I am amazed that you can post on Slashdot at a default of +2 with your broken English and Luddite views.
Domestication has, on the whole, been *extremely* pleasant for us. Occasionally we get a plague from an animal species that way, yes. We've also managed to do such amazing things as grow food so efficiently that we can support a large and sedentary (vs nomadic) population almost anywhere on Earth, and give them lots of leisure time to display their ignorance by commenting on Slashdot.
Also, the "junk DNA" remark you are criticizing was from the submitter. Maybe the article suggested somehow adding more chromosomes rather than replacing apparently unused regions. Either way, it sounded like primarily a thought experiment, so you can relax. Perhaps after you eschew modern medicine and die at 30, we will encode your sad story into some bacterial DNA for the edification of future generations.
I'm glad I'm not paying that guy by the hour. In the time he spent trying to get the Micros~1 library and tools to do what he needed, he could have simply written the client side of the protocol. Instead of reading the relevant RFC, he gripes about inconsistent documentation on MSDN and searches the web. And then he cites his own incompetence as an example of how much programming has changed. Wow, what wisdom.
It's not like copying some extra genetic material is that expensive for the cell. What's the selective disadvantage in having some superfluous introns (non-coding regions) in your DNA?
We may not immediately be able to make natural organisms "better" in terms of natural fitness, but we can still make plenty of modifications which are beneficial to us. We can do it even without the use direct genetic engineering; we call that "domestication".
By "post-DMCA" I meant the general legislative climate. I was not implying that the DMCA was relevant to this specific case.
I believe it is only in the last 10 or 15 years that misappropriation of a trade secret has been treated as a state or federal crime. Do you have a counterexample of earlier legislation?
Maybe the most you would pay for it is nothing. TV has only novelty value to me, for example; I often feel after watching something (which is rare these days) that the enjoyment I got from it was not even worth the time invested.
Suppose you sneak some people into a museum with an entrance fee without them paying, and they get to look at everything. What is the economic benefit? Are they happier? Would they have paid for it? Can they now charge someone else to pay for a recounting of the experience? Now suppose I draw a really bad picture and call my home "The Museum of Lousy Art" and start asking $100 to walk in and gaze upon the picture. Furthermore suppose some kids look in my window and see the picture. Have they gained anything? Perhaps, but was it worth $100?
Now, you could argue that the satellite service has some value because a large market of consumers exists who will pay the price asked. But you can't exactly resell the pirated service you are receiving, so what they will pay is no measure of your "economic benefit". Perhaps you can sell your entire pirate rig to someone else; that is exactly the potential economic benefit I mentioned originally. Otherwise, you are probably getting more satisfaction out of simply achieving the "pirating" than from watching the results.
That's not obvious. It's not anything you can hoard or resell, for example. Just because the satellite service charges a lot for it doesn't make it worth that much.
I think even the argument that the satellite companies are harmed by lost revenue is stronger.
I'm getting the impression from other posters that this is indeed a big undrground business. Not even owning a TV myself, I find it difficult to imagine paying anyone for the privelege of watching it....
Is breaking an NDA a criminal act? Breach of contract is normally something handled in civil court. You might be made to pay damages, but you won't be going to jail for it. Or perhaps I don't understand how things work in the post-DMCA America.
I could understand treating international industrial espionage as a criminal matter; I don't think you can get someone extradited to face a suit in civil court, which is where this is normally resolved. But the guy lives in the US. Why isn't a suit good enough? Has disclosing a trade secret been considered criminal until recently?
Reading a (slightly dated) article on the legislation being used to prosecute him, I'm not even convinced that requirements of intent are met in this case. Who was he hoping to provide economic benefit to? Do the satellite hackers sell mod chips?
In each option transaction, one person "writes" (sells) the option, and one person buys the option. The buyer of a put has the OPTION to sell at the strike price until the expiration date. The writer must buy at that price if the option is exercised. A call option is a similar arrangement, but the option writer is instead obligated to sell to the option holder. The situation you are thinking of is writing an uncovered call, where you do not actually hold the shares you have promised to sell. Purchasing options does not risk losing more than you spent.
Umm... surely the article means to say that whitelisted senders do not require a token?
Anyway, this sounds really sweet. I never bothered making a hotmail account before, but now that I can "Earn Money at Home" just by receiving and reading spam all day, I have a reason to sign up!
Micros~1 will not release any of their core products on any platform but their own. (IE doesn't count, since you don't directly pay for it; instead its popularity as a client makes their server offerings more appealing.) They are almost down to one supported kernel (no more 9x/ME), and they certainly don't want to throw away the development effort spent on all those undocumented OS features:)
Looking forward, Microsoft is very serious about Yukon (their SQL-server-for-a-filesystem project), and that will almost certainly not be available in a compatible form on non-MS platforms, nor would they encourage its use if it was. The last thing they want to do is let anyone think they endorse something other than an all-MS shop as a reasonable way to do business. (Although I suppose someone might have said the same thing about IBM a few years back, given their even greater vertical integration.)
I can't even imagine them releasing watered-down versions of Office et alia on other platforms. They just have too much coupling in their designs. And Windows as a system is all about proliferation of interfaces; new software built on.NET might be more portable in theory, but I suspect their own products will always rely on things which are only implemented as black-box binaries on Windows.
I find it interesting that so many people comment that Forth is meant for embedded environments and has no place in a "modern" GUI system. But PostScript is similar to Forth in flavor, and its original embedded target was printers... and now OS X uses "Display PDF", more or less a superset of Display PostScript.
Just because a tool like Forth is traditionally used by a single programmer in a very cramped system doesn't mean it couldn't have applications in other places. There are many things I wouldn't write in Forth... and there are many times I find myself writing GDI calls and wishing for a more Forth-like interface.
At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
Yes, that normally is difficult if there is "no connection between the computers". So is the mouse also a base station for wireless ethernet?!?
I believe Diablo was basically complete and looking for a publisher when Blizzard merged with the developers, so that doesn't really speak to the potential quality of a collaborative effort.
This is hardly what was being suggested. Only that a rehabilitative approach is more sensible than prison time, for nonviolent juvenile vandals.
It's a bit easier to find and exploit holes then it is to find and patch those holes
Obviously the words of someone who has never written an exploit in his life. Or even audited source code for holes.
Most security problems, especially your average buffer overflow, take just a few keystrokes to patch once located (especially given drop-in replacements like vsnprintf() et al). Only an architectural security problem could require more effort to patch than to exploit. (I suppose one could argue that every buffer overflow or unneeded service open to the world is really an instance of a much larger architectural problem, in the sense of c language tools or design philosophy.)
Whether your average worm writer has anything to do with finding the holes they use or constructing working exploits for them is another question.
Personally, I like the Kevin Mitnick treatment
I'm sure you would *love* the "Mitnick treatment" when they are *your* constitutional rights being brushed aside.
Slashdot Mirror
I am amazed that you can post on Slashdot at a default of +2 with your broken English and Luddite views.
Domestication has, on the whole, been *extremely* pleasant for us. Occasionally we get a plague from an animal species that way, yes. We've also managed to do such amazing things as grow food so efficiently that we can support a large and sedentary (vs nomadic) population almost anywhere on Earth, and give them lots of leisure time to display their ignorance by commenting on Slashdot.
Also, the "junk DNA" remark you are criticizing was from the submitter. Maybe the article suggested somehow adding more chromosomes rather than replacing apparently unused regions. Either way, it sounded like primarily a thought experiment, so you can relax. Perhaps after you eschew modern medicine and die at 30, we will encode your sad story into some bacterial DNA for the edification of future generations.
<flamethrower mode=off>
I'm glad I'm not paying that guy by the hour. In the time he spent trying to get the Micros~1 library and tools to do what he needed, he could have simply written the client side of the protocol. Instead of reading the relevant RFC, he gripes about inconsistent documentation on MSDN and searches the web. And then he cites his own incompetence as an example of how much programming has changed. Wow, what wisdom.
It's not like copying some extra genetic material is that expensive for the cell. What's the selective disadvantage in having some superfluous introns (non-coding regions) in your DNA?
We may not immediately be able to make natural organisms "better" in terms of natural fitness, but we can still make plenty of modifications which are beneficial to us. We can do it even without the use direct genetic engineering; we call that "domestication".
The Raelians, duh! That's how come Clonaid is so far ahead of other human cloning efforts... they read the documentation.
By "post-DMCA" I meant the general legislative climate. I was not implying that the DMCA was relevant to this specific case.
I believe it is only in the last 10 or 15 years that misappropriation of a trade secret has been treated as a state or federal crime. Do you have a counterexample of earlier legislation?
Maybe the most you would pay for it is nothing. TV has only novelty value to me, for example; I often feel after watching something (which is rare these days) that the enjoyment I got from it was not even worth the time invested.
Suppose you sneak some people into a museum with an entrance fee without them paying, and they get to look at everything. What is the economic benefit? Are they happier? Would they have paid for it? Can they now charge someone else to pay for a recounting of the experience? Now suppose I draw a really bad picture and call my home "The Museum of Lousy Art" and start asking $100 to walk in and gaze upon the picture. Furthermore suppose some kids look in my window and see the picture. Have they gained anything? Perhaps, but was it worth $100?
Now, you could argue that the satellite service has some value because a large market of consumers exists who will pay the price asked. But you can't exactly resell the pirated service you are receiving, so what they will pay is no measure of your "economic benefit". Perhaps you can sell your entire pirate rig to someone else; that is exactly the potential economic benefit I mentioned originally. Otherwise, you are probably getting more satisfaction out of simply achieving the "pirating" than from watching the results.
That's not obvious. It's not anything you can hoard or resell, for example. Just because the satellite service charges a lot for it doesn't make it worth that much.
I think even the argument that the satellite companies are harmed by lost revenue is stronger.
I'm getting the impression from other posters that this is indeed a big undrground business. Not even owning a TV myself, I find it difficult to imagine paying anyone for the privelege of watching it....
This law is *much* more specific than that. Nevermind the question of whether this *should* be treated as criminal.
Is breaking an NDA a criminal act? Breach of contract is normally something handled in civil court. You might be made to pay damages, but you won't be going to jail for it. Or perhaps I don't understand how things work in the post-DMCA America.
I could understand treating international industrial espionage as a criminal matter; I don't think you can get someone extradited to face a suit in civil court, which is where this is normally resolved. But the guy lives in the US. Why isn't a suit good enough? Has disclosing a trade secret been considered criminal until recently?
Reading a (slightly dated) article on the legislation being used to prosecute him, I'm not even convinced that requirements of intent are met in this case. Who was he hoping to provide economic benefit to? Do the satellite hackers sell mod chips?
In each option transaction, one person "writes" (sells) the option, and one person buys the option. The buyer of a put has the OPTION to sell at the strike price until the expiration date. The writer must buy at that price if the option is exercised. A call option is a similar arrangement, but the option writer is instead obligated to sell to the option holder. The situation you are thinking of is writing an uncovered call, where you do not actually hold the shares you have promised to sell. Purchasing options does not risk losing more than you spent.
Umm... surely the article means to say that whitelisted senders do not require a token?
Anyway, this sounds really sweet. I never bothered making a hotmail account before, but now that I can "Earn Money at Home" just by receiving and reading spam all day, I have a reason to sign up!
They must have one hell of an inventory problem if they are resorting to this for some extra cash!
Micros~1 will not release any of their core products on any platform but their own. (IE doesn't count, since you don't directly pay for it; instead its popularity as a client makes their server offerings more appealing.) They are almost down to one supported kernel (no more 9x/ME), and they certainly don't want to throw away the development effort spent on all those undocumented OS features :)
.NET might be more portable in theory, but I suspect their own products will always rely on things which are only implemented as black-box binaries on Windows.
Looking forward, Microsoft is very serious about Yukon (their SQL-server-for-a-filesystem project), and that will almost certainly not be available in a compatible form on non-MS platforms, nor would they encourage its use if it was. The last thing they want to do is let anyone think they endorse something other than an all-MS shop as a reasonable way to do business. (Although I suppose someone might have said the same thing about IBM a few years back, given their even greater vertical integration.)
I can't even imagine them releasing watered-down versions of Office et alia on other platforms. They just have too much coupling in their designs. And Windows as a system is all about proliferation of interfaces; new software built on
Terrorists are the real-world equivalent of trolls
Yes, exactly. When you respond to a troll, the terrorists have already won.
You know, I once had a German supervisor complain about me doing exactly that. Shit, I must be really obnoxious.
I find it interesting that so many people comment that Forth is meant for embedded environments and has no place in a "modern" GUI system. But PostScript is similar to Forth in flavor, and its original embedded target was printers... and now OS X uses "Display PDF", more or less a superset of Display PostScript.
Just because a tool like Forth is traditionally used by a single programmer in a very cramped system doesn't mean it couldn't have applications in other places. There are many things I wouldn't write in Forth... and there are many times I find myself writing GDI calls and wishing for a more Forth-like interface.
At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
Yes, that normally is difficult if there is "no connection between the computers". So is the mouse also a base station for wireless ethernet?!?
I believe Diablo was basically complete and looking for a publisher when Blizzard merged with the developers, so that doesn't really speak to the potential quality of a collaborative effort.
It sounds like your application is time travel, which seems pretty sexy to me.
Now where is that scroll of 'create boulders' when I need it?!?
perhaps all your slashdot posts linking to your homepage is pushing you up in pagerank? :)
kazaa and morpheus are the same network, so if you can download something from morpheus, you dont exactly need the kazaa client :)
the downloadable installer actually gets most of the kazaa program from the fasttrack network, oddly enough....
hand him the keys to your enterprise system
This is hardly what was being suggested. Only that a rehabilitative approach is more sensible than prison time, for nonviolent juvenile vandals.
It's a bit easier to find and exploit holes then it is to find and patch those holes
Obviously the words of someone who has never written an exploit in his life. Or even audited source code for holes.
Most security problems, especially your average buffer overflow, take just a few keystrokes to patch once located (especially given drop-in replacements like vsnprintf() et al). Only an architectural security problem could require more effort to patch than to exploit. (I suppose one could argue that every buffer overflow or unneeded service open to the world is really an instance of a much larger architectural problem, in the sense of c language tools or design philosophy.)
Whether your average worm writer has anything to do with finding the holes they use or constructing working exploits for them is another question.
Personally, I like the Kevin Mitnick treatment
I'm sure you would *love* the "Mitnick treatment" when they are *your* constitutional rights being brushed aside.