It is _possible_ to comply with 'all access to network resources', but this is costly.
Cardholder data, on the other hand, can be limited and is perfectly reasonable as a requirement.
For #11, does 'regular' imply frequent as well? Does that compound with 'all network resources'? If so, this is a HUGE time sink. It could also be done, but this has a cost attached as well. It gets worse. PCI is a far-reaching set of requirements, when read in specific. It even has implications as far as how you run your business, outside of technical security.
In general, companies tend to isolate the PCI-compliance requirements to a section of the company that simply doesn't interact with the rest of the company except through tightly controlled channels. This becomes even more important as you add on any fiduciary requirements from the U.S. Federal Government or privacy restrictions from the E.U., Canada or some other nations. It gets crazy, and eventually you just need to isolate the parts of your company that are going to have to become paperwork havens, and let the rest of the company operate.
I have had friends who work on Wall Street and have to comply with Sarbanes/Oxley (too lazy to check spelling, sorry) and I have to say... PCI is ugly as sin, but not as horrible at that mess.
Rootkits have as their goal the subversion of system security And that's exactly what this software is supposedly doing. No. There's a difference between making a boneheaded security gaffe and subverting security. If you can't see the difference between the two, then I suppose this conversation is moot, and we'll have to declare every piece of Linux software a rootkit if it's ever had a security issue that wasn't just a bug, but a deliberate design choice that turned out to have security implications.
That said, I'm actually not sure that this is as much of a problem as F-Secure has claimed.
What the software is doing is creating a hidden directory that the standard Windows API can't access except by explicit path name (e.g. it doesn't show up in the directory contents). So, here's the question: what does this gain a malicious program? Sure, such a directory is handy, but your friendly neighborhood worm or spyware could just create such a directory itself. It doesn't help the software in question get past local virus scanners in the first place, only hide from them subsequently... so what's the issue, here? What has Sony done that actually improves the situation for any malware?
I'm not saying it's a good policy to have such directories, but I'm also not sure that this is a serious security problem especially since, obviously, F-Secure's software was able to detect it.
It only seeks to protect sensitive biometric data which should not be visible to all programs) from the normal Windows API.
The intentions behind the software are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it does.
Correct.
What this software does is an end-run around the operating system, deliberately hiding things that should not and need not be hidden. Mostly True. I'm not sure I agree with "should not and need not," but I'll grant that they did it the wrong way. No question.
The bottom line is that this is not a rootkit. It's simply not. The term rootkit refers to a class of software that hides its existence from the OS, and this software does not do that. There's also the matter of the goal (you mentioned intent, but I think goals are more quantifiable and measurable). Rootkits have as their goal the subversion of system security. It doesn't matter if their DRM-enforcement modules from Sony CDs or virus delivery vectors. They exist to prevent the system from being aware of their installation and preventing their deinstallation. This software does not have any such goal. Its goal is to prevent casual API calls from accessing sensitive biometric data. Period.
I'm all for slapping Sony around over distributing software that has a security problem (e.g. it can provide safe harbor for malicious code), but let's not throw around the word "rootkit" unless we really mean a piece of software that tries to mask its existence on the system. Otherwise, we'll just have to come up with a new word for that.
Please note the defenition of "rootkit," ripped from the beginning of the rootkit wikipedia article:
A rootkit is a set of software tools intended to conceal running processes, files or system data from the operating system.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, yada yada yada. This is a naive definition (I'll edit it later, with appropriate sources). Many programs attempt to conceal files which are not rootkits. Rootkits are the core of a type of software that seeks to hide its own existence. This Sony software does no such thing. You can see the software. You can remove the software. You can view every one of the software's files. Even F-Secure said that they believed the software was designed only with the security of the thumbnail drive data in mind, not with any subversion of the host (like the real Sony rootkit that got them in so much trouble). It only seeks to protect sensitive biometric data which should not be visible to all programs) from the normal Windows API. Again, I'm not defending how they did this. It's poor design, as it has huge security implications. However, it's not a rootkit, but a poorly designed driver.
We need to be more careful to cry wolf when there's, you know... a wolf. Otherwise, when some company decides to deploy a real rootkit again, no one is going to listen to us.
Shoot, I'm more liberal than most and I think the PC bullshit goes too far. I've always been amused at the idea that political correctness is somehow associated with liberals. Who pushes the hardest to make sure words that will offend people don't end up on record albums? Who pushes the hardest to make sure that images that offend people won't show up on the Internet?
Each political party or ideal has its own idea of what's deeply offensive, and a fringe of each will always push to have such material or behavior removed from society. On the left, it tends to be bigotry, sexism, and the like. On the right it's pornography and anti-patriotism (flag burning amendment, anyone?) These are good conversations to have, though, as it keeps us examining what we consider right and wrong.
I posted this on the firehose version of this article. Thought I should do so here too:
Please note: this software simply creates a directory that is hidden from the Windows API for its fingerprint authentication. It's not actually a rootkit, just using one of the many tools of the trade of rootkits. The concern is that the hidden directory is hidden from all of the Windows API, including virus scanners, and thus could be used by malicious software to hide infected files.
I'm not sure that it's reasonable to accuse Sony of distributing a rootkit when they've simply distributed software which uses a technique that could accidentally help malicious software.
It's also probably a bad thing to keep swinging the rootkit-bat around like this. The next time some large corporation really tries to root all of their customers' machines, no one will believe the story.
There's no way that the Bush administration will put forth an actual watchdog. The best the Democrats can do is to block the nomination of one Loyal Bushy in favor of the next. No, I think they'll make a show of their resistance, but unless Bush puts forth someone who can't read or burns a copy of the Constitution on the steps of the Capitol Building before the hearing, the nomination will likely go through.
Read TFA:
They're doing something where they're layering film so that the front and the back are in focus like a cartoon [...] so they actually have to treat the actors in some way so we can hold our own with the background. So first off, it's not what the Slashdot summary says. It's going to have multiple planes of focus, but the entire frame will not be in focus. Think of an old cartoon where you had a foreground plane, an action plane and a background plane. It may look something like that, but of course, the real world has more in it than those three planes, so some things won't be in focus. No camera has an infinite depth of field, but it can be simulated by using multiple images, digitally composited. This is something like a focus bracket, which you can see a good example of in Wikipedia's picture of the day from April 18, 2007 (I just happen to have remembered this because it's where I learned about the technique).
No, we actually offend Christians quite often. The difference is, when we offend Christians, they don't stage riots and burn down embassies. No, of course, they don't. In the U.S. Christians tend not to riot because we're, on the whole, very respectful of them. There's good natured fun, but rarely does it get out of hand, and no one really brings out the big guns. As evidence, even a mild movie about Christ fantasizing about a life as a normal man, while on the cross, drew huge protests.
There are people who have invisible friends. Why is there a line in making fun of their belief? There really isn't. You don't get to draw lines in the sand when it comes to free speech. Once you put one restriction on it it is no longer free. Welcome to the 1800s where we decided that freedom of speech is not universal, but rather subject to the restrictions provided for by the rest of the constitution.
But that's beside the point. The real issue is how far you can go within social constraints. No one made a law that said that B.B. couldn't draw those cartoons. His publishers just decided not to carry them. No freedom of speech issues there. Social restrictions are often far more powerful than legal ones.
I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc. That's true, but I think that's mostly because, in the U.S. at least, we understand Christianity as a culture, and understand what sorts of fun we can and cannot make of it without outright offending anyone. After all, we've been learning that for centuries. Think back to the places where the jokes went over the top, and we learned what would offend. Remember Piss Christ? There is a line, but it's a fuzzy, cultural line that we had to find with trial and error. With Islam, we don't know where the line is, so we play it safe. Artists like B.B. are pushing the limits of our understanding with respect to where that line is, and someday we will have adapted to Islam to the point that we will be able to safely make fun of it without offending anyone *most* of the time.
To those of the Muslim faith: don't take it the wrong way. This is how a culture comes to terms with something new. You're now "in" so to speak.
Historians accept that the Bible exists, yes. Not sure what your point was, there, but I'm fairly sure that you don't know either, given that even biblical scholars can't agree on what real events some of the Bible might map to, and how literally or figuratively to interpret it.
But they can agree on what a large number of real events map. Does that mean because you can't amp all events, you throw everything out? No. It means that you don't get to wave the "historians accept the bible" bat around as if this were some defense of the entire text from front to back. You have to look at each, individual passage and look into the biblical scholarship that has been done around it. At times, you will discover that a passage refers to events which are well documented, and while the specifics might be in question, there's no doubt that the larger items did happen.
On the other hand, you were talking about reading the Bible in order to extrapolate information about its God. In that, there is no historical corroboration. There's no way for us, for example, to confirm the rationale stated in the Book of Job, even if we could confirm that the events happened. The Bible speaks to motivations behind deeds which are almost certainly colored or created whole-cloth by its authors. Those cannot be relied upon in any sort of historical context.
Certainly credible (eliminating people like Spong) biblical scholars don't agree on how to interpret all parts of the bible, but there substantial agreement. Can you tell me of a field of stufy where all practioners are in lockstep? It's the disagreement over how to interpret the Bible as a whole that are of concern. It used to be heresy to interpret the Bible literally, but modern interpretations are very literal. Those two views diverge wildly in terms of what we should take away from the book historically.
At a minimum, you would begin such an effort with a simple question: if all of this were fairy tale invented by people, would it still exist in the same form? The obvious answer is that, yes, it would exist in the same form, just like thousands of other works of fiction.
Really? It is historically well attested fiction. No, it's not. That's the point. There's nothing outside of Jewish tradition that corroborates a large amount of what's in the Old Testament. The New Testament is largely a set of propaganda for the church that the authors are trying to found, and so even where events or places map to other records, the details must be held in question. That's not a bad thing. Religious books don't need corroboration. Histories do, however.
"Patent submitters typically know about the most obvious examples of prior art, so most patents are worded to carefully carve out a niche in which the patent almost, but not quite, describes existing technologies."
And then they will sue, or threaten to sue, or offer to "license" the technology with as BROAD an interpretation as possible;-) Only in the minority of cases.
The vast majority of patent filings never see enforcement. They are used as a "warchest" to implement a system of mutually assured destruction, should one large company decide to sue another. This is why IBM had no problem contributing so many patents to the defense of open source software. It doesn't weaken the primary purpose for which IBM holds those patents.
If SPF were more widely implemented, or required to be implemented, wouldn't this problem be solved? Yes.
Don't send NDRs to domains without SPFs or when SPF fails. A fair point.
And what DynDNS is doing is simply preventing all people from using their service from knowing whether email is being delivered properly. If I typo an email address, I damn well better be getting an NDR from the recipient domain, because simply having it go into an email black hole and never knowing whether it got there is not an acceptable alternative. Welcome to 2007. I hate to say it, but this is the state we're in. When I used mailhop, I used it for secondary MX, so I would not really have cared too much about the off chance that when my primary MX was down, you sent mail with typo in the To address. Failure recovery doesn't need to be 100% perfect for me to appreciate having it.
Don't assume that there's prior art just because the Slashdot summary seems to be similar to things you used in the past. The only measure of valid prior art (other than actually going to court) is when a patent lawyer looks over both the letter of the claims and the claim of prior art. Often, in that light, the prior art turns out to have no relevance.
Patent submitters typically know about the most obvious examples of prior art, so most patents are worded to carefully carve out a niche in which the patent almost, but not quite, describes existing technologies.
One presumes that he has been required to surrender his hardware (all of it) to the authorities for the installation of the tracking software which phones home to indicate what he's doing (at whatever level of granularity it tracks such things).
He could probably get away with VMWare or the like running Linux under Windows, but that would just run the risk of landing him in jail.
His best bet is Cygwin, the suite of open source tools for Windows that includes everything you need to essentially subvert a Windows desktop and make it think it's a Unix-like OS. It's not 100% perfect, but it's a far cry better than pure Windows. I regularly use a Windows laptop with X running under it, ssh to my office with X-forwarding and several gnome-terminals running on my work desktop.
Other than that, the only native Windows apps I use are Firefox and Thunderbird, so it's often hard to tell what OS it actually is.
Also, and possibly more important... It's not like WotC is going to come to your house and destroy your books. If there's a rule that says you can't play old editions of games, I must have missed the memo. Of course, and that's the case for 1st ed, 2nd and 3.0 as well. The problem is that any players I recruit won't be able to buy these books new as of next year. They'll find plenty of 4.0 on the shelves, and they'll be asking me, "why can't we just play 4.0?" It's an insidious trap and one that I've come to terms with. The fact that Wizards yanked the rug out from under their statement that there wouldn't be a 4.0 for years is what's making this an untenable situation.
Guess I have to destroy my old Top Secret S.I. box, and my old WoD books, and my Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu books, and HoL, and AEon, and... Not at all, but try recruiting players for those. I can... sometimes. But it's always much easier to recruit players for a game when you're playing something that they can go out and buy on their hobby/gaming store shelves.
I have a suggestion. Take a look at the bible (which is accepted by historians) and perform your own scientific study of the effects and nature of God. Historians accept that the Bible exists, yes. Not sure what your point was, there, but I'm fairly sure that you don't know either, given that even biblical scholars can't agree on what real events some of the Bible might map to, and how literally or figuratively to interpret it.
As for your use of the phrase "scientific study"... you should do some reading on what the scientific method is all about. At a minimum, learn about the concept of testability. At a minimum, you would begin such an effort with a simple question: if all of this were fairy tale invented by people, would it still exist in the same form? The obvious answer is that, yes, it would exist in the same form, just like thousands of other works of fiction. From there, the book's contents must all be read with a high degree of skepticism. It might allow us to corrolate facts that we already have other sources for, and in that its contents are useful. It also has a number of valuable insights into the culture and attitudes of the ancient world. Everything else is really just interesting reading, and nothing more.
PS: your essay about Perl is also highly problematic. Try working in languages like Smalltalk and Ruby for a bit. I think you'll have very different opinions of what a usable object system must provide when you're done. Specifically, your attitude toward dynamic object capablities are somewhat archaic in the face of modern language design.
They killed the RPGA. Meh.
They killed Dungeon Magazine. A pity, because it usually had good stuff. I never subscribed, but I bought an issue now and then. Of those, only Dungeon affects me personally, but it was rather sudden notice for the RPGA.
They killed Dragon Magazine. For this they deserve to burn in hell, although the magazine has had its ups and downs over the years. I think any publication that tries to do interesting things will fall on its face from time to time, and I'll definitely agree that Dragon did. But, when I read articles like the Core Beliefs: Boccob... it tears me up that they killed that. They claim there will be/is an online version, but it won't be Paizo and my subscription is dead.
Since the early days of 2ed, with its recycled artwork and the increasing obviousness that T$R wasn't willing to pay even minimum wage to proofreaders to look over their stuff before it got to the printers, I've known that T$R was primarily concerned with making money. Aside from the 3.0->3.5 bait & switch, I haven't had much to complain about since WotC took over, though. I didn't either. In fact, even the 3.5 thing I understood. They had serious problems with 3.0 and errata just wasn't cutting it. 3.5 addressed those issues, and although there WERE differences, you could still use your 3.0 books with 3.5 as long as you knew where the major pitfalls were.
It was when Hasbro bought Wizards that they started pushing books that made no sense (why do we need a Complete Arcane *and* a complete Mage), only to then re-publish compendiums of all of the old material from those books because there was too much to read.
I play in 2 D&D groups (both of them containing people whom you know:-)). I suspect one of them will be ok with sticking to 3.5 rules. The other will probably want to move to 4.0, simply because of the announced rules improvements (though I'll wait to judge that until I see the details). The 4.0 rules will have to be spectacularly good for me to pay for them, I think. I can't see 4.0 being worth it. Everything I've heard reads like they've ripped the soul out of 3.5 and made it much more a cookie-cutter game like the worst elements of original 1st ed. combined with a video game. Yes, I'd like to see level 1 wizards that aren't going to fall over when they see a cockroach, but not at the expense of the creative process of character creation and campaign planning. The whole "everyone will have more defined roles in the party," thing sounds to me like classic video game play, not what I look for in a tabletop game.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'll want to play 4.0, but it will be a few years before I get over this feeling of betrayal (petty though that may be). For now, I'll see what Monte Cook's World of Darkness is like, and if it makes White Wolf games something I'd want to play.
You misunderstand. We're not upset that there was a 4th edition. We're upset that Wizards said many times, though their public forums and in conferences, that there would not be a 4th edition any time soon, and we made purchases with the expectation that the shelf-life on 3.5 was at least on the order of a few years.
Then they terminated the print magazines that had been the core of the D&D community for 30 years and announced that the new edition would be published mid-next-year.
They killed the RPGA. They killed Dungeon Magazine. They killed Dragon Magazine. They have set an end-of-life on half my bookshelf, the cost of which I don't want to think about.
The day they ended their license to Paizo for the magazines, was the day I canceled over $100 of pre-orders with Amazon for Wizards' products. I have spent thousands of dollars with them over the last decade on card games, tabletop books, etc. I will never buy from them again.
Burn me once, shame on you. Don't expect pre-orders for "Burn Me Again 4.0."
I'll wait and see what the Google tool provides. Perhaps it will have some nice features that stellarium doesn't. I'd also like to see the data they provide (stellarium's data isn't all that comprehensive).
One thing about stellarium that I love, though, is the red-filter. When you turn it on, the entire display is tinted red so that you can use it on a laptop while star-gazing without ruining your night vision. Very handy for star-spotting.
Stellarium doesn't integrate with maps of the world, that's why. With Stellarium, you specify your location in Lat./Lon. or you specify the location of a known observatory. Then it will show you what the sky will look like at the specified (or current) time of day. With Google Earth, it would be easy to see where the stars are in the sky from anywhere on the planet. I think you phrased that poorly. Stellarium lets you see the sky from any point on earth, but you might find yourself using Google Maps (and/or Google Earth) to locate your point on earth. This is a fair point, but one that's moot after the first time you fire up Stellarium.
Another tool that's useful is celestia, a tool for displaying the known universe in 3D, and navigating through it. It's a nice compliment to stellarium, and I recommend both tools highly. To see what celestia is capable of, fire it up and press "d" for the demo. It's definitely one of those "oooh, ahhh" moments.
I was wondering the same thing. I'm actually getting rather tired of this particular knee-jerk. Yes, there are Christian crackpots in the world. No, not all crackpots are Christian nor are all Christians crackpots. Faith in a deity is tangential to the search for truth through the scientific method. Only where one allows the two to become entangled does crackpottery arise.
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Cardholder data, on the other hand, can be limited and is perfectly reasonable as a requirement.
For #11, does 'regular' imply frequent as well? Does that compound with 'all network resources'? If so, this is a HUGE time sink. It could also be done, but this has a cost attached as well. It gets worse. PCI is a far-reaching set of requirements, when read in specific. It even has implications as far as how you run your business, outside of technical security.
In general, companies tend to isolate the PCI-compliance requirements to a section of the company that simply doesn't interact with the rest of the company except through tightly controlled channels. This becomes even more important as you add on any fiduciary requirements from the U.S. Federal Government or privacy restrictions from the E.U., Canada or some other nations. It gets crazy, and eventually you just need to isolate the parts of your company that are going to have to become paperwork havens, and let the rest of the company operate.
I have had friends who work on Wall Street and have to comply with Sarbanes/Oxley (too lazy to check spelling, sorry) and I have to say... PCI is ugly as sin, but not as horrible at that mess.
That said, I'm actually not sure that this is as much of a problem as F-Secure has claimed.
What the software is doing is creating a hidden directory that the standard Windows API can't access except by explicit path name (e.g. it doesn't show up in the directory contents). So, here's the question: what does this gain a malicious program? Sure, such a directory is handy, but your friendly neighborhood worm or spyware could just create such a directory itself. It doesn't help the software in question get past local virus scanners in the first place, only hide from them subsequently... so what's the issue, here? What has Sony done that actually improves the situation for any malware?
I'm not saying it's a good policy to have such directories, but I'm also not sure that this is a serious security problem especially since, obviously, F-Secure's software was able to detect it.
The intentions behind the software are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it does.
Correct. What this software does is an end-run around the operating system, deliberately hiding things that should not and need not be hidden. Mostly True. I'm not sure I agree with "should not and need not," but I'll grant that they did it the wrong way. No question.The bottom line is that this is not a rootkit. It's simply not. The term rootkit refers to a class of software that hides its existence from the OS, and this software does not do that. There's also the matter of the goal (you mentioned intent, but I think goals are more quantifiable and measurable). Rootkits have as their goal the subversion of system security. It doesn't matter if their DRM-enforcement modules from Sony CDs or virus delivery vectors. They exist to prevent the system from being aware of their installation and preventing their deinstallation. This software does not have any such goal. Its goal is to prevent casual API calls from accessing sensitive biometric data. Period.
I'm all for slapping Sony around over distributing software that has a security problem (e.g. it can provide safe harbor for malicious code), but let's not throw around the word "rootkit" unless we really mean a piece of software that tries to mask its existence on the system. Otherwise, we'll just have to come up with a new word for that.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, yada yada yada. This is a naive definition (I'll edit it later, with appropriate sources). Many programs attempt to conceal files which are not rootkits. Rootkits are the core of a type of software that seeks to hide its own existence. This Sony software does no such thing. You can see the software. You can remove the software. You can view every one of the software's files. Even F-Secure said that they believed the software was designed only with the security of the thumbnail drive data in mind, not with any subversion of the host (like the real Sony rootkit that got them in so much trouble). It only seeks to protect sensitive biometric data which should not be visible to all programs) from the normal Windows API. Again, I'm not defending how they did this. It's poor design, as it has huge security implications. However, it's not a rootkit, but a poorly designed driver.
We need to be more careful to cry wolf when there's, you know... a wolf. Otherwise, when some company decides to deploy a real rootkit again, no one is going to listen to us.
Each political party or ideal has its own idea of what's deeply offensive, and a fringe of each will always push to have such material or behavior removed from society. On the left, it tends to be bigotry, sexism, and the like. On the right it's pornography and anti-patriotism (flag burning amendment, anyone?) These are good conversations to have, though, as it keeps us examining what we consider right and wrong.
I posted this on the firehose version of this article. Thought I should do so here too:
Please note: this software simply creates a directory that is hidden from the Windows API for its fingerprint authentication. It's not actually a rootkit, just using one of the many tools of the trade of rootkits. The concern is that the hidden directory is hidden from all of the Windows API, including virus scanners, and thus could be used by malicious software to hide infected files.
I'm not sure that it's reasonable to accuse Sony of distributing a rootkit when they've simply distributed software which uses a technique that could accidentally help malicious software.
It's also probably a bad thing to keep swinging the rootkit-bat around like this. The next time some large corporation really tries to root all of their customers' machines, no one will believe the story.
There's no way that the Bush administration will put forth an actual watchdog. The best the Democrats can do is to block the nomination of one Loyal Bushy in favor of the next. No, I think they'll make a show of their resistance, but unless Bush puts forth someone who can't read or burns a copy of the Constitution on the steps of the Capitol Building before the hearing, the nomination will likely go through.
But that's beside the point. The real issue is how far you can go within social constraints. No one made a law that said that B.B. couldn't draw those cartoons. His publishers just decided not to carry them. No freedom of speech issues there. Social restrictions are often far more powerful than legal ones.
To those of the Muslim faith: don't take it the wrong way. This is how a culture comes to terms with something new. You're now "in" so to speak.
That, of course, depends on how broadly this precedent is applied.
But they can agree on what a large number of real events map. Does that mean because you can't amp all events, you throw everything out? No. It means that you don't get to wave the "historians accept the bible" bat around as if this were some defense of the entire text from front to back. You have to look at each, individual passage and look into the biblical scholarship that has been done around it. At times, you will discover that a passage refers to events which are well documented, and while the specifics might be in question, there's no doubt that the larger items did happen.
On the other hand, you were talking about reading the Bible in order to extrapolate information about its God. In that, there is no historical corroboration. There's no way for us, for example, to confirm the rationale stated in the Book of Job, even if we could confirm that the events happened. The Bible speaks to motivations behind deeds which are almost certainly colored or created whole-cloth by its authors. Those cannot be relied upon in any sort of historical context. Certainly credible (eliminating people like Spong) biblical scholars don't agree on how to interpret all parts of the bible, but there substantial agreement. Can you tell me of a field of stufy where all practioners are in lockstep? It's the disagreement over how to interpret the Bible as a whole that are of concern. It used to be heresy to interpret the Bible literally, but modern interpretations are very literal. Those two views diverge wildly in terms of what we should take away from the book historically. At a minimum, you would begin such an effort with a simple question: if all of this were fairy tale invented by people, would it still exist in the same form? The obvious answer is that, yes, it would exist in the same form, just like thousands of other works of fiction.
Really? It is historically well attested fiction. No, it's not. That's the point. There's nothing outside of Jewish tradition that corroborates a large amount of what's in the Old Testament. The New Testament is largely a set of propaganda for the church that the authors are trying to found, and so even where events or places map to other records, the details must be held in question. That's not a bad thing. Religious books don't need corroboration. Histories do, however.
And then they will sue, or threaten to sue, or offer to "license" the technology with as BROAD an interpretation as possible
The vast majority of patent filings never see enforcement. They are used as a "warchest" to implement a system of mutually assured destruction, should one large company decide to sue another. This is why IBM had no problem contributing so many patents to the defense of open source software. It doesn't weaken the primary purpose for which IBM holds those patents.
Don't assume that there's prior art just because the Slashdot summary seems to be similar to things you used in the past. The only measure of valid prior art (other than actually going to court) is when a patent lawyer looks over both the letter of the claims and the claim of prior art. Often, in that light, the prior art turns out to have no relevance.
Patent submitters typically know about the most obvious examples of prior art, so most patents are worded to carefully carve out a niche in which the patent almost, but not quite, describes existing technologies.
One presumes that he has been required to surrender his hardware (all of it) to the authorities for the installation of the tracking software which phones home to indicate what he's doing (at whatever level of granularity it tracks such things).
He could probably get away with VMWare or the like running Linux under Windows, but that would just run the risk of landing him in jail.
His best bet is Cygwin, the suite of open source tools for Windows that includes everything you need to essentially subvert a Windows desktop and make it think it's a Unix-like OS. It's not 100% perfect, but it's a far cry better than pure Windows. I regularly use a Windows laptop with X running under it, ssh to my office with X-forwarding and several gnome-terminals running on my work desktop.
Other than that, the only native Windows apps I use are Firefox and Thunderbird, so it's often hard to tell what OS it actually is.
As for your use of the phrase "scientific study"... you should do some reading on what the scientific method is all about. At a minimum, learn about the concept of testability. At a minimum, you would begin such an effort with a simple question: if all of this were fairy tale invented by people, would it still exist in the same form? The obvious answer is that, yes, it would exist in the same form, just like thousands of other works of fiction. From there, the book's contents must all be read with a high degree of skepticism. It might allow us to corrolate facts that we already have other sources for, and in that its contents are useful. It also has a number of valuable insights into the culture and attitudes of the ancient world. Everything else is really just interesting reading, and nothing more.
PS: your essay about Perl is also highly problematic. Try working in languages like Smalltalk and Ruby for a bit. I think you'll have very different opinions of what a usable object system must provide when you're done. Specifically, your attitude toward dynamic object capablities are somewhat archaic in the face of modern language design.
It was when Hasbro bought Wizards that they started pushing books that made no sense (why do we need a Complete Arcane *and* a complete Mage), only to then re-publish compendiums of all of the old material from those books because there was too much to read. I play in 2 D&D groups (both of them containing people whom you know
I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'll want to play 4.0, but it will be a few years before I get over this feeling of betrayal (petty though that may be). For now, I'll see what Monte Cook's World of Darkness is like, and if it makes White Wolf games something I'd want to play.
You misunderstand. We're not upset that there was a 4th edition. We're upset that Wizards said many times, though their public forums and in conferences, that there would not be a 4th edition any time soon, and we made purchases with the expectation that the shelf-life on 3.5 was at least on the order of a few years.
Then they terminated the print magazines that had been the core of the D&D community for 30 years and announced that the new edition would be published mid-next-year.
Yeah, we're pissed.
They killed the RPGA. They killed Dungeon Magazine. They killed Dragon Magazine. They have set an end-of-life on half my bookshelf, the cost of which I don't want to think about.
The day they ended their license to Paizo for the magazines, was the day I canceled over $100 of pre-orders with Amazon for Wizards' products. I have spent thousands of dollars with them over the last decade on card games, tabletop books, etc. I will never buy from them again.
Burn me once, shame on you. Don't expect pre-orders for "Burn Me Again 4.0."
I'll wait and see what the Google tool provides. Perhaps it will have some nice features that stellarium doesn't. I'd also like to see the data they provide (stellarium's data isn't all that comprehensive).
One thing about stellarium that I love, though, is the red-filter. When you turn it on, the entire display is tinted red so that you can use it on a laptop while star-gazing without ruining your night vision. Very handy for star-spotting.
Another tool that's useful is celestia, a tool for displaying the known universe in 3D, and navigating through it. It's a nice compliment to stellarium, and I recommend both tools highly. To see what celestia is capable of, fire it up and press "d" for the demo. It's definitely one of those "oooh, ahhh" moments.
I was wondering the same thing. I'm actually getting rather tired of this particular knee-jerk. Yes, there are Christian crackpots in the world. No, not all crackpots are Christian nor are all Christians crackpots. Faith in a deity is tangential to the search for truth through the scientific method. Only where one allows the two to become entangled does crackpottery arise.