Plus, I'm not convinced that trading of copyrighted works without some form of payment to the copyright holder is a good thing.
Better uninstall any Linux systems that you didn't originally install via a CD that you purchased. Oh, and be sure to-unwrite any Free software you use that was created by someone downloading the original copyrighted source, making a few changes, and sending the patches back to the author. Finally, be sure to download all of your Windows updates directly from the source instead of, say, using an XP/SP2 CD that a friend burned for you.
Darn near everything (including Linux and BSD) is copyrighted, which is completely orthogonal to the issue of whether it's freely distributable.
Caller ID is certainly not a secure method of authentication
I didn't mean to imply that it was. ANI, however, is a lot more secure than CID.
At my last job, I spent quite a bit of time in an ILEC's CO where we had a bunch of DSLAMs (is that enough acronyms in one sentence?) and other related stuff. We could dial into the racks' terminal server via an analog modem that was set to accept calls from exactly one ANI. Unless you were at the office using one particular jack, it wouldn't even answer the phone when you called. Add in a few unpublished numbers and you can build a reasonable simulation of firewall+NAT.
Would I trust the outcome of an election to just that? No way! But it's definitely a layer of obscurity that's worth having, in much the same way that although a firewall may be defeated, you're certainly better off having one.
NOTE: I really like St Louis and don't want them lumped in with the rest of MO.
This may come as a great surprise, but:
Most other Missourians feel the same way about St. Louis - they don't want it lumped in with the rest of the state either. Ask an average Springfield(, MO)ian or Kansas City resident whether they think St. Louis is home to state's finest. Chances are, they're embarrassed by the perceived liberal messes, poor education, and (not least of all) the horrific traffic.
I don't want to start a flame war about which part is "better", but sometimes people forget that the other side's point of view can be eerily similar to their own.
The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers
I'm OK with that. If the software is certified for a particular set of Windows + patches, then on election night I want it running on that exact platform - not that system +/- a few minor "adjustments".
and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines.
One detail left out: did it answer calls from every phone number in existence, or just the ones on an approved list?
I don't mean to imply that everything was hunky-dorey, but the facts you mentioned (on their own) don't necessarily mean that the system was compromised.
I said this in another post in reply to someone who said they weren't going to vote because they weren't happy with the choices. That post was buried deeply in a story with 1800+ comments so I doubt that many people will see it. This is important, though, and I want to say it again (and again and again until it sinks in):
Show up, get your ballot, and drop it - unmarked (except for your local issues which you have no right to ignore) - into the box. That says that you're a voter, but you're unhappy with your choices. On the other hand, refusing to vote just makes you sound like a bitter slacker who can't be bothered to get off his butt to make his voice heard.
Politicians are acutely aware of voting results, and they'll do what they can to sway voters to their side (even if that means, shock and horror!, adopting some of the ideas popular among those people). How much do you think they'll change to pick up the "uninterested vote"? None at all.
If you're happy with the choices, then vote. If you're not happy, then you especially need to vote. Don't let yourself be counted among those too ignorant to care!
but Apple is doing it right by integrating network resources into the real VFS layer so that all applications can access them.
Apple has the privilege of only having one VFS layer. There is no such single layer that KDE could rely upon, since it runs on quite a few distinct operating systems.
I'd love a universal fish:// handler (even more if they added a multi-hop syntax ala Emacs' Tramp so that I could access files as root on a remote system), but I don't Debian and FreeBSD getting together and implementing an identical interface so that I can use it on my two favorite systems.
(FWIW, I've been sticking the "flag" postage stamps on my mail upside down.)
Umm, that's a traditional way of saying "I love you". You might want to think back to everyone you've sent such a letter to; you might need to correct a few misunderstandings here and there.
Is this the same "The Lancet" that's a journal for medical laboratory scientists, sort of like "Communications of the ACM" is a journal for computer scientists? Or is this some new "The Lancet" upstart that claims expertise in geopolitical arts?
In other news, The Economist is running a story on whether Koch's postulates apply to modern illnesses.
Re:open-source vs. suitability to task
on
Learning PHP 5
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· Score: 3, Interesting
So, being open-source is more important than suitability to task?
For many of us, being Free Software is "suitability to task". That is, non-Free software is an automatic disqualification from the running.
I've built my company's web apps on Zope, Python, PostgreSQL, and FreeBSD. None of those "vendors" will go out of business next year (but if they did, who cares?). There will be no forced upgrade to a more expensive version that we don't need. We can get timely (and free) security updates and feature upgrades. We have an infinite-user license.
How on Earth could a closed vendor compete with that? The answer: they can't. There are far too many Free options for developing network applications to even glance at the proprietary stuff.
Oh, and my boss likes our system so much that he just gave me permission to release all of the non-business-logic software I've written over the last year under an open source license. The only remaining step is to pick the license that we'll use to share our work with the community that made it all possible. Have I mentioned today that I dig my job?
I actually asked them, "Where did you get this number?"
...thereby proving that were are, in fact, a member of some shadowy cabal bent on world domination/destruction. Exactly how many years of "volunteer" service did you have to give before the Secret Service let you go back home?
Even worse is when you end up with mycity.org, mycitypolice.org, mycityparksandrecreationdepartment.com, mycitypoliticians.gov, and so on. What's so awful about mycity.gov, police.mycity.gov, parks.mycity.gov, people.mycity.gov, and so on?
I have to disagree. Since all films are made by somebody, why not put them under the creator's own domain (like nextchristmasmovie.universalstudios.com, junkwithteengirls.sonypictures.com, etc.)?
If I created something pretty cool that was going to generate a lot of hits, I certainly wouldn't mind making it obvious that it's one of my company's products: "Hey, kewlgame.honeypot.net is pretty slick! Maybe I'll wander up one level to honeypot.net to see what else they host!"
Unless, that is, that they're so cynical about their own products that they don't really want to be associated with them on a long-term basis...
Funny? Where's "+1: Dead accurate"? Seriously, who thought that.post was a peachy idea? "Why, in five years' time, I'll bet we have... a good three or four registrants!" How many postal systems are there in the world? Surely no more than 200 or so. Even at 100% saturation, this will still be a void wasteland.
How many commercial travel operators are going to move away from the well-recognized.com TLD and into a new.travel? That sounds even lamer than.biz, and I've literally never seen one single legit business in that namespace (please don't flood me with counterexamples).
At any rate, you'll see at least as many smartass domain names as legitimate ones in either dumb new TLD. For example:
$ grep -E '*post$'/usr/share/dict/american-english-large bedpost c ompost doorpost fencepost gatepost goalpost g uidepost heelpost impost lamppost milepost ou tpost post repost ripost rudderpost signpost sternpost
BTW, the "fish:" links work everywhere in KDE, not just in Konqueror.
Yep. I fired up KMyMoney2 at the office, selected File -> Open, and entered "sftp://myserver/home/me/" in the directory input line. Then I browsed until I saw the accounts file I wanted and double-clicked it. Voila - I was looking at my checkbook without manually copying a single file or running KMyMoney2 remotely. Even better, it remembers the path to the last file you opened and automatically loads it at launch, so simply loading KMyMoney2 automatically opens my personal checkbook with no extra intervention from me.
People who think KDE is bloated don't really grasp what it can do for them. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
When it failed because of poor file locking, arbitrary array limit choices (try 53) and other CS101 gambits, it became my problem (with no windows background) to fix.
Your boss handed you a lifetime-employment card and you're bitching?
Do we really need a VB clone in linuxland?
You do not. I do not have my retirement worked out yet, and I welcome such a clone with open arms.
The financial and business effect of browser choice is not felt on the client side, it is not typically a factor in purchase decisions.
I couldn't disagree more. I'm responsible for a web-based application that my company's customers use to access our database, generate reports, fetch scanned documents, etc. and I made strict XHTML/1.0+CSS compliance a critical priority from the first day of planning. Because of this, our clients can use Windows+IE, Windows+Firefox, OSX+Safari, Linux+Konqueror, or good ol' Lynx to use every bit of functionality throughout the site.
Our clients are in the transportation industry, and many of them have Internet-connected computers solely to visit our site. As it stands right now, they have no reason whatsoever to stick with Windows when they buy their next computer. If their friends tell them to get a Mac because they're easier to use, fine. If their kid installs Linux for them because it's free, fine. If they want to stick with Windows, that's also OK.
The point is that I've given them no reason to keep from switching to a different OS if they want to. I didn't do this because I'm anti-Microsoft - I just wanted a good experience for our customers - but I'm sure that Bill and friends would've preferred that I approached it differently.
When you can build an unambiguous object tree from HTML, you can define what "properly" means and apply it to that tree to get pixel-perfect renderings in every correct browser known.
When the same HTML can be diagrammed 39 ways to Sunday without any being the obviously correct tree, the rest is a crap shoot.
It's like attempting to decode data encrypted with a one-time pad. "Mozilla is teh r0xx3r!" is just as likely as "Internet Explorer 4 me", but neither is necessarily the "correct" answer (ie what was originally intended). Frankly, that Slashdot renders at all is a testament to the design teams behind all of the browsers that can display it. I &heart; Slashdot, but it's certainly not because I admire the beauty and elegance of the HTML that Slashcode pumps out.
when will people learn our focus should be energy? Exploration of mars should be second on our list of things to do in the US.
You're right. Building an intriguing project that could get large amounts of public support and is based around a safe and efficient freakin' nuclear reactor has nothing to do with energy.
Sounds to me like the focus is exactly where you want it to be, albeit not (yet) in the form you're asking for.
Slashdot Mirror
Better uninstall any Linux systems that you didn't originally install via a CD that you purchased. Oh, and be sure to-unwrite any Free software you use that was created by someone downloading the original copyrighted source, making a few changes, and sending the patches back to the author. Finally, be sure to download all of your Windows updates directly from the source instead of, say, using an XP/SP2 CD that a friend burned for you.
Darn near everything (including Linux and BSD) is copyrighted, which is completely orthogonal to the issue of whether it's freely distributable.
I didn't mean to imply that it was. ANI, however, is a lot more secure than CID.
At my last job, I spent quite a bit of time in an ILEC's CO where we had a bunch of DSLAMs (is that enough acronyms in one sentence?) and other related stuff. We could dial into the racks' terminal server via an analog modem that was set to accept calls from exactly one ANI. Unless you were at the office using one particular jack, it wouldn't even answer the phone when you called. Add in a few unpublished numbers and you can build a reasonable simulation of firewall+NAT.
Would I trust the outcome of an election to just that? No way! But it's definitely a layer of obscurity that's worth having, in much the same way that although a firewall may be defeated, you're certainly better off having one.
Oh. Dear. Lord. Do you hear Republicans bitching about the '60 election? No. When on Earth will the Democrats stuff trotting out that tired old whine?
Find something new to complain about. This one just makes rational people write you off as delusional.
This may come as a great surprise, but:
Most other Missourians feel the same way about St. Louis - they don't want it lumped in with the rest of the state either. Ask an average Springfield(, MO)ian or Kansas City resident whether they think St. Louis is home to state's finest. Chances are, they're embarrassed by the perceived liberal messes, poor education, and (not least of all) the horrific traffic.
I don't want to start a flame war about which part is "better", but sometimes people forget that the other side's point of view can be eerily similar to their own.
I'm OK with that. If the software is certified for a particular set of Windows + patches, then on election night I want it running on that exact platform - not that system +/- a few minor "adjustments".
and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines.
One detail left out: did it answer calls from every phone number in existence, or just the ones on an approved list?
I don't mean to imply that everything was hunky-dorey, but the facts you mentioned (on their own) don't necessarily mean that the system was compromised.
As opposed to Blackboxvoting.biz which tried to sell me some herbal \/1ag4a this morning.
That didn't seem to work out too well for you, did it?
Show up, get your ballot, and drop it - unmarked (except for your local issues which you have no right to ignore) - into the box. That says that you're a voter, but you're unhappy with your choices. On the other hand, refusing to vote just makes you sound like a bitter slacker who can't be bothered to get off his butt to make his voice heard.
Politicians are acutely aware of voting results, and they'll do what they can to sway voters to their side (even if that means, shock and horror!, adopting some of the ideas popular among those people). How much do you think they'll change to pick up the "uninterested vote"? None at all.
If you're happy with the choices, then vote. If you're not happy, then you especially need to vote. Don't let yourself be counted among those too ignorant to care!
Apple has the privilege of only having one VFS layer. There is no such single layer that KDE could rely upon, since it runs on quite a few distinct operating systems.
I'd love a universal fish:// handler (even more if they added a multi-hop syntax ala Emacs' Tramp so that I could access files as root on a remote system), but I don't Debian and FreeBSD getting together and implementing an identical interface so that I can use it on my two favorite systems.
Umm, that's a traditional way of saying "I love you". You might want to think back to everyone you've sent such a letter to; you might need to correct a few misunderstandings here and there.
In other news, The Economist is running a story on whether Koch's postulates apply to modern illnesses.
For many of us, being Free Software is "suitability to task". That is, non-Free software is an automatic disqualification from the running.
I've built my company's web apps on Zope, Python, PostgreSQL, and FreeBSD. None of those "vendors" will go out of business next year (but if they did, who cares?). There will be no forced upgrade to a more expensive version that we don't need. We can get timely (and free) security updates and feature upgrades. We have an infinite-user license.
How on Earth could a closed vendor compete with that? The answer: they can't. There are far too many Free options for developing network applications to even glance at the proprietary stuff.
Oh, and my boss likes our system so much that he just gave me permission to release all of the non-business-logic software I've written over the last year under an open source license. The only remaining step is to pick the license that we'll use to share our work with the community that made it all possible. Have I mentioned today that I dig my job?
...thereby proving that were are, in fact, a member of some shadowy cabal bent on world domination/destruction. Exactly how many years of "volunteer" service did you have to give before the Secret Service let you go back home?
Thanks for the funniest thing I've heard all day!
Even worse is when you end up with mycity.org, mycitypolice.org, mycityparksandrecreationdepartment.com, mycitypoliticians.gov, and so on. What's so awful about mycity.gov, police.mycity.gov, parks.mycity.gov, people.mycity.gov, and so on?
If I created something pretty cool that was going to generate a lot of hits, I certainly wouldn't mind making it obvious that it's one of my company's products: "Hey, kewlgame.honeypot.net is pretty slick! Maybe I'll wander up one level to honeypot.net to see what else they host!"
Unless, that is, that they're so cynical about their own products that they don't really want to be associated with them on a long-term basis...
How many commercial travel operators are going to move away from the well-recognized .com TLD and into a new .travel? That sounds even lamer than .biz, and I've literally never seen one single legit business in that namespace (please don't flood me with counterexamples).
At any rate, you'll see at least as many smartass domain names as legitimate ones in either dumb new TLD. For example:
I for one welcome our new com.post overlords.
$200 at the local massage parlor, plus tip.
Yep. I fired up KMyMoney2 at the office, selected File -> Open, and entered "sftp://myserver/home/me/" in the directory input line. Then I browsed until I saw the accounts file I wanted and double-clicked it. Voila - I was looking at my checkbook without manually copying a single file or running KMyMoney2 remotely. Even better, it remembers the path to the last file you opened and automatically loads it at launch, so simply loading KMyMoney2 automatically opens my personal checkbook with no extra intervention from me.
People who think KDE is bloated don't really grasp what it can do for them. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Neither does this. That link is what you get if you visit their Mac support page and click on "Internet Explorer 5 for Mac".
If no support is available at any price, then it doesn't exist. QED, there is no IE5 for Mac.
Your boss handed you a lifetime-employment card and you're bitching?
Do we really need a VB clone in linuxland?
You do not. I do not have my retirement worked out yet, and I welcome such a clone with open arms.
I couldn't disagree more. I'm responsible for a web-based application that my company's customers use to access our database, generate reports, fetch scanned documents, etc. and I made strict XHTML/1.0+CSS compliance a critical priority from the first day of planning. Because of this, our clients can use Windows+IE, Windows+Firefox, OSX+Safari, Linux+Konqueror, or good ol' Lynx to use every bit of functionality throughout the site.
Our clients are in the transportation industry, and many of them have Internet-connected computers solely to visit our site. As it stands right now, they have no reason whatsoever to stick with Windows when they buy their next computer. If their friends tell them to get a Mac because they're easier to use, fine. If their kid installs Linux for them because it's free, fine. If they want to stick with Windows, that's also OK.
The point is that I've given them no reason to keep from switching to a different OS if they want to. I didn't do this because I'm anti-Microsoft - I just wanted a good experience for our customers - but I'm sure that Bill and friends would've preferred that I approached it differently.
Actually, sorry for being so harsh. They might've regenerated the stats since you last looked at it.
When you can build an unambiguous object tree from HTML, you can define what "properly" means and apply it to that tree to get pixel-perfect renderings in every correct browser known.
When the same HTML can be diagrammed 39 ways to Sunday without any being the obviously correct tree, the rest is a crap shoot.
It's like attempting to decode data encrypted with a one-time pad. "Mozilla is teh r0xx3r!" is just as likely as "Internet Explorer 4 me", but neither is necessarily the "correct" answer (ie what was originally intended). Frankly, that Slashdot renders at all is a testament to the design teams behind all of the browsers that can display it. I &heart; Slashdot, but it's certainly not because I admire the beauty and elegance of the HTML that Slashcode pumps out.
You're right. Building an intriguing project that could get large amounts of public support and is based around a safe and efficient freakin' nuclear reactor has nothing to do with energy.
Sounds to me like the focus is exactly where you want it to be, albeit not (yet) in the form you're asking for.
Does NFS work for you?