"This might increase pressure on Apple to loosen the backdoor restrictions. Will the industry relent and allow Government access to data from these devices?"
I suppose this post may just be click-bait, but there is no "loosening" or "relenting." The question is whether companies sell end-to-end encryption to their customers -- Yes or No. End-to-end encryption is the only real security that the government can't invade. People may disagree about whether citizens in a democracy should have a private sphere that excludes the government, but those are the stakes -- Yes or No. There is no gray area.
You misunderstood the discussion. An interview loop at Microsoft is a *loop* because you are routed past multiple interviewers with different questions and emphases. That is, all in one day. Three interviews is a typical start (taking up the morning), and if you have a shot after that, you'll be sent to additional interviewers. It sounds like Google works the same way.
I work there (FTE) and this is complete nonsense. The managers may be working themselves to death, but individual contributors are not, except in cases of extreme inefficiency. The company wants you to produce results, not to kill yourself and waste the money spent training you. They take the work-life balance thing seriously nowadays, regardless of how things used to be when this stereotype first was cast. The most cynical thing you can say about this is that you can't burn out your employees in a competitive job market or when you aren't compensating them with soaring stock values.
With all that said, I agree that it is exceeding lame to cancel the pub plan.
"The frontal and temporal lobes, which govern speech -- no dedicated writing center is hardwired in the brain -- may also figure in. For example, lesions in Wernicke's area, located in the left temporal lobe, result in excessive speech and loss of language comprehension. People with Wernicke's aphasia speak in gibberish and often write constantly. In light of these traits, Flaherty speculates that some activity in this area could foster the urge to blog."
I got a pretty good education funded by the taxpayers of several states. I drive on pretty good roads that are paid for by taxes and which promote commerce, hence wealth. My grandmother received a pretty good pension from Social Security and tax-funded health care until she died at a ripe old age. The Internet is a pretty good communication system that was created using taxes. And the security function you think so highly of has been a corporate-profit-drive botch (for this country, at least) in every military or covert operation since Korea, except maybe for the cooperative Balkan effort in the nineties. Now why don't you dream up some more examples to support your flimsy viewpoint? Or did you just copy it off of a Libertarian Web site?
Virtual desktops! The FVWM paper (like its cousin the Afterstep pager I'm looking at right now) struck me as the single most impressive feature in X when I switched to Linux six years ago. I don't know how long pagers and virtual desktops have ben part of the Unix world -- surely since before the mid-nineties, at least. This article makes no mention of this even though it interviews a Microsoft scientist (with three computers on her desk) whose research shows that more computer "desk" space (i.e., a really big monitor) makes people dramatically more productive. That's interesting research, but it would have been good if the reporter had also talked to anybody other than Microsoft. Whoops -- he did -- Apple, Microsoft's "only competitor" according to the article. Unix/Linux gets cut out completely in this account despite its extreme relevance. I don't see a conspiracy -- I suspect the reporter is merely ignorant.
Due respect for Microsoft: I've visited the campus and seen some of this intelligent "presence" software, which is being used internally, and it truly is amazing. Business will eat this stuff up when it comes on the market, or gets included in the OS, which is not to say that workers will enjoy the potential capability of such software to log workers' activities in Big Brotherish detail.
I set up a 100-node Linux infrastructure for a charter school, with a custom-built server and firewall on the backend and surplus or donated PCs as clients. The niftiest thing was making roaming logons possible; any student could access his/her desktop from any machine on the network (all home directories were on the main server). It was a simple matter of using NFS and NIS to do this. We had nice high-end HP switches, 200 drops, and about two miles of ethernet pulled throughout the building, so the network was quite fast and uncongested. A lot of applications could be run the server's/usr/local, which was also shared out by NFS. We had Samba running as well for the Windows users (mainly clerical staff), and after I left the project, the admins added Macintosh support. OUr main problem was flaky hardware on the client side; otherwise, it worked like a dream and I challenge you to repreoduce any like it on a Windows platform.
There are still plenty of WordPerfect 8 users on Linux who are, like me, sufficiently attached to it to install the old libc and xlib libraries it requires. (It gets harder each time.) There is even an actively maintained support site: Rick Moen's WordPerfect on Linux FAQ. WP8's printer support is still reasonably good after all these years, and ther is no substitute for the Reveal Codes feature, which is the ultimate in being able to lift the hood and make quick repairs. OO is slow and ugly (just like it has always been), Abiword is feature-poor and quirky (it won't even support printers that ancient WP8 supports, and I don't have any interest in learning why). Serious word processing for non-Word-users is a nightmare of switching around among apps until one does the job. In my work, which includes authoring books, WordPerfect still comes out on top most of the time as the best all-around choice. I will gladly buy an a new Linux-native release. (And we just won't talk about WP9 for Linux....) The only features where WP8 can't match or beat reecent releases of Word is in change-tracking and commenting, where MS dominates completely.
Of course our friend Bob Enderle, the Grand Troll of on-line newsmedia, is quoted in today's New York Timesarticle:
``It seems unlikely this is going to create a material, significant security problem,'' said Rob Enderle, a technology expert and principal analyst with the Enderle Group. ``It's more embarrassing than anything else because it makes it look like Microsoft can't control its code.''
It's disappointing to see such lazy reporting from the Times.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that Debian stable has a MIPS port (debian-mipsel) that works like a champ on the Qube2. There is a highly useful HOWTO that covers the problems of getting any system installed and bootable on the Qube's weird architecture. It took some additional fiddling when I set it up, but it worked. No need to go throwing away your stock Qube motherboard, in other words, and you get to keep the thing up to date using apt-get. My Debianized Qube2 currently only has a Web server and IRC running on it, but I plan to make it my firewall as well and get rid of a bulkier machine currently serving that purpose. I made pretty much the same changes to the RAM and hard drive that this guy describes.
You are dead wrong. Usage determines meaning. Dictionaries track usage, not immutably fixed meanings, although they may also provide etymologies and usage histories of the meanings that have existed in the past. Dictionaries report, they don't prescribe. Only self-appointed language police prescribe what's proper and improper, but that is a matter of culture and politics, not linguistics. And in your example, "gooke beke fumf goosh dorf" means whatever we (a linguistic community) agree it means.
If you want meanings to be fixed and stable, stick to mathematics.
David W. Robinson, Ph.D. Prof. of English Georgia Southern University
For a pretty Linux desktop experience there's Debian; for the more seasoned Linux hackers there is Mandrake and SuSE; for the Linux newbies there's Slackware and Gentoo.
You are joking, right? Pretty Debian? Mandrake for seasoned hackers? Gentoo for newbies?
After losing eight hours of editing work during a botched backup attempt, I heard about a utility called safedelete. I can't find much on it, but here it is from Ibiblio. Interestingly, the person that told me about this utility (which sets up a trash directory with timed expiration and a system of aliases for rm and related commands) was an old Unix hand, and only secondarily a Linux user. The program works fine in Debian, I can report.
And I don't get these people saying they are too smart to need an undelete capability. Must be nice!
I don't know when I've enjoyed reading a long, lawyerly letter so much. (I can't imagine that this was really written by a congressman, though it would be nice to think so.) An earlier poster commented that we have all heard these arguments before on Slashdot. Well, not necessarily. There is a big difference between advocates and insiders trading views they already share, and watching a masterful display of reasoned analysis about genuinely different viewpoints. The letter puts the official Microsoft position through the Bass-O-Matic by out-arguing it, not by shouting back or by storming off in a rhetorical huff.
If Microsoft's public statements were held to this level of logic and clarity more often, we would have a very different software market. Advertising and other sorts of propaganda are so pervasive that I think we tend to forget what a real debate looks like. This Peruvian congressman reveals just how shallow Microsoft's self-interested arguments against free software really are. It makes them look both stupid and shrill.
I have long wondered why Microsoft doesn't assimilate the multiple desktops concept from the Unix world; it's so obviously a good idea. The standard Windows desktop is a convenient temporary dumping ground for files and program shortcuts, but after using Linux, I find it unbearably claustrophobia-producing to have just one desktop, not three with four panes each, navigatible (in my case) with the Afterstep pager.
The problem with Microsoft's desktop metaphor is that it's not implemented very well. It's too small. My real desk is huge and covered with junk, most of it easily locatable. In Windows, the desktop feels about as big as a cafeteria tray, and all you can do is stack things on top of each other, navigating them with tabs in the screen tray (and not too many of those). With a and FVWM/Afterstep/Englightenment pager, I have a real-seeming virtual space that allows for the clutter and complexity I need. It's easier and more natural to develop a spatial memory of where stuff is than to acquire abstract knowledge of a directory tree.
The Unix implementations of this principle are not perfect. I use my multiple virtual desktops to organize open program windows, not data files, because of the limitations of my particular Window manager. I use a tree-organized file manager for the other stuff.
On the other hadn, I haven't had huge success convincing Windows users that multiple desktops are a good idea and can change their lives for the better. A lot of people seem pretty stressed out managing even one desktop.
Is is really a bad thing that Web server logs are going to be treated the same as telephone logs? You don't need a court order to obtain logs that show who called whom, but you do need a court order to tap someone's phone and listen to the content of the call. The same now applies to Web connections.
The really bad legal attacks on freedom in cyberspace have involved attempts to grab powers and impose controls that the technology makes feasible, but that are not supported in the laws regulating conventional media (e.g., the cases and controversy surrounding DMCA, UCITA, DeCSS). Lawrence Lessig makes the argument that legislators need to move slowly and carefully, making new law by extending the old law according to carefuly drawn analogies. The worst thing that can happen is to take the potential for control through computer code and enshrine that in law (as with the DMCA's restrictions on who can read what and where).
It seems to me that the Justice Department made a successful argument for treating cyberspace the same as older communication media. In the long run, that's a good thing. The law already contains protections against unwarranted surveillance, and to apply that same body of law to cyber-communications is a desirable outcome.
Look, if you are working for Microsoft directly or indirectly, don't you have to expect to follow the conditions they lay down? I have done contract technical editing for Microsoft Press, and you can be certain that they expected me to be using Word, and when I invoiced them, I had to use IE to access the invoicing site. I am no fan of the company's products and I detest it's business practices, but I don't see the point of taking it personally. I used their software when I had to, and I went on using Linux in my free time.
Basically, there seems to be a difference between people who are dealing directly with MS as developers (or whatever) and people who are normal users. You've given up some of your freedom when you decide to program for the Windows API. That doesn't make you the victim of illegitimate market manipulation -- it's called making a living.
Slashdot Mirror
"This might increase pressure on Apple to loosen the backdoor restrictions. Will the industry relent and allow Government access to data from these devices?"
I suppose this post may just be click-bait, but there is no "loosening" or "relenting." The question is whether companies sell end-to-end encryption to their customers -- Yes or No. End-to-end encryption is the only real security that the government can't invade. People may disagree about whether citizens in a democracy should have a private sphere that excludes the government, but those are the stakes -- Yes or No. There is no gray area.
You got it! As an anarcho-liberal technophile Seattleite who loathes McGinn, I endorse this message.
Could that picture be any more fake? You've been trolled.
Please substantiate your claim that "A lot of people died because of that release of raw information."
And somebody with moderation please mod this troll down.
Whoa, OK, I misunderstood that for a moment.
You misunderstood the discussion. An interview loop at Microsoft is a *loop* because you are routed past multiple interviewers with different questions and emphases. That is, all in one day. Three interviews is a typical start (taking up the morning), and if you have a shot after that, you'll be sent to additional interviewers. It sounds like Google works the same way.
Arsenic smells (hence tastes) like garlic when heated in air and oxidized. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic#Chemical.
Obviously, then, you need a Guildsman piloting the ship, tripping on spice and foreseeing the obstacles.
I work there (FTE) and this is complete nonsense. The managers may be working themselves to death, but individual contributors are not, except in cases of extreme inefficiency. The company wants you to produce results, not to kill yourself and waste the money spent training you. They take the work-life balance thing seriously nowadays, regardless of how things used to be when this stereotype first was cast. The most cynical thing you can say about this is that you can't burn out your employees in a competitive job market or when you aren't compensating them with soaring stock values.
With all that said, I agree that it is exceeding lame to cancel the pub plan.
Ever wonder why nearly all blogs are stupid?
"The frontal and temporal lobes, which govern speech -- no dedicated writing center is hardwired in the brain -- may also figure in. For example, lesions in Wernicke's area, located in the left temporal lobe, result in excessive speech and loss of language comprehension. People with Wernicke's aphasia speak in gibberish and often write constantly. In light of these traits, Flaherty speculates that some activity in this area could foster the urge to blog."
(Emphasis mine.)
I got a pretty good education funded by the taxpayers of several states. I drive on pretty good roads that are paid for by taxes and which promote commerce, hence wealth. My grandmother received a pretty good pension from Social Security and tax-funded health care until she died at a ripe old age. The Internet is a pretty good communication system that was created using taxes. And the security function you think so highly of has been a corporate-profit-drive botch (for this country, at least) in every military or covert operation since Korea, except maybe for the cooperative Balkan effort in the nineties. Now why don't you dream up some more examples to support your flimsy viewpoint? Or did you just copy it off of a Libertarian Web site?
Virtual desktops! The FVWM paper (like its cousin the Afterstep pager I'm looking at right now) struck me as the single most impressive feature in X when I switched to Linux six years ago. I don't know how long pagers and virtual desktops have ben part of the Unix world -- surely since before the mid-nineties, at least. This article makes no mention of this even though it interviews a Microsoft scientist (with three computers on her desk) whose research shows that more computer "desk" space (i.e., a really big monitor) makes people dramatically more productive. That's interesting research, but it would have been good if the reporter had also talked to anybody other than Microsoft. Whoops -- he did -- Apple, Microsoft's "only competitor" according to the article. Unix/Linux gets cut out completely in this account despite its extreme relevance. I don't see a conspiracy -- I suspect the reporter is merely ignorant.
Due respect for Microsoft: I've visited the campus and seen some of this intelligent "presence" software, which is being used internally, and it truly is amazing. Business will eat this stuff up when it comes on the market, or gets included in the OS, which is not to say that workers will enjoy the potential capability of such software to log workers' activities in Big Brotherish detail.
Duh, shell, not perl.
watch -n 1 'echo "The time is near: `date +%s`"'
This is nice to have running at the moment of truth to create the maximum dramatic effect.
I set up a 100-node Linux infrastructure for a charter school, with a custom-built server and firewall on the backend and surplus or donated PCs as clients. The niftiest thing was making roaming logons possible; any student could access his/her desktop from any machine on the network (all home directories were on the main server). It was a simple matter of using NFS and NIS to do this. We had nice high-end HP switches, 200 drops, and about two miles of ethernet pulled throughout the building, so the network was quite fast and uncongested. A lot of applications could be run the server's /usr/local, which was also shared out by NFS. We had Samba running as well for the Windows users (mainly clerical staff), and after I left the project, the admins added Macintosh support. OUr main problem was flaky hardware on the client side; otherwise, it worked like a dream and I challenge you to repreoduce any like it on a Windows platform.
``It seems unlikely this is going to create a material, significant security problem,'' said Rob Enderle, a technology expert and principal analyst with the Enderle Group. ``It's more embarrassing than anything else because it makes it look like Microsoft can't control its code.''
It's disappointing to see such lazy reporting from the Times.
If you want meanings to be fixed and stable, stick to mathematics.
David W. Robinson, Ph.D.
Prof. of English
Georgia Southern University
You are joking, right? Pretty Debian? Mandrake for seasoned hackers? Gentoo for newbies?
No more of this or someone may get hurt.
After losing eight hours of editing work during a botched backup attempt, I heard about a utility called safedelete. I can't find much on it, but here it is from Ibiblio. Interestingly, the person that told me about this utility (which sets up a trash directory with timed expiration and a system of aliases for rm and related commands) was an old Unix hand, and only secondarily a Linux user. The program works fine in Debian, I can report.
And I don't get these people saying they are too smart to need an undelete capability. Must be nice!
I don't know when I've enjoyed reading a long, lawyerly letter so much. (I can't imagine that this was really written by a congressman, though it would be nice to think so.) An earlier poster commented that we have all heard these arguments before on Slashdot. Well, not necessarily. There is a big difference between advocates and insiders trading views they already share, and watching a masterful display of reasoned analysis about genuinely different viewpoints. The letter puts the official Microsoft position through the Bass-O-Matic by out-arguing it, not by shouting back or by storming off in a rhetorical huff.
If Microsoft's public statements were held to this level of logic and clarity more often, we would have a very different software market. Advertising and other sorts of propaganda are so pervasive that I think we tend to forget what a real debate looks like. This Peruvian congressman reveals just how shallow Microsoft's self-interested arguments against free software really are. It makes them look both stupid and shrill.
Good work!
I have long wondered why Microsoft doesn't assimilate the multiple desktops concept from the Unix world; it's so obviously a good idea. The standard Windows desktop is a convenient temporary dumping ground for files and program shortcuts, but after using Linux, I find it unbearably claustrophobia-producing to have just one desktop, not three with four panes each, navigatible (in my case) with the Afterstep pager.
The problem with Microsoft's desktop metaphor is that it's not implemented very well. It's too small. My real desk is huge and covered with junk, most of it easily locatable. In Windows, the desktop feels about as big as a cafeteria tray, and all you can do is stack things on top of each other, navigating them with tabs in the screen tray (and not too many of those). With a and FVWM/Afterstep/Englightenment pager, I have a real-seeming virtual space that allows for the clutter and complexity I need. It's easier and more natural to develop a spatial memory of where stuff is than to acquire abstract knowledge of a directory tree.
The Unix implementations of this principle are not perfect. I use my multiple virtual desktops to organize open program windows, not data files, because of the limitations of my particular Window manager. I use a tree-organized file manager for the other stuff.
On the other hadn, I haven't had huge success convincing Windows users that multiple desktops are a good idea and can change their lives for the better. A lot of people seem pretty stressed out managing even one desktop.
Is is really a bad thing that Web server logs are going to be treated the same as telephone logs? You don't need a court order to obtain logs that show who called whom, but you do need a court order to tap someone's phone and listen to the content of the call. The same now applies to Web connections.
The really bad legal attacks on freedom in cyberspace have involved attempts to grab powers and impose controls that the technology makes feasible, but that are not supported in the laws regulating conventional media (e.g., the cases and controversy surrounding DMCA, UCITA, DeCSS). Lawrence Lessig makes the argument that legislators need to move slowly and carefully, making new law by extending the old law according to carefuly drawn analogies. The worst thing that can happen is to take the potential for control through computer code and enshrine that in law (as with the DMCA's restrictions on who can read what and where).
It seems to me that the Justice Department made a successful argument for treating cyberspace the same as older communication media. In the long run, that's a good thing. The law already contains protections against unwarranted surveillance, and to apply that same body of law to cyber-communications is a desirable outcome.
Look, if you are working for Microsoft directly or indirectly, don't you have to expect to follow the conditions they lay down? I have done contract technical editing for Microsoft Press, and you can be certain that they expected me to be using Word, and when I invoiced them, I had to use IE to access the invoicing site. I am no fan of the company's products and I detest it's business practices, but I don't see the point of taking it personally. I used their software when I had to, and I went on using Linux in my free time.
Basically, there seems to be a difference between people who are dealing directly with MS as developers (or whatever) and people who are normal users. You've given up some of your freedom when you decide to program for the Windows API. That doesn't make you the victim of illegitimate market manipulation -- it's called making a living.