Since the GPL has not been tested in court, it is still quite open to interpretation.
I've heard many people say this, and it always throws me. The GPL is not law; I don't understand how it would need to be "tested in court". As I understood it, the GPL is a private agreement which all parties agree to for mutual benefit. If a court were to find it unenforcable, it would not mean that (in this example) LinkSys would be free to use the code without distributing the source, but rather that LinkSys would no longer have a license to use the code. Short of finding copyright law itself (which HAS been tested in court) unenforcable, I can't imagine how court could find the GPL eggregious enough to warrant an illegal infringment of anyone's inalienable rights.
...they can charge for the source code even if you purchased the binary. They can charge what it costs them to distribute it.
From the purchasers side, I suppose this is correct. If I have to pay two cents to get it, then I've been charged a fee. From the suppliers side (which was my frame of mind) I suppose they could charge a million dollars for the source, if it actually cost them a million dollars to deliver the source. But in any case there would be no net profit for the supplier, so I wouldn't consider that to be "charging a fee".
But the supplier cannot "charge for the source", only for "what it costs them to distribute it."
It's like if I were to buy you a beer; it would be a "free beer" as far as your pocket book was concerned (I haven't been able to charge you anything), although you might still have to "pay for it" the following morning.;-)
The problem isn't when soda machines charge more on hot days (I don't even know why article metioned that, it's irrelevant). The problem is when companies gather information about you in order to either raise or lower prices for you.
I wish it were as simple as this. Human nature usually follows a pattern wherein the desire to observe is followed closely by the desire to control.
In the first phase, the Bartender must sell both of us a beer at the same price, because he can't discriminate between us. In the second phase, the Bartender figures out (by looking at his data) that he can earn a dollor more profit by selling me a beer at my maximum price.
But in the third phase, the Bartender realizes that he can garner an extra 10 cents by offering me 2 cents of peanuts for free.
This raises the question of control. Am I drinking the beer because I want to, or am I drinking the beer because I'm being manipulated into drinking the beer so the Bartender gets more profit?
Clearly the amount of "free peanuts" I'm offered will be directly related to how "gullible" (or "controllable") I am, and anyone who choose his freedom over a discount will be labeled a "deviant"?
We'll leave it as an exercise for the Reader to spot other cases where the behavior of "gullible" people has been manipulated through offers of "gratis" or "reduced price" merchandise.
Charging fees for it is possible and within the GPL restrictions, too, so even if source is made available, it may not be free as in beer.
You are mistaken about this.
You can charge what you will for verbatim (un-modified) copies of the source. but if you sell someone the binary, the source must either accompany the binary, or be offered "for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution".
What this means is that if I haven't purchased the binary (inside the router) I can't demand they give me the source. I have to negotiate for it; they can demand any price they want. But once I've bought the router, I can demand the source for the binaries. This effectively limits the amount they can charge for the source to the amount they can charge for the binary.
See Section 3 of the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt) Version 2, June 1991:
In this scenario, at least a large sample of ballots would be rescanned, the database records compared, and the results displayed.
If we're going to scan a "large sample" of the ballots, why not scan them all? Next, if we're scanning them all, then who-I've-voted-for is defined by how the ballot scans, and it doesn't matter what the e-vote box told the database, or wether what it said was corrupted en-route. But then, it also doesn't matter what the ballot says in the human-readable section, because the scanner won't be looking at that.
Counting every ballot and avoiding ballot tampering are essential critera for a democratic election process. Neither getting the counting done quickly nor ensuring that counting them is "easy" is anywhere near as essential. If we have to give up next-day results to ensure always-correct results, this seems a no-brainer to me.
Many people think it inconcevable we would be able to count, by hand, all of the ballots from a major election in a reasonable timeframe; certaintly not in a single day. This conveniently ignores the fact that, even for major elections, we always cast, by hand all of the ballots in a single day. And I'm not aware of any technological advancement which would make the act of casting a ballot a simpler, quicker, or less expensive transaction than counting that ballot.
I presume you're asking/. to identify flaws and weaknesses in this?
1: The traffic with the database server should be properly secured (ipsec, ssl w/client certs, etc.)
Unnecessary Obsfucation. What does a secure channel buy you? If the vote has been rigged in the precinct, then ensuring it is not tampered with en-route to the tallying server buys you nothing. And if your voting protocol cannot detect in-route tampering after it has occurred, you're equally screwed. You only need a secure channel if you're planning to trust that channel. In the case of ballot counts, there's no reason to trust a single channel.
Besides, how can I, as a voter, be sure that the channel is secure, and they're not just telling me it's secure to get me off their back?
2: Voting machines use touch-screens. At the end, the voting machine displays a list of candidates you voted for and asks you to confirm. Then when you do, it submits your data to the database and prints a ballot.
How do I know that the votes the machine submits to the database are the same as the votes I cast? Will anyone even look as the paper ballots before the "official vote count" is published based on what's in the database?
The ballot contains: 1: An easy-to-scan bar code 2: A human readable ballot listing for manual verification. 3: The ballot serial number.
Double Standard. Why record your vote on a ballot twice? (once as "human readable" and once as "barcode") Why bother recording it in a machine readable format if the database server already has the vote recorded? If there is a discrepency, which one takes priority? More to the point, if the e-vote box "accidentally" puts "Candidate A" into the human readable part, and encodes "Candidate B" into the barcode, care to guess which column will be pegged by the electronic recount tallying system, presuming a recount is called for?
There's no need to have a special marking to allow electronic reading. We are perfectly capable of building a system which is both clearly obvious to any human reader, and obvious enough for a computer to make a "go/no go/unsure..need help" call.
And if the ballots have serial numbers, won't that allow me to reconstruct who voted for what by knowing which person used which machine in which order?
Might I offer an alternative?
1. An ballot preparation box, which offers whatever preferred user interface is appropriate, language preference, input preference (visually/physically handicapped, etc.) runs on whatever technology (open or closed) is appropriate, and serves only to prepare a physical ballot in a consistent (and valid) format. This device would ensure that the voter was presented with the correct ballot for his precinct, that only one candidate for each office was voted for, that the "holes" or optical marks were correctly formed. It produces a "slip of paper" which serves as a ballot. Any failure or incorrect operation of this box would only produce an incorrect ballot, which could be ignored. Consistent failure would cause tthe machine to be taken out of service. This is not a privleged machine; luddites could prepare their ballot by hand, if they choose. Geeks and the clinically paranoid could build their own ballot preparation boxes, if they wished.
2. A ballot commit box, which would read a prepared ballot, display how it would interpret the ballot, and offer the voter a chance to commit the ballot or reject it. This would also run on whatever (open/closed) technology was most appropriate. If rejected, the ballot is voided and returned to the voter for replacement. If accepted, a "ballot summary" record is generated for that ballot, which is composed of a random number and a summary of the vote selections cast. The ballot goes into a physically secure vote storage box (held as evidence for a the count). The "ballot summary" record is displayed privately to the
In the 802.11 sense, I don't think of it as "jamming", since they can't overpower your transmitter, but they _can_ set up their own transmitter which is just as powerful as yours and use up any available bandwidth that way.
Kinda like slashdotting your own webserver to keep people from using up all your bandwidth.
So, those movie theaters, restaurants, etc. that block cell phone signals are breaking the law?
The first thing to understand is that the frequency spectrum where 802.11 operates is regulated differently from the spectrum where cell phones operate. Unless you own a piece of the cell phone spectrum, it's illegal for you to generate a signal (of any useful power) within that spectrum range.
Second; if by "block" you mean "generate a jamming signal" then a business which does this is very likely breaking the law. If you mean "block" as in "has a building constructed such that it's impossible to get a decent cell signal inside" then that's okay. No one is obligated to ensure that signals can be received, and a legitimate spectrum user has no course of action against anyone for their own inability to make their signal penetrate.
If by "block" you mean "ask people to turn off their cell phones when entering" I thought it was clear this is a courtsey issue (or perhaps a "safety" issue) No one is likely to complain that you're carrying a cell phone in most places like this so long as it remains silent, and you don't make a nusiance of yourself trying to use it.
(Here's an interesting experiment: try going into one of those places with a fake cell phone and strike up an imaginary conversation with yourself. I'll bet you get thrown out just as fast, and I'll bet pointing out that it's not really a cell phone won't make a bit of difference.)
Hospitals are a different story. There are some poorly-engineered medical devices which can't stand to be around even a low powered and completely legitimate signal generator like a call phone or a laptop computer. Since the effect of such cross-device interference could be life-or-death, They ask you to turn such devices off completely. Many airlines do this as well, for the same reasons.
I'm curious, though. Are you aware of any business under U. S. FCC jurisdiction which are blocking (read: jamming) cellular frequencies? I'd be very interested to find out more about them. Do tell.
I do believe they actually can jam it on their property if they so desire....but I might be wrong here.
Well, you're half-right. (and I guess, therefore, half wrong.;-)
The 802.11 spectrum space is unregulated, in that no one can claim priority over anyone else. They could effectively jam it by deploying equipment which renders the spectrum unusable. They would have to use devices which were operating within the law inside this spectrum space (limited power transmitters, avoiding bleed-over to spectrum outside the defined range, etc.) They would not be limited to doing this only on their own property. (Yes, that means if you grant them access to your property they could prevent you from using your own access point.)
What they can't do is prevent you from using the spectrum anyway if you can find a way to do it despite their "jamming". Those are the rules.
If they can and do block off the free access on their property only, more power to 'em.
Why would you presume that, just because they own the facility (the statium, and the land it sits on) they would also own everything else "on" their property?
The whole point of having an "unregulated portion of the spectrum" is that nobody owns it anywhere. They can't deny me the right to use that portion of the spectrum on their property (receive or broadcast), because they don't own it.
I for one would be upset if they tried to do this.
But the rest of the civilized world is not in agreement on this. Or are we defining those who do not agree as uncivilized, in a Bushesque "you're either with us or your against us" kinda way?
...then yes, black would be white...
You're trolling, aren't you?i Maybe it depends on what your definition of is is?
So you're saying that Saddam was mistaken when he said he had WMD's?
That would be one way to characterize it. Mistaken, incompetent, deliberately disingenous; I'm sure we can come up with any number of terms. But you seem to be saying "We can't blame Bush, he was only trusting Saddam." or have I read this wrong? I would have expected you to say "We can't blame Bush, he was only trusting the CIA, and the rest of the world." but seeing as how the rest of the world based their decision on what Bush (and Blair) claimed, and how even the CIA is now claimimg they told the White House they had no solid evidence, I can see how you might want to avoid such circular logic.
Maybe Hans Blitz wasn't given the proper facts when he went and saw, first-hand, the WMD's?
I was unaware of this, at least in terms relevant to the current invasion. Can you provide a source?
Maybe the UN was mistaken when they said Saddam has WMD's and must disarm immediately... 18 times over 12 years?
Maybe they were, but I don't think so. But again you're missing the point. The UN not only said "disarm or face sanstions", the UN also said "you must prove you have disarmed or face sanstions". They placed the burden of proof onto Iraq. No one could even complain that Iraq had not disarmed because Iraq never really offered any adequate evidence to prove they had. So the sanctions (or some sanction of some sort) should have remained.
But, as you pointed out, that was 12 years ago.
If the UN told the US "disarm or face sanstions", would we choose to disarm, or would we choose to face sanctions? Are we allowed to make that choice? Is Iraq allowed? A civilized man realizes he does not get to make choices for others, he can only choose what he will do for himself, thus the "cooperate with us if you want us to cooperate with you" attitude of sanctions. Only a bully believes a "do what I want or I'll pummel you into the ground..." strategy has any merit.
Was Saddam given faulty facts when he USED his WMD's against his own people to kll tens of thousands?
It's deplorable that he killed "tens of thousands" of his people. It's also deplorable that he used WMD's. If I had to choose one over the other, I would have preferred that he used WMD's (but killed no people) over killing all those people (but using no MWD's).
Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of Abraham Lincoln's own people were killed in the Civil War? Does it matter that Lincoln didn't use Nuclear, Chemical. or Biological weapons to accomplish it? Have we forgotten that, as recently as a few months ago, Putin used chemical weapons to kill a theatre full of his own people in a Moscow "anti-terrorist" operation?
It was made clear to Iraq that they would have to get rid of their weapons programs to get the sanctions lifted. It's not clear whether they were really trying to get rid of their WMD program to get the sanctions lifted, or whether they were trying to hide their weapons program, but there's little doubt he had WMD's at one time, which in my mind constitutes grounds for a "search warrant" only, not a prosecution, certaintly not a conviction. Blitz was in the process of searching when Bush said "you're otta time". Ironic how now it's Bush claiming they just need a little more time...
Thus spoke Matrix272, immediately before launching into a political argument:
What did Bush lie about exactly? Even Saddam admitted he had WMD's.
So, under your reasoning, if I "admit" black is white, it's not considered lying for you to agree that black is white where it suits your own purposes, even though you know (or should have known) it's not true?
France, Germany, Russia, the UN, etc. all agreed on it. This is all common knowledge to those who are open-minded enough to look at the facts.
You're confusing common knowledge with the facts. Under this reasoning, it was right and proper for Galileo to be excommunicated from the Church for saying that the earth revolved around the Sun, because it was common knowledge and everyone important already agreed that the sun revolved around the Earth. The wise man does not accept common knowledge as the truth, but rather searches for the truth precisely where common knowledge seems strongest.
The President should always uphold the Constitution, and try to make the world a better place.
So, when those two goals are incompatible, which should prevail? It's important to point out that we can't always agree on what will "make the world a better place", but we have a much better handle on what it means to "uphold the Constitution", which is why we wrote it down in the first place. It is the fundamental tenet of a society governed by law.
History is littered with the tales of societies which substituted the rule of law with the rule of a personality. Hitler, Pol Pot, and Hussein offer us clear examples of the results. I hope we are not headed on the same path.
Oh dear. I may have just Godwin'd myself.;-)
He's never screwed an intern, or "lost" important financial papers that were dangerous to him.
You're asserting a negative. While we all (I hope) support the concept of "innocent until proven guilty", you cannot bolster a claim of innocence with a lack of proven guilt.
He's not perfect, but he's definitely a step (or a giant leap) in the right direction from the last President.
It's not a question of weather he's better than the joker he's replacing, but a question of weather he's good enough.
...but when that person gets in the witness chair and lies under oath, I have a problem with it.
We should rightly be concerned when a president mis-represents the truth to avoid political scandal. We should be even more concerned when it is done for the purpose of taking the country into War.
Should we place the President under oath before things like press conferences and the State Of The Union address, or should the Oath Of Office be enough?
In a fair world, it would mean the jobs of several NASA bureaucrats--not just for not paying attention to foam-strike problems, but for lying to Lehman's committee, to Congress, and to the American people about how there had never before been any foam-strike problems.
What are you talking about? Since when is "lying to...the American people" grounds for dismissal? I thought that only happened if there was some intern and a blue dress involved...
Whenever I hear "innovative" ideas like this, it always reminds me of RISKS-8.49
A quick summary:
A single engine light aircraft was flying in heavy cloud and moderate turbulence when it apparently entered a thunderstorm cell. A severe downdraught caused an abrupt descent, followed by wind shear causing a stall, and further descent. The pilot broke free from the base of the cloud, still descending, and saw lots of trees. He pulled back VERY HARD on the controls, recovered control of the aircraft, but felt it was performing strangely, so he landed at the first opportunity.
Subsequent examination of the aircraft showed:
a) eucalyptus leaves in the undercarriage, presumably from tree skimming.
b) the wings had undergone permanent deformation, with the tips being now some 30cm higher than normal. The main spar had bent in two places. This was attributed to 'G' forces in excess of the flight envelope of the aircraft.
Leave the decision making in the hands of the pilot; that's what they're paid for. If I die in an airplane crash, I want to know that the pilot did everything in his power to save my life, and paid for his failure with his own. I'd not be nearly as happy about dying in such a crash and knowing that somewhere some programmer is cheering his software that prevented the pilot from violating some FAA regulation at the expense of the aircraft.
Face it, when push comes to shove you have no control over the other clients short of a hardware-level Palladium-style lockout.
This is not entirely true. A hardware-level Palladium-style lockout seems like such a great solution...to people who don't understand hardware.
There's an interesting tautology I learned a while back: If it can be done in hardware, then it can be done in software. By the same token, if it can't be done in software, then it can't be done in hardware either.
There are cryptographic protocols which allow a cheat-free game to be created, and you don't even need a dedicated server. But the processing power and bandwidth are prohibitive, even for simple games. It's much more cost effective to create cool games and hope that you can make your money selling to honorable people before the cheaters destroy the value of the game.
As others have suggested, if you want a cheat-free game, exclude people you don't trust, just like if you want a spam-free mailbox, blacklist everyone you don't know.
One day we'll wake up and discover how much of our world is being destroyed by cheaters, freeloaders, spammers, etc. and really get tough on them. Or maybe one day the cheaters will wonder why nobody wants to play with them anymore and grow up. I'm betting on the former.
So, would you support a law that allowed a game admin to "hack into" a cheater's system to disable it so they can't cheat any more? If so, I think Sen. Berman would appreciate your support.
...it basically gives each spammer one "freebie"...
Hello, again, Your Honor. No, Sir, that wasn't me. I'm Joel_0x00000A71@spamhost.com but the spam in question came from Joel_0x00000A70@spamhost.com so clearly I can't be held responsible. Yes, Your Honor, It won't happen again. Um, Your Honor, if it pleases the Court, may we take a recess before we reconvene for the next case, we've been at this all morning and I've got to get something to eat before I appear here again for Public vs. Joel_0x00000A72@spamhost.com"?
Security professionals need to realize that RFID tags are dumb devices. They listen, and they respond. Currently, they don't care who sends the signal. Anything your companies' transceiver can detect, the bad guy's transceiver can detect. So don't be lulled into a false sense of security.
At one time, web pages were also "dumb", but then the technology improved, and now we have web pages which use cookies to track our movements, used embedded applets to create annoying advertisments in a manner designed to guarantee visibility, and so on.
But every computer will always act in the interests of it programmer, within the limits of the hardware and the skill of the programmer.
Today's RFID tags may just wait for a query and respond with (what is essentially a UPC) number. It's not hard to imagine what follows in the near future; Individual serial number?, expiration date?, number of times queried?, ever queried by a non-Walmart-approved scanner?, ever witness a response by a similarly-branded product's RFID tag?, how many?, what product?, competing brand? Tomorrow's devices will leverage their capabilities to ensure the most profitibility for their creators. We already have printers which won't accept generic ink cartridges and cell phones which demand brand-specific batteries, Imagine razors which won't take generic blades. Will Pepsi vending machines refuse to sell Coke products, or just keep them 5 degrees warmer?
Or perhaps more realistically, will we see a day when Warranty and Return-For-Refund will be dependent on the RFID tag remaining in-service? So, when you buy those RFID-equipped tires, you can either choose your warranty (and let the tire company track your driving habits) or disable the RFID tags for privacy reasons but be unable to enforce your 50,000 miles tread life guarantee. (And what happens if the manufacturer-defect-caused blowout takes the RFID tag with it?)
it's important to note when words are undergoing redefinition to suit a political agenda.
We've seen this in action during the War in Iraq. Originally, "Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons" were the target of the search. Later, that definition was broadened into "Banned weapons", then the still more general "weapons of mass destruction". Currently, even those words have been lost, and everything now refers to "WMD's". It wouldn't surprise me if, within the next 6 weeks, we start seeing the "WMD" acronym re-defined to stand for something other than "Weapons", "Mass", and "Destruction".
My own personal paranoia aside though, paradoxically security as a social process has had completely the opposite effect.
Security does exist. It's not entirely a marketdroid's wet dream. But security always takes a point of view. Security has an attitude.
When Microsoft adds security to it's products (at least when it actually does add security, and it's not just vapor hype) it is always adding security from the Microsoft point of view. The security they add is always aimed at addressing things Microsoft perceives as a vulnerability, and as such, will only benefit others to the extent they share Microsoft's interests. The more closely you are tied into the "Microsoft Way" of doing things, the more applicable the security fix will likely be for you.
But it's important to keep in mind Microsoft's prime (only?) motivation: profit. They will not release a "security enhancement" which has the effect of reducing their profitibility no matter how much more "secure" it makes their product by any definition you and I might use. (Or at least they better not. If they do, I know a truckload of lawyers ready to file a shareholder lawsuit against them for it.)
On the other hand, the more closely you are tied into the "Microsoft Way" the more likely you are to be creating profit for Microsoft, rather than yourself. (It's not always a bad strategy, Intel has done quite well with this tactic.) And nobody want's to be the Netscape, Sun, or other company that finds itself with a different "security point of view". Remember "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run?" That was a Microsoft security issue.
If the "security" someone is offering doesn't secure the things you find valuable, it's likely because the person offering that security has a different perspective on what he considers to be the greatest threat. This explains both Ashcroft's push for TIA (Is he more concerned that the U.S. Government will be overthrown, or that the Republican Administration will be overthrown?), as well as the insistence of "daily Windows viruses and worms are not a grave enough threat to consider replacing Windows with another platform" by those who's job security depends on not replacing Windows with another platform.
Blaming Bill Gates for Microsoft Worms is about the same as blaiming Henry Ford for drunk driving deaths.
No, it would be more like blaming Henry Ford for selling unsafe Pinto's (or more generally any car without seatbelts) because making them safe would cost too much and cut into sales.
A better analogy would be blaming Bill Gates for Microsoft remote exploits as about the same as blaiming Henry Ford for drunk driving deaths.
I guess Gates still doesn't get it, or maybe it get's it and he's just hoping nobody calls him on it.
The concepts of trust and security are often used together, but it's important to realize they are at different ends of the spectrum.
If I ask you to trust me, what I'm really doing is asking you to remove some of the security you may have against actions I take.
Security can be a product; you may want to sell it, and I may want to buy it. But trust is a relationship. I will trust you only if I choose to, and no amount of price cuts will have an effect on that. Anyone who tries to sell trust clearly has other intentions in mind.
Also, you can build a fortress of security on top of a foundation of trust, but it makes no sense offer a fortress of security as a replacement for that foundation of trust, which is what many who offer "security" are really trying to sell. The trust has to be there first, or you have nothing to build the security upon.
I don't know if Microsoft will ever recover enough community trust to make any security they offer worthwhile, but I certainly wouldn't want to accept the "security" they offer without a foundation of trust to place it on.
I bet a lot of mechanical engineers wish they had a restart button.
No. Mechanical Engineers with you software folk weren't so dependent on the restart button for your designs. It's a lot more efficient to design it right the first time than to try to learn something by watching it fail for the umpteenth time. When hardware fails, there's usually something very important to be learned. When software fails, the questions usually go something like "Can we get away with shipping it anyway, and just fix it with a service pack somewhere down the road?"
With failures like this mounting up, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on NASA projects.
Isn't that a little like saying "With so many kids failing in school, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on improving education..." or "With so many people dying from these new diseases, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on researching a cure..."
You don't launch a plane expecting it to crash, which is to say if it hadn't crashed you're not learning anything, you're just turning the crank. Progress comes not when the expected happens but rather when the unexpected happens, and there are lessons to be learned from the burnt and twisted wrekage of every fallen bird.
On a different topic...
...release some liquid nitrogen or some other super-coolant...
The counter to heat is not cold; the counter is resiliance. The weight of the coolant, the tanks to hold it, the tubes to deliver it, equipment to keep it cool, etc, would add significantly to the weight of the shuttle (which means it takes more fuel to get it into orbit, which means a larger external tank, which means even more styrofoam insulation, etc...). Besides, the shuttle's been in space for a while at that point. LN2 would be more likely to warm it up than cool it down.
Who's community is he talking about? "my" community is linux. I don't want to move to the *BSDs, or GNU/hurd.
The point is essentially this: For most "linux" users, if you replaced their "linux" box with a GNU/BSD system, or a GNU/HURD system, they wouldn't know the difference. Developers and the very clued would, but for most of the "linux" community, there wouldn't be much of an impact. You'd still have your bash, your vi, your emacs and your gcc.
I'd be willing to bet most people couldn't name anything distinctive about the Linux kernel itself, and if you asked the average Linux advocate (or slashdotter) just what they liked about Linux, their answer would have nothing to do with kernel features at all.
But if you replaced their "linux" box with a Windows/Linux box, or a Jaguar/Linux box, most of the linux community would sense something had changed.
In case you missed the concept, a "Windows/Linux" box is what you get if you have access to all the Windows sources, and you port them to compile on top of a linux kernel. Easier to understand would be a "Jaguar/Linux" system (which probably already exists) wherein someone at Apple recompiles Jaguar for Linux (instead of BSD). Assuming you avoid anything you'd consider to be part of GNU, you'd wind up with a completely Stallman-free system. Of course, Apple would own it, and would only be able to give it away (and therefore no one else would be able to use it) and so Apple wouldn't have had any motive to create such a beast. History tells us what happened to Apple when they had to develop their own kernel; they barely survived.
Were you aware that, long before OSX, Apple produced a system called MkLinux, which was GNU on top of a OSF microkernel with a Linux compatibility layer that looked almost identical to what you'd call a "linux" box today? IIRC, it was based on the RedHat 5.2 disrtibution.
A lot of "Linux" people have a hard time understanding why the GNU/Linux distinction is necessary, since GNU and Linux are such successful partners. In much the same way, a lot of linux people think only in terms of x86-based Linux, since they live only in the x86 hardware realm. Consider this: Imagine some favorite proprietary software company announced they would be making a version of their proprietary software available for "linux", but you come to find out they've only released a version compiled for S390; no x86 support. Have they released a "linux" version? Have they done anything to further the "linux" community, other than tick-off some bullet on a feature chart so they can claim they support "linux"?
The history is important here, so even if you're not interested in it, tolerate others who are. It may be all fine and dandy for you to call it a "gun", but professional soldiers will demand that you call it a rifle.
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Then, I respectfully stand corrected.
I've heard many people say this, and it always throws me. The GPL is not law; I don't understand how it would need to be "tested in court". As I understood it, the GPL is a private agreement which all parties agree to for mutual benefit. If a court were to find it unenforcable, it would not mean that (in this example) LinkSys would be free to use the code without distributing the source, but rather that LinkSys would no longer have a license to use the code. Short of finding copyright law itself (which HAS been tested in court) unenforcable, I can't imagine how court could find the GPL eggregious enough to warrant an illegal infringment of anyone's inalienable rights.
From the purchasers side, I suppose this is correct. If I have to pay two cents to get it, then I've been charged a fee. From the suppliers side (which was my frame of mind) I suppose they could charge a million dollars for the source, if it actually cost them a million dollars to deliver the source. But in any case there would be no net profit for the supplier, so I wouldn't consider that to be "charging a fee".
But the supplier cannot "charge for the source", only for "what it costs them to distribute it."
It's like if I were to buy you a beer; it would be a "free beer" as far as your pocket book was concerned (I haven't been able to charge you anything), although you might still have to "pay for it" the following morning. ;-)
I wish it were as simple as this. Human nature usually follows a pattern wherein the desire to observe is followed closely by the desire to control.
In the first phase, the Bartender must sell both of us a beer at the same price, because he can't discriminate between us. In the second phase, the Bartender figures out (by looking at his data) that he can earn a dollor more profit by selling me a beer at my maximum price.
But in the third phase, the Bartender realizes that he can garner an extra 10 cents by offering me 2 cents of peanuts for free.
This raises the question of control. Am I drinking the beer because I want to, or am I drinking the beer because I'm being manipulated into drinking the beer so the Bartender gets more profit?
Clearly the amount of "free peanuts" I'm offered will be directly related to how "gullible" (or "controllable") I am, and anyone who choose his freedom over a discount will be labeled a "deviant"?
We'll leave it as an exercise for the Reader to spot other cases where the behavior of "gullible" people has been manipulated through offers of "gratis" or "reduced price" merchandise.
You are mistaken about this.
You can charge what you will for verbatim (un-modified) copies of the source. but if you sell someone the binary, the source must either accompany the binary, or be offered "for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution".
What this means is that if I haven't purchased the binary (inside the router) I can't demand they give me the source. I have to negotiate for it; they can demand any price they want. But once I've bought the router, I can demand the source for the binaries. This effectively limits the amount they can charge for the source to the amount they can charge for the binary.
See Section 3 of the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt) Version 2, June 1991:
If we're going to scan a "large sample" of the ballots, why not scan them all? Next, if we're scanning them all, then who-I've-voted-for is defined by how the ballot scans, and it doesn't matter what the e-vote box told the database, or wether what it said was corrupted en-route. But then, it also doesn't matter what the ballot says in the human-readable section, because the scanner won't be looking at that.
Counting every ballot and avoiding ballot tampering are essential critera for a democratic election process. Neither getting the counting done quickly nor ensuring that counting them is "easy" is anywhere near as essential. If we have to give up next-day results to ensure always-correct results, this seems a no-brainer to me.
Many people think it inconcevable we would be able to count, by hand, all of the ballots from a major election in a reasonable timeframe; certaintly not in a single day. This conveniently ignores the fact that, even for major elections, we always cast, by hand all of the ballots in a single day. And I'm not aware of any technological advancement which would make the act of casting a ballot a simpler, quicker, or less expensive transaction than counting that ballot.
Unnecessary Obsfucation. What does a secure channel buy you? If the vote has been rigged in the precinct, then ensuring it is not tampered with en-route to the tallying server buys you nothing. And if your voting protocol cannot detect in-route tampering after it has occurred, you're equally screwed. You only need a secure channel if you're planning to trust that channel. In the case of ballot counts, there's no reason to trust a single channel.
Besides, how can I, as a voter, be sure that the channel is secure, and they're not just telling me it's secure to get me off their back?
How do I know that the votes the machine submits to the database are the same as the votes I cast? Will anyone even look as the paper ballots before the "official vote count" is published based on what's in the database?
Double Standard. Why record your vote on a ballot twice? (once as "human readable" and once as "barcode") Why bother recording it in a machine readable format if the database server already has the vote recorded? If there is a discrepency, which one takes priority? More to the point, if the e-vote box "accidentally" puts "Candidate A" into the human readable part, and encodes "Candidate B" into the barcode, care to guess which column will be pegged by the electronic recount tallying system, presuming a recount is called for?
There's no need to have a special marking to allow electronic reading. We are perfectly capable of building a system which is both clearly obvious to any human reader, and obvious enough for a computer to make a "go/no go/unsure..need help" call.
And if the ballots have serial numbers, won't that allow me to reconstruct who voted for what by knowing which person used which machine in which order?
Might I offer an alternative?
1. An ballot preparation box, which offers whatever preferred user interface is appropriate, language preference, input preference (visually/physically handicapped, etc.) runs on whatever technology (open or closed) is appropriate, and serves only to prepare a physical ballot in a consistent (and valid) format. This device would ensure that the voter was presented with the correct ballot for his precinct, that only one candidate for each office was voted for, that the "holes" or optical marks were correctly formed. It produces a "slip of paper" which serves as a ballot. Any failure or incorrect operation of this box would only produce an incorrect ballot, which could be ignored. Consistent failure would cause tthe machine to be taken out of service. This is not a privleged machine; luddites could prepare their ballot by hand, if they choose. Geeks and the clinically paranoid could build their own ballot preparation boxes, if they wished.
2. A ballot commit box, which would read a prepared ballot, display how it would interpret the ballot, and offer the voter a chance to commit the ballot or reject it. This would also run on whatever (open/closed) technology was most appropriate. If rejected, the ballot is voided and returned to the voter for replacement. If accepted, a "ballot summary" record is generated for that ballot, which is composed of a random number and a summary of the vote selections cast. The ballot goes into a physically secure vote storage box (held as evidence for a the count). The "ballot summary" record is displayed privately to the
Kinda like slashdotting your own webserver to keep people from using up all your bandwidth.
The first thing to understand is that the frequency spectrum where 802.11 operates is regulated differently from the spectrum where cell phones operate. Unless you own a piece of the cell phone spectrum, it's illegal for you to generate a signal (of any useful power) within that spectrum range.
Second; if by "block" you mean "generate a jamming signal" then a business which does this is very likely breaking the law. If you mean "block" as in "has a building constructed such that it's impossible to get a decent cell signal inside" then that's okay. No one is obligated to ensure that signals can be received, and a legitimate spectrum user has no course of action against anyone for their own inability to make their signal penetrate.
If by "block" you mean "ask people to turn off their cell phones when entering" I thought it was clear this is a courtsey issue (or perhaps a "safety" issue) No one is likely to complain that you're carrying a cell phone in most places like this so long as it remains silent, and you don't make a nusiance of yourself trying to use it.
(Here's an interesting experiment: try going into one of those places with a fake cell phone and strike up an imaginary conversation with yourself. I'll bet you get thrown out just as fast, and I'll bet pointing out that it's not really a cell phone won't make a bit of difference.)
Hospitals are a different story. There are some poorly-engineered medical devices which can't stand to be around even a low powered and completely legitimate signal generator like a call phone or a laptop computer. Since the effect of such cross-device interference could be life-or-death, They ask you to turn such devices off completely. Many airlines do this as well, for the same reasons.
I'm curious, though. Are you aware of any business under U. S. FCC jurisdiction which are blocking (read: jamming) cellular frequencies? I'd be very interested to find out more about them. Do tell.
Well, you're half-right. (and I guess, therefore, half wrong. ;-)
The 802.11 spectrum space is unregulated, in that no one can claim priority over anyone else. They could effectively jam it by deploying equipment which renders the spectrum unusable. They would have to use devices which were operating within the law inside this spectrum space (limited power transmitters, avoiding bleed-over to spectrum outside the defined range, etc.) They would not be limited to doing this only on their own property. (Yes, that means if you grant them access to your property they could prevent you from using your own access point.)
What they can't do is prevent you from using the spectrum anyway if you can find a way to do it despite their "jamming". Those are the rules.
Why would you presume that, just because they own the facility (the statium, and the land it sits on) they would also own everything else "on" their property?
The whole point of having an "unregulated portion of the spectrum" is that nobody owns it anywhere. They can't deny me the right to use that portion of the spectrum on their property (receive or broadcast), because they don't own it.
I for one would be upset if they tried to do this.
But the rest of the civilized world is not in agreement on this. Or are we defining those who do not agree as uncivilized, in a Bushesque "you're either with us or your against us" kinda way?
You're trolling, aren't you?i Maybe it depends on what your definition of is is?
That would be one way to characterize it. Mistaken, incompetent, deliberately disingenous; I'm sure we can come up with any number of terms. But you seem to be saying "We can't blame Bush, he was only trusting Saddam." or have I read this wrong? I would have expected you to say "We can't blame Bush, he was only trusting the CIA, and the rest of the world." but seeing as how the rest of the world based their decision on what Bush (and Blair) claimed, and how even the CIA is now claimimg they told the White House they had no solid evidence, I can see how you might want to avoid such circular logic.
I was unaware of this, at least in terms relevant to the current invasion. Can you provide a source?
Maybe they were, but I don't think so. But again you're missing the point. The UN not only said "disarm or face sanstions", the UN also said "you must prove you have disarmed or face sanstions". They placed the burden of proof onto Iraq. No one could even complain that Iraq had not disarmed because Iraq never really offered any adequate evidence to prove they had. So the sanctions (or some sanction of some sort) should have remained.
But, as you pointed out, that was 12 years ago.
If the UN told the US "disarm or face sanstions", would we choose to disarm, or would we choose to face sanctions? Are we allowed to make that choice? Is Iraq allowed? A civilized man realizes he does not get to make choices for others, he can only choose what he will do for himself, thus the "cooperate with us if you want us to cooperate with you" attitude of sanctions. Only a bully believes a "do what I want or I'll pummel you into the ground..." strategy has any merit.
It's deplorable that he killed "tens of thousands" of his people. It's also deplorable that he used WMD's. If I had to choose one over the other, I would have preferred that he used WMD's (but killed no people) over killing all those people (but using no MWD's).
Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of Abraham Lincoln's own people were killed in the Civil War? Does it matter that Lincoln didn't use Nuclear, Chemical. or Biological weapons to accomplish it? Have we forgotten that, as recently as a few months ago, Putin used chemical weapons to kill a theatre full of his own people in a Moscow "anti-terrorist" operation?
It was made clear to Iraq that they would have to get rid of their weapons programs to get the sanctions lifted. It's not clear whether they were really trying to get rid of their WMD program to get the sanctions lifted, or whether they were trying to hide their weapons program, but there's little doubt he had WMD's at one time, which in my mind constitutes grounds for a "search warrant" only, not a prosecution, certaintly not a conviction. Blitz was in the process of searching when Bush said "you're otta time". Ironic how now it's Bush claiming they just need a little more time...
So, under your reasoning, if I "admit" black is white, it's not considered lying for you to agree that black is white where it suits your own purposes, even though you know (or should have known) it's not true?
You're confusing common knowledge with the facts. Under this reasoning, it was right and proper for Galileo to be excommunicated from the Church for saying that the earth revolved around the Sun, because it was common knowledge and everyone important already agreed that the sun revolved around the Earth. The wise man does not accept common knowledge as the truth, but rather searches for the truth precisely where common knowledge seems strongest.
So, when those two goals are incompatible, which should prevail? It's important to point out that we can't always agree on what will "make the world a better place", but we have a much better handle on what it means to "uphold the Constitution", which is why we wrote it down in the first place. It is the fundamental tenet of a society governed by law.
History is littered with the tales of societies which substituted the rule of law with the rule of a personality. Hitler, Pol Pot, and Hussein offer us clear examples of the results. I hope we are not headed on the same path.
Oh dear. I may have just Godwin'd myself. ;-)
You're asserting a negative. While we all (I hope) support the concept of "innocent until proven guilty", you cannot bolster a claim of innocence with a lack of proven guilt.
It's not a question of weather he's better than the joker he's replacing, but a question of weather he's good enough.
We should rightly be concerned when a president mis-represents the truth to avoid political scandal. We should be even more concerned when it is done for the purpose of taking the country into War.
Should we place the President under oath before things like press conferences and the State Of The Union address, or should the Oath Of Office be enough?
What are you talking about? Since when is "lying to...the American people" grounds for dismissal? I thought that only happened if there was some intern and a blue dress involved...
A quick summary:
A single engine light aircraft was flying in heavy cloud and moderate turbulence when it apparently entered a thunderstorm cell. A severe downdraught caused an abrupt descent, followed by wind shear causing a stall, and further descent. The pilot broke free from the base of the cloud, still descending, and saw lots of trees. He pulled back VERY HARD on the controls, recovered control of the aircraft, but felt it was performing strangely, so he landed at the first opportunity.
Subsequent examination of the aircraft showed:
a) eucalyptus leaves in the undercarriage, presumably from tree skimming.
b) the wings had undergone permanent deformation, with the tips being now some 30cm higher than normal. The main spar had bent in two places. This was attributed to 'G' forces in excess of the flight envelope of the aircraft.
Leave the decision making in the hands of the pilot; that's what they're paid for. If I die in an airplane crash, I want to know that the pilot did everything in his power to save my life, and paid for his failure with his own. I'd not be nearly as happy about dying in such a crash and knowing that somewhere some programmer is cheering his software that prevented the pilot from violating some FAA regulation at the expense of the aircraft.
This is not entirely true. A hardware-level Palladium-style lockout seems like such a great solution...to people who don't understand hardware.
There's an interesting tautology I learned a while back: If it can be done in hardware, then it can be done in software. By the same token, if it can't be done in software, then it can't be done in hardware either.
There are cryptographic protocols which allow a cheat-free game to be created, and you don't even need a dedicated server. But the processing power and bandwidth are prohibitive, even for simple games. It's much more cost effective to create cool games and hope that you can make your money selling to honorable people before the cheaters destroy the value of the game.
As others have suggested, if you want a cheat-free game, exclude people you don't trust, just like if you want a spam-free mailbox, blacklist everyone you don't know.
One day we'll wake up and discover how much of our world is being destroyed by cheaters, freeloaders, spammers, etc. and really get tough on them. Or maybe one day the cheaters will wonder why nobody wants to play with them anymore and grow up. I'm betting on the former.
So, would you support a law that allowed a game admin to "hack into" a cheater's system to disable it so they can't cheat any more? If so, I think Sen. Berman would appreciate your support.
Hello, again, Your Honor. No, Sir, that wasn't me. I'm Joel_0x00000A71@spamhost.com but the spam in question came from Joel_0x00000A70@spamhost.com so clearly I can't be held responsible. Yes, Your Honor, It won't happen again. Um, Your Honor, if it pleases the Court, may we take a recess before we reconvene for the next case, we've been at this all morning and I've got to get something to eat before I appear here again for Public vs. Joel_0x00000A72@spamhost.com"?
At one time, web pages were also "dumb", but then the technology improved, and now we have web pages which use cookies to track our movements, used embedded applets to create annoying advertisments in a manner designed to guarantee visibility, and so on.
But every computer will always act in the interests of it programmer, within the limits of the hardware and the skill of the programmer.
Today's RFID tags may just wait for a query and respond with (what is essentially a UPC) number. It's not hard to imagine what follows in the near future; Individual serial number?, expiration date?, number of times queried?, ever queried by a non-Walmart-approved scanner?, ever witness a response by a similarly-branded product's RFID tag?, how many?, what product?, competing brand? Tomorrow's devices will leverage their capabilities to ensure the most profitibility for their creators. We already have printers which won't accept generic ink cartridges and cell phones which demand brand-specific batteries, Imagine razors which won't take generic blades. Will Pepsi vending machines refuse to sell Coke products, or just keep them 5 degrees warmer?
Or perhaps more realistically, will we see a day when Warranty and Return-For-Refund will be dependent on the RFID tag remaining in-service? So, when you buy those RFID-equipped tires, you can either choose your warranty (and let the tire company track your driving habits) or disable the RFID tags for privacy reasons but be unable to enforce your 50,000 miles tread life guarantee. (And what happens if the manufacturer-defect-caused blowout takes the RFID tag with it?)
We've seen this in action during the War in Iraq. Originally, "Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons" were the target of the search. Later, that definition was broadened into "Banned weapons", then the still more general "weapons of mass destruction". Currently, even those words have been lost, and everything now refers to "WMD's". It wouldn't surprise me if, within the next 6 weeks, we start seeing the "WMD" acronym re-defined to stand for something other than "Weapons", "Mass", and "Destruction".
Security does exist. It's not entirely a marketdroid's wet dream. But security always takes a point of view. Security has an attitude.
When Microsoft adds security to it's products (at least when it actually does add security, and it's not just vapor hype) it is always adding security from the Microsoft point of view. The security they add is always aimed at addressing things Microsoft perceives as a vulnerability, and as such, will only benefit others to the extent they share Microsoft's interests. The more closely you are tied into the "Microsoft Way" of doing things, the more applicable the security fix will likely be for you.
But it's important to keep in mind Microsoft's prime (only?) motivation: profit. They will not release a "security enhancement" which has the effect of reducing their profitibility no matter how much more "secure" it makes their product by any definition you and I might use. (Or at least they better not. If they do, I know a truckload of lawyers ready to file a shareholder lawsuit against them for it.)
On the other hand, the more closely you are tied into the "Microsoft Way" the more likely you are to be creating profit for Microsoft, rather than yourself. (It's not always a bad strategy, Intel has done quite well with this tactic.) And nobody want's to be the Netscape, Sun, or other company that finds itself with a different "security point of view". Remember "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run?" That was a Microsoft security issue.
If the "security" someone is offering doesn't secure the things you find valuable, it's likely because the person offering that security has a different perspective on what he considers to be the greatest threat. This explains both Ashcroft's push for TIA (Is he more concerned that the U.S. Government will be overthrown, or that the Republican Administration will be overthrown?), as well as the insistence of "daily Windows viruses and worms are not a grave enough threat to consider replacing Windows with another platform" by those who's job security depends on not replacing Windows with another platform.
No, it would be more like blaming Henry Ford for selling unsafe Pinto's (or more generally any car without seatbelts) because making them safe would cost too much and cut into sales.
A better analogy would be blaming Bill Gates for Microsoft remote exploits as about the same as blaiming Henry Ford for drunk driving deaths.
Feel better now? (-:
The concepts of trust and security are often used together, but it's important to realize they are at different ends of the spectrum.
If I ask you to trust me, what I'm really doing is asking you to remove some of the security you may have against actions I take.
Security can be a product; you may want to sell it, and I may want to buy it. But trust is a relationship. I will trust you only if I choose to, and no amount of price cuts will have an effect on that. Anyone who tries to sell trust clearly has other intentions in mind.
Also, you can build a fortress of security on top of a foundation of trust, but it makes no sense offer a fortress of security as a replacement for that foundation of trust, which is what many who offer "security" are really trying to sell. The trust has to be there first, or you have nothing to build the security upon.
I don't know if Microsoft will ever recover enough community trust to make any security they offer worthwhile, but I certainly wouldn't want to accept the "security" they offer without a foundation of trust to place it on.
No. Mechanical Engineers with you software folk weren't so dependent on the restart button for your designs. It's a lot more efficient to design it right the first time than to try to learn something by watching it fail for the umpteenth time. When hardware fails, there's usually something very important to be learned. When software fails, the questions usually go something like "Can we get away with shipping it anyway, and just fix it with a service pack somewhere down the road?"
Isn't that a little like saying "With so many kids failing in school, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on improving education..." or "With so many people dying from these new diseases, it's obvious why the government is so reluctant to spend more money on researching a cure..."
You don't launch a plane expecting it to crash, which is to say if it hadn't crashed you're not learning anything, you're just turning the crank. Progress comes not when the expected happens but rather when the unexpected happens, and there are lessons to be learned from the burnt and twisted wrekage of every fallen bird.
On a different topic...
The counter to heat is not cold; the counter is resiliance. The weight of the coolant, the tanks to hold it, the tubes to deliver it, equipment to keep it cool, etc, would add significantly to the weight of the shuttle (which means it takes more fuel to get it into orbit, which means a larger external tank, which means even more styrofoam insulation, etc...). Besides, the shuttle's been in space for a while at that point. LN2 would be more likely to warm it up than cool it down.
No, "Baked Alaska" was the proper strategy here.
The point is essentially this: For most "linux" users, if you replaced their "linux" box with a GNU/BSD system, or a GNU/HURD system, they wouldn't know the difference. Developers and the very clued would, but for most of the "linux" community, there wouldn't be much of an impact. You'd still have your bash, your vi, your emacs and your gcc.
I'd be willing to bet most people couldn't name anything distinctive about the Linux kernel itself, and if you asked the average Linux advocate (or slashdotter) just what they liked about Linux, their answer would have nothing to do with kernel features at all.
But if you replaced their "linux" box with a Windows/Linux box, or a Jaguar/Linux box, most of the linux community would sense something had changed.
In case you missed the concept, a "Windows/Linux" box is what you get if you have access to all the Windows sources, and you port them to compile on top of a linux kernel. Easier to understand would be a "Jaguar/Linux" system (which probably already exists) wherein someone at Apple recompiles Jaguar for Linux (instead of BSD). Assuming you avoid anything you'd consider to be part of GNU, you'd wind up with a completely Stallman-free system. Of course, Apple would own it, and would only be able to give it away (and therefore no one else would be able to use it) and so Apple wouldn't have had any motive to create such a beast. History tells us what happened to Apple when they had to develop their own kernel; they barely survived.
Were you aware that, long before OSX, Apple produced a system called MkLinux, which was GNU on top of a OSF microkernel with a Linux compatibility layer that looked almost identical to what you'd call a "linux" box today? IIRC, it was based on the RedHat 5.2 disrtibution.
A lot of "Linux" people have a hard time understanding why the GNU/Linux distinction is necessary, since GNU and Linux are such successful partners. In much the same way, a lot of linux people think only in terms of x86-based Linux, since they live only in the x86 hardware realm. Consider this: Imagine some favorite proprietary software company announced they would be making a version of their proprietary software available for "linux", but you come to find out they've only released a version compiled for S390; no x86 support. Have they released a "linux" version? Have they done anything to further the "linux" community, other than tick-off some bullet on a feature chart so they can claim they support "linux"?
The history is important here, so even if you're not interested in it, tolerate others who are. It may be all fine and dandy for you to call it a "gun", but professional soldiers will demand that you call it a rifle.