture thing going guys, but would it kill you to put on the veneer of respectability? Geez... this guy looks like a cliche movie hacker lackey.
He's a hacker, at a hacking conference, doing something that happened to be of interest to Forbes.
It sounds silly, but a clean shave and a button-down is how you say "I'm one of the good guys" to this crowd
What part of "Black Hat" isn't obvious? He isn't, and he isn't trying to be "one of the good guys".
This isn't some carefully groomed spokesperson we're talking about, this is the guy who managed to open hotel doors without a key, and told everyone how you do it.
I suspect if Forbes had said "hey, mind shaving, getting a haircut, and changing your t-shirt", he'd have told them to go straight to hell.
Because he isn't marketing himself to the Forbes demographic, or the general public. I'm not even sure why you think he should be.
You run stories about geeks doing sketchy things, and you might get pictures of sketchy looking geeks.
I'm pretty sure that all the US government would have to do is turn up with a warrant and be given access to any room they like regardless of the type of lock used.
With a warrant, you can do practically anything, because a judge has signed off on it.
It's what they can do without warrants that scares me.
If you are into comic books, I doubt you want a "richer and more complex story telling experience".
I think that would ruin it, personally. It's a nice nod in the direction of comic superheroes, without being bound by anything that happened in them.
I thought they did a really good job of side-stepping the whole thing. I mean, you can't have "Gazer Beam" as well as the 'serious' ones. Most of them had tongue in cheek names.
Seems like trying to bring those more directly into the story just would sort of wreck it.
If you are into comic books, I doubt you want a "richer and more complex story telling experience".
Well, "comic books" have come a long way, and in cases like the original Dark Knight, it's termed more of a graphic novel.
Quite frankly, if Hollywood had a better story telling experience, they wouldn't be turning to heavily to these sources.
Some of these have story lines that go back decades, and which cover a lot more interesting things than what most screen writers seem to be able to do on their own.
Let's face it, starting with the first X-Men movie, these have been making huge amounts of money for the studios.
I would agree that a TV adaptation isn't as likely to garner the audience it would need. But to say that the original comics don't have rich and complex story telling is a little unfair.
Well, once again your stunning wit and arrogance aren't helping here.
My understanding is that certain kinds of signals, once in an HDMI chain, are by the spec not allowed to be turned into anything else. That is, once you hit anything which is HDCP, you're screwed, and there would be no way to actually send composite output. That would result in your mini-HDMI adapter being essentially useless for anything but HDMI -- so good luck with any other cabling formats.
Tell you what, I will happily accept that I'm wrong if you can accept that you need to stop being such a smug asshole all of the time. If you've got anything else useful to add, feel free -- if all you've got is snark, keep it to yourself.
Is there functionality they can do over their connector which can't be covered via existing USB? Bandwidth? Control functions?
If there's anything they can do in their connector that normally doesn't get provided by USB, then I should think there's nothing at all nefarious about it.
I've always assumed this was more about additional stuff they could do, not snubbing a standard that doesn't quite cover what they want.
Well, the way I see it, the lawmakers are pushing to have everything we do me monitored and tracked for several years... we should be starting with them.
Oh puh-lease! The attempting to prove a negative straw man argument.
You can neither prove something is safe nor dangerous... it's the same logical fallacy, asshole.
Look, you whined that people who object to GMO never give their reasons. I've given you mine. You're the one who is now acting like a complete childish douchebag who is rejecting everything I said out of hand. You're basically resorting to ad hominem responses, and generally acting like a churlish little shit.
So why don't you go back to swapping genes with your sister, and crawl back under your rock? You're clearly only interested in shouting over people that you're right and they're wrong.
So despite your initial claim that nobody ever provides supporting arguments, you've already 100% made up your mind, and then accuse others of doing that.
Unfortunately as usual the greenpeace and anti-GM rent-a-mod luddites are against it because... well I've no idea really
Because nobody has any idea about the long term implications of using GMOs, or what might be going wrong. They make them, decree they're safe, and then say unless there's evidence to the contrary, they must be.
GMO crops can affect biodiversity, and in the case of Monsanto pollute other people's fields even when they aren't using it, and when it's sent for food aid the recipients are told they can't keep seed to plant next year because they're not "licensed" to grow corn.
It's the law of unintended consequences, really. Except that people take the default position of "what could possibly go wrong?", until something does.
If you think people are against GMO food because they're luddites, then you're an idiot.
People are against it because there's no evidence it's safe either, and there's a lot that can go wrong with it. In fact, there's loads of examples where it has.
It's like pharmaceuticals. The company who makes it has a vested interest in selling it, so if they take a few shortcuts, or leave out the evidence they don't like, or outright fabricate their evidence -- well, then we don't really know what we're getting, do we?
I'm far from a luddite, but I see an awful lot to suggest that people are doing this, doing a piss poor job of actually keeping tabs on it, and not always being up front about it when it goes wrong. With some things (say, thalidomide) you only discover the disastrous consequences after literally years.
Feel free to exercise your choice to eat those things. Me, I'd prefer to avoid it. There's just too many accidents and questions that I'm not convinced there are good enough answers yet.
No, but if someone buys a DVD while abroad, and brings it home only to find out that they're not allowed to watch it (since the American copyright groups are pushing to have breaking the region encoding declared a criminal act) then they're expected to sit there with a dud DVD and not play it.
This isn't about getting the content without paying for them. This is about taking a good you bought, and using it where you live.
Breaking the region encoding just allows you to play a product you legally purchased, and legally brought home without waiting for the same product to be re-released where you live.
America is basically trying to export laws which strip the right of first sale and other fair use rights they already enjoy.
There's a huge difference between that and what you describe.
Slashdot Mirror
Says who? Jackson Pollock was regularly derided for doing abstract work that people claimed their children could do better. Pollock's works sell in the millions when they sell.
Any Warhol painted soup cans.
Art is in the eye of the beholder, and is almost entirely subjective. People who try to define what constitutes are are mostly missing the point -- you don't have to like it, get it, appreciate it, or respect it. There is no uniform definition of it.
At the end of the day, what you and I think constitutes "art" is irrelevant. People have sold cans of shit before -- and the last time that sold, it was over 100,000 pounds.
Drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait until lunchtime!
Please fondle my bum
Do you seriously believe the NSA would give a flying fig about the GPL?
I'm quite sure they could cite any number of "national security" reasons and tell you to go screw off.
That, of course, presumes you'd get any respond other than "no comment" on your inquiries.
Seriously, playing "what if" about how to force the NSA to disclose code under the GPL is kind of a pointless exercise. You'd be stonewalled to the point of being ignored.
Rule 34. And I shudder to contemplate that too much. :-P
Yes, but the policy was in response to courts upholding that people have the right to photograph police.
This is an explicit policy which re-affirms case law, and is a reminder that police have no legal right to seize the phone or the memory card.
I bet you also have policies at work that say you're not allowed to do anything illegal.
I personally don't (like I said, I only ever launch them by accident and then close them) ... but for all I know thousands of actually useful apps are out there that people would be sad if went away. And, no, I have no idea of what they'd be. :-P
I was just pointing out that asking why someone would want Java on their phone is a little late since it's been there for years already. My Motorola Razr had it back in '02 or so I think, my Krazr had it, my LG phone has it.
Well, it's a center for supercomputing -- so likely many different things.
It doesn't sound like it's built for a specific purpose, but the many things people use supercomputers for -- fancy physics simulations and the like seem popular. I'm sure some grad student will use it for something goofy now and then. No doubt industry will pay to get some time on it to solve some specific problems.
Because, like anything, if you were there for it, you might have some nostalgia for it. It's something you did that most people can't even imagine having to do -- like programming in assembly, or walking to school (uphill, both ways).
I had a prof in university who used to wistfully tell me about toggling in the boot sequence with the buttons on the front of the machine. Hell, he once gave me the manual for the Winchester ST-506 hard-drive controller, and had me write the metal-up code to handle the HD -- about as bare metal as you can get as you shoved a byte into a register and wait for an interrupt to happen to respond to it. I still think that was kind of cool, but it's not something everybody wants to do. But, I gotta say, writing my own cat, ls, rm, mv etc in DOS going straight into the FAT filesystem, and knowing there wasn't a single line of code between me and the hardware I didn't write was fun and rewarding.
I bet most people using computers never had to deal with IRQ assignments for hardware to make them all work together. It was a pain in the ass, but we all fought through it.
And, finally, like so many of these technology projects "because I can" is sometimes all the reasoning you need. People do all sorts of stuff in their spare time, and one person's "shiny fun toy" is another person's "WTF would you do that for?".
OK, this is really cool ... but how many people still have decks of punch cards?
The closest I've been to them is a box we had of them we used for notes.
Though, given the level of technology pack-rats we likely have on Slashdot, I expect several people to say they still have some cool program or another tied up neatly waiting for just such a thing. :-P
I don't know about you, but my cell phones have had stuff on them for years that say "powered by Java" (which mostly I launch by accident, and then close after waiting for the damned thing to start up).
Java is used for much more than just desktops. The Micro Edition has been around a long time.
Many many phones have Java code on them.
If it's part of the actual file it will ... grep doesn't object to binary files last I knew.
It won't be broken out into nice fields like "Composer" or whatever, but grep will chew through files looking for text matches.
Sadly, if they have been granted a patent to it -- they effectively do.
Which is the most annoying thing about all of these lawsuits; they've all been granted ridiculous patents, that mostly seem to cover an idea, they all overlap, and the only thing corporations seem to understand now is to sue.
I honestly don't see a way out of this, unless companies just decide amongst themselves to play nice -- but with billions in product revenue at stake, everybody would rather sue everybody else to make sure nobody else sells a product like their.
Blame software patents. That's what is fundamentally broken here -- the companies are just looking out for their own interests, even if that means they're spending so much time in court.
He's a hacker, at a hacking conference, doing something that happened to be of interest to Forbes.
What part of "Black Hat" isn't obvious? He isn't, and he isn't trying to be "one of the good guys".
This isn't some carefully groomed spokesperson we're talking about, this is the guy who managed to open hotel doors without a key, and told everyone how you do it.
I suspect if Forbes had said "hey, mind shaving, getting a haircut, and changing your t-shirt", he'd have told them to go straight to hell.
Because he isn't marketing himself to the Forbes demographic, or the general public. I'm not even sure why you think he should be.
You run stories about geeks doing sketchy things, and you might get pictures of sketchy looking geeks.
With a warrant, you can do practically anything, because a judge has signed off on it.
It's what they can do without warrants that scares me.
I think that would ruin it, personally. It's a nice nod in the direction of comic superheroes, without being bound by anything that happened in them.
I thought they did a really good job of side-stepping the whole thing. I mean, you can't have "Gazer Beam" as well as the 'serious' ones. Most of them had tongue in cheek names.
Seems like trying to bring those more directly into the story just would sort of wreck it.
Well, "comic books" have come a long way, and in cases like the original Dark Knight, it's termed more of a graphic novel.
Quite frankly, if Hollywood had a better story telling experience, they wouldn't be turning to heavily to these sources.
Some of these have story lines that go back decades, and which cover a lot more interesting things than what most screen writers seem to be able to do on their own.
Let's face it, starting with the first X-Men movie, these have been making huge amounts of money for the studios.
I would agree that a TV adaptation isn't as likely to garner the audience it would need. But to say that the original comics don't have rich and complex story telling is a little unfair.
Well, once again your stunning wit and arrogance aren't helping here.
My understanding is that certain kinds of signals, once in an HDMI chain, are by the spec not allowed to be turned into anything else. That is, once you hit anything which is HDCP, you're screwed, and there would be no way to actually send composite output. That would result in your mini-HDMI adapter being essentially useless for anything but HDMI -- so good luck with any other cabling formats.
Tell you what, I will happily accept that I'm wrong if you can accept that you need to stop being such a smug asshole all of the time. If you've got anything else useful to add, feel free -- if all you've got is snark, keep it to yourself.
Except I know for a fact that it supports more than just HDMI. It supports component video, audio. Possibly even more.
What you're describing is multiple connectors, bodged together with more non-standard stuff, and which still might not cover all of the bases.
I can see why Apple went with a proprietary adapter. People don't want multiple input/output ports in their phone.
Is there functionality they can do over their connector which can't be covered via existing USB? Bandwidth? Control functions?
If there's anything they can do in their connector that normally doesn't get provided by USB, then I should think there's nothing at all nefarious about it.
I've always assumed this was more about additional stuff they could do, not snubbing a standard that doesn't quite cover what they want.
Well, the way I see it, the lawmakers are pushing to have everything we do me monitored and tracked for several years ... we should be starting with them.
You can neither prove something is safe nor dangerous ... it's the same logical fallacy, asshole.
Look, you whined that people who object to GMO never give their reasons. I've given you mine. You're the one who is now acting like a complete childish douchebag who is rejecting everything I said out of hand. You're basically resorting to ad hominem responses, and generally acting like a churlish little shit.
So why don't you go back to swapping genes with your sister, and crawl back under your rock? You're clearly only interested in shouting over people that you're right and they're wrong.
So despite your initial claim that nobody ever provides supporting arguments, you've already 100% made up your mind, and then accuse others of doing that.
Because nobody has any idea about the long term implications of using GMOs, or what might be going wrong. They make them, decree they're safe, and then say unless there's evidence to the contrary, they must be.
GMO crops can affect biodiversity, and in the case of Monsanto pollute other people's fields even when they aren't using it, and when it's sent for food aid the recipients are told they can't keep seed to plant next year because they're not "licensed" to grow corn.
It's the law of unintended consequences, really. Except that people take the default position of "what could possibly go wrong?", until something does.
If you think people are against GMO food because they're luddites, then you're an idiot.
People are against it because there's no evidence it's safe either, and there's a lot that can go wrong with it. In fact, there's loads of examples where it has.
Genetically modified pigs have ended up in the food supply and contaminated crops.
It's like pharmaceuticals. The company who makes it has a vested interest in selling it, so if they take a few shortcuts, or leave out the evidence they don't like, or outright fabricate their evidence -- well, then we don't really know what we're getting, do we?
I'm far from a luddite, but I see an awful lot to suggest that people are doing this, doing a piss poor job of actually keeping tabs on it, and not always being up front about it when it goes wrong. With some things (say, thalidomide) you only discover the disastrous consequences after literally years.
Feel free to exercise your choice to eat those things. Me, I'd prefer to avoid it. There's just too many accidents and questions that I'm not convinced there are good enough answers yet.
No, but if someone buys a DVD while abroad, and brings it home only to find out that they're not allowed to watch it (since the American copyright groups are pushing to have breaking the region encoding declared a criminal act) then they're expected to sit there with a dud DVD and not play it.
This isn't about getting the content without paying for them. This is about taking a good you bought, and using it where you live.
Breaking the region encoding just allows you to play a product you legally purchased, and legally brought home without waiting for the same product to be re-released where you live.
America is basically trying to export laws which strip the right of first sale and other fair use rights they already enjoy.
There's a huge difference between that and what you describe.
Well, given that he's worth around $4 billion or so ... I'd say whatever he's doing it working for him.