You're right, this problem is rampant in the open-source community. Why, I've heard rumors that some of the people who write code for Linux don't even get paid for it!
I'd gladly pay a per-mile charge for the road, if it would get the street sweepers to clear the junk completely off the road, rather than into the bicycle lane where I have to ride over it with my skinny tires....
Re:Creates real inequity. Poor priced out of rushh
on
Every Road a Toll Road
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> Is it a better world if the limosine can travel fast because the Escorts can't afford to be in that part of town at that time of day?
The proposal is to charge more for driving when/where there is more congestion - if the limo is driving fast, then the Escort can afford to be there. This plan essentially means that rich people have the 'right' to spend more time in traffic jams. Sounds good to me.:-)
Seriously, though, there's a fundamental flaw in this plan, and that flaw is that at certain times, *all* roads are congested. People don't *want* to be stuck in traffic, they do it because they have no other choice. Taxing them more because they are stuck just adds insult to injury, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the problem. I'd much rather have the government give people tax rebates for riding bikes to work; it would help the congestion problem, the pollution problem, and the obesity problem all at the same time!
The version numbers are meaningful mainly within the development tree, not external to it. Gnome 2.x is not equivalent to KDE 2.x, it is simply a full version beyond Gnome 1.0
Yeah, right. Next you'll be trying to tell me that Windows 2000 isn't 833.33 times better than Linux 2.4!
But if you read the rest of the sentence, with a new emphasis:
(B) A "digital musical recording" does not include a material object:--
(i) in which the fixed sounds consist entirely of spoken word recordings, or
(ii) in which one or more computer programs are fixed , except that a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or
communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material.
IANAL, but it seems clear from the context that a computer program that plays encoded audio files on the disc constitutes "statements or instructions" that "bring about the perception" of the sounds. So in terms of the AHRA, these new discs are legally equivalent to other digital music recordnigs. In other words, we're legally within our rights to be able to make backups. If the technology prevents that, then they're taking away our legal rights without due process, which is illegal.
What I'm even more concerned about, though, is that the players included on these discs may have spyware. I'm sure Universal would love to know what music we listen to, when, and how often. I'm equally sure that I don't want them underhandedly snooping that information from me without my knowledge. Call me paranoid, but I won't run software that comes from the music industry on my computer.
> how long will it be until you have to scan your license to buy alcohol or tobacco
Maybe they'll link identity info with credit card info. Then 15-year-olds can just steal their mom's credit card, run it through the combined identify/purchase scanner, and buy booze for free!
> What I would envision for the future is the biometric info (e.g. fingerprint) is stored in that barcode.
Hey, yeah! Combine that with the device pictured in the article -- "A driver's license bar code reading device that reveals the age of the owner" -- and you'll never again have to stand in the cold outside a smoky bar while a 300 pound bouncer-gorilla squints at your picture and then looks at you suspiciously....
Maybe they're planning to announce the iSegway -- it comes in four different colors!
Re:Are some people complaining a bit too much?
on
The Eyes Have It
·
· Score: 1
Hrm... are the virgins going to be on the plane? If not, then you're fucked. Or rather, you're not fucked.
Re:Are some people complaining a bit too much?
on
The Eyes Have It
·
· Score: 1
> As long as the industry in question is largely directed by the government it is government. The police cannot hire a thug to kick in your door, search your house, then turn over the evidence to the police. If that is the case then he is an "agent of the police" and subject to the same regulations and laws and rules of evidence as any officer. The same theory applies to the airlines.
This is not true. The police *can* hire a thug to kick in your door, search your house, then turn over the evidence to the police. They can even use that evidence to arrest you. And they can certainly use that evidence to stop you from boarding a plane. However, if you have a good lawyer, then they can't use that evidence to put you in jail *once your case goes to trial* (okay, I'm overstating a bit, a really good lawyer would even prevent your case from going to trial). Nonetheless, if they've stopped you from blowing up an airplane / national-monument, then who cares if they can't send you to jail for that crime? They can always revoke your citizenship and arrest or deport you, if they don't want to just shoot you indiscriminately....
Of course, if the police want to use the information collected in airport security checks to arrest people, then they wouldn't resort to this kind of tactic. But once they've got a hold of someone, they can always find legal ways to dig up more dirt. Geez, am I the only/. reader who watches Law&Order?:-)
> Of course, the terrorists are going to be training to pass the lie detector test, so it probably won't help catch them.
Naturally. So anyone who passes through all the various security checkpoints without incident is clearly a terrorist, and should be arrested immediately.
The world is becoming more and more like the movie "Brazil".
I suppose it's worth mentioning at this point that your ears (unless you've been listening to loud music for too long) have about a 3% THD. Yes, 3.0. If you stick an earphone in your ear and play two tones at different frequencies, your ear will generate a cubic distortion tone that can actually be measured in the ear canal. And these distortions vary significantly from one person to another. So no matter how good your sound system is, you'll never hear the music the way the composer(s) did.
Do I need to mention how the room you're in colors the sound?
B) Highly professional "black hat" who will enter your system, steal your new revolutionary prototype plans and provide them for a small charge to your competitor who will get it to market six months before you.
Do these kinds of top-secret ultra-spy black-hat crackers really exist, or are they the modern equivalent of the Communist Menace? I've seen plenty of proof of script kiddies, but have never seen evidence (outside of Hollywood) that these kind of people exist. Are we building fortresses to protect ourselves against black-hats who don't exist, or are there really people that talented and that dangerous out there?
Black hats are going to get ahold of the exploit, even if the source code to it is not published on incidents.org or bugtraq. All that not publishing it there does is provide a false sense of security.
Not only that, but if the report provides enough information for people to be able to identify and understand the exploit (a must for any report), then going from the report to a working exploit might take all of 10 minutes for a half-decent coder. So regardless of whether the report contains code or not, the code will be almost instantly as available as the report. So there's no logical reason *not* to include it in the report. Meanwhile, there are *plenty* of reasons, as mentioned by irix and blakestah, to include exploit code. So not including the code gains you nothing, while including it gains you something. Guess which is the better option?
All of these worms made use of security flaws in the systems they attacked, and if there hadn?t been security vulnerabilities in Windows®, Linux, and Solaris®
My favorite part, though, is "This is a true statement...." It's true in the same sense that "Hitler, Mahatma Ghandi, and Mother Teresa were collectively responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews" is a true statement.
If openly addressing vulnerabilities inevitably leads to those vulnerabilities being exploited, vendors will have no choice but to find other ways to protect their customers.
Crap...I'm trying to find a problem with the logic, but I can't actually understand the argument - anyone? What other ways are there for vendors to protect their customers than put out fixes?
Considering that this essay is from Microsoft, I think it reads clearly as a thinly veiled threat to sue anyone who points out vulnerabilities in Microsoft products (UCITA, anyone?). In Microsoft logic, if people stop publishing vulnerabilities for fear of being sued, then the problem of people exploiting known vulnerabilities goes away. This logic is akin to leaving a bank vault wide open, but turning off the lights so thieves won't see it.
In the land of real people, litigation will not solve the problem, and Microsoft needs to know this. The first security expert to get sued will be screwed, but by that time the vulnerability will have been made public, and thus be exploitable. This lawsuit will leave a bad taste in the mouths of the "self-described security community," so that the next exploit that is found will be exploited rather than published. When people start abandoning their products en masse because of constant security problems, Microsoft may realize that they shouldn't've angered the people who point out the chinks in their armor.
Re:Why no recumbents in Tour de France?
on
Biking @ 80 MPH
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Recumbents aren't used in road races because they wouldn't affect the outcome. What most people don't understand about the Tour de France (or any serious bike race) is that it's not an individual sport, but a team sport. No single rider can maintain a fast pace unassisted for any length of time. In the Tour, riders have to travel about 200 km per day most days for 20 days (okay, they get one day off in the middle). This year, Armstrong averaged 40.01 kph for 3452 km. Could he do that on his own? No chance. The reason he was able to maintain that speed was that he rode in a group -- the peloton -- that took turns fighting wind resistance. The peloton (a French word meaning "a bunch of guys on bikes" -- at least 90% of the riders on any given day) is made up of many teams, all riding together in one big group. The people at the front of the peloton put out an extra effort to fight wind resistance, so the rest of the group doesn't have to. Various teams take turns at the front, so that no one team gets worn out. The strategy of the Tour involves teams trying to control the speed of the peloton, either speeding up or slowing down, by spending extra time at the front either riding hard (to speed up the group to catch cyclists trying to break away) or riding slow (to slow down the group and let their team's star ride away with the victory). Of course there's more to it than that, but that's the basic idea. And that basic idea would not change if the riders were all on recumbents. Whether you're riding at 40 kph or 70 kph, your basic foe is wind resistance, and the rules of the peloton still apply. So allowing recumbents would not change the spirit of the race (which is really more like chess than like sprinting), but would increase the danger to all the participants. Is that a good idea? I think not.
I wish more people would realize this -- chairs, or more generally "things", are not expensive to a company. Sure, each of us might balk at spending $700 on a chair, but that amount of money falls below the radar of most companies, compared to their biggest expense: employees.
I don't have the exact numbers, but in silicon valley the starting salary for tech workers has to be at least $50,000/yr (anything less, and the employees couldn't even afford to live in a shack in a garlic field in Gilroy). Add to that the cost of providing health insurance, retirement benefits, stock options, office space, electricity, a computer, etc., and it costs the company roughly double the employee's salary per year to have the employee work there. Now, compare the cost of a $700, one-time expense for a chair to the cost of a $100,000 yearly expense for the employee. Sure, the employee's going to spend a day or two fiddling with the settings. But over the course of a year, if a comfortable chair increases the employee's productivity by just 1% (that's 5 minutes a day spent working rather than stretching ones back or standing at the window), the company gets an effective return on its investment in the first year! Personally, I have more faith in a company that is willing to spend money to optimize the productivity of its employees than a company that sacrifices employee performance to save a few dollars. "Penny wise, pound foolish," I believe, is the proverb that applies here.
Slashdot Mirror
DNA and computer code have one very important thing in common -- 90% of the code is junk!
You're right, this problem is rampant in the open-source community. Why, I've heard rumors that some of the people who write code for Linux don't even get paid for it!
I'd gladly pay a per-mile charge for the road, if it would get the street sweepers to clear the junk completely off the road, rather than into the bicycle lane where I have to ride over it with my skinny tires....
> Is it a better world if the limosine can travel fast because the Escorts can't afford to be in that part of town at that time of day?
:-)
The proposal is to charge more for driving when/where there is more congestion - if the limo is driving fast, then the Escort can afford to be there. This plan essentially means that rich people have the 'right' to spend more time in traffic jams. Sounds good to me.
Seriously, though, there's a fundamental flaw in this plan, and that flaw is that at certain times, *all* roads are congested. People don't *want* to be stuck in traffic, they do it because they have no other choice. Taxing them more because they are stuck just adds insult to injury, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the problem. I'd much rather have the government give people tax rebates for riding bikes to work; it would help the congestion problem, the pollution problem, and the obesity problem all at the same time!
What do you think the chances are that Palm decided to spin off the PalmOS division to make room for the new BeOS engineering team?
Nah, they're just spinning off the software division before the Xerox lawsuit reduces them to rubble.
The version numbers are meaningful mainly within the development tree, not external to it. Gnome 2.x is not equivalent to KDE 2.x, it is simply a full version beyond Gnome 1.0
Yeah, right. Next you'll be trying to tell me that Windows 2000 isn't 833.33 times better than Linux 2.4!
But if you read the rest of the sentence, with a new emphasis:
(B) A "digital musical recording" does not include a material object:--
(i) in which the fixed sounds consist entirely of spoken word recordings, or
(ii) in which one or more computer programs are fixed , except that a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material.
IANAL, but it seems clear from the context that a computer program that plays encoded audio files on the disc constitutes "statements or instructions" that "bring about the perception" of the sounds. So in terms of the AHRA, these new discs are legally equivalent to other digital music recordnigs. In other words, we're legally within our rights to be able to make backups. If the technology prevents that, then they're taking away our legal rights without due process, which is illegal.
What I'm even more concerned about, though, is that the players included on these discs may have spyware. I'm sure Universal would love to know what music we listen to, when, and how often. I'm equally sure that I don't want them underhandedly snooping that information from me without my knowledge. Call me paranoid, but I won't run software that comes from the music industry on my computer.
Hey, if corporations are legal people, let's hit 'em with B&E if they try this! Hrm, how do you put an entire corporation in jail for 20 years?
> how long will it be until you have to scan your license to buy alcohol or tobacco
Maybe they'll link identity info with credit card info. Then 15-year-olds can just steal their mom's credit card, run it through the combined identify/purchase scanner, and buy booze for free!
> What I would envision for the future is the biometric info (e.g. fingerprint) is stored in that barcode.
Hey, yeah! Combine that with the device pictured in the article -- "A driver's license bar code reading device that reveals the age of the owner" -- and you'll never again have to stand in the cold outside a smoky bar while a 300 pound bouncer-gorilla squints at your picture and then looks at you suspiciously....
Maybe they're planning to announce the iSegway -- it comes in four different colors!
Hrm... are the virgins going to be on the plane? If not, then you're fucked. Or rather, you're not fucked.
> As long as the industry in question is largely directed by the government it is government. The police cannot hire a thug to kick in your door, search your house, then turn over the evidence to the police. If that is the case then he is an "agent of the police" and subject to the same regulations and laws and rules of evidence as any officer. The same theory applies to the airlines.
/. reader who watches Law&Order? :-)
This is not true. The police *can* hire a thug to kick in your door, search your house, then turn over the evidence to the police. They can even use that evidence to arrest you. And they can certainly use that evidence to stop you from boarding a plane. However, if you have a good lawyer, then they can't use that evidence to put you in jail *once your case goes to trial* (okay, I'm overstating a bit, a really good lawyer would even prevent your case from going to trial). Nonetheless, if they've stopped you from blowing up an airplane / national-monument, then who cares if they can't send you to jail for that crime? They can always revoke your citizenship and arrest or deport you, if they don't want to just shoot you indiscriminately....
Of course, if the police want to use the information collected in airport security checks to arrest people, then they wouldn't resort to this kind of tactic. But once they've got a hold of someone, they can always find legal ways to dig up more dirt. Geez, am I the only
> Of course, the terrorists are going to be training to pass the lie detector test, so it probably won't help catch them.
Naturally. So anyone who passes through all the various security checkpoints without incident is clearly a terrorist, and should be arrested immediately.
The world is becoming more and more like the movie "Brazil".
The bad voodoo is called IDE. Try using a SCSI CD drive -- you'll find they're much faster.
I suppose it's worth mentioning at this point that your ears (unless you've been listening to loud music for too long) have about a 3% THD. Yes, 3.0. If you stick an earphone in your ear and play two tones at different frequencies, your ear will generate a cubic distortion tone that can actually be measured in the ear canal. And these distortions vary significantly from one person to another. So no matter how good your sound system is, you'll never hear the music the way the composer(s) did.
Do I need to mention how the room you're in colors the sound?
Really? *Both* of those three?
Do these kinds of top-secret ultra-spy black-hat crackers really exist, or are they the modern equivalent of the Communist Menace? I've seen plenty of proof of script kiddies, but have never seen evidence (outside of Hollywood) that these kind of people exist. Are we building fortresses to protect ourselves against black-hats who don't exist, or are there really people that talented and that dangerous out there?
Black hats are going to get ahold of the exploit, even if the source code to it is not published on incidents.org or bugtraq. All that not publishing it there does is provide a false sense of security.
Not only that, but if the report provides enough information for people to be able to identify and understand the exploit (a must for any report), then going from the report to a working exploit might take all of 10 minutes for a half-decent coder. So regardless of whether the report contains code or not, the code will be almost instantly as available as the report. So there's no logical reason *not* to include it in the report. Meanwhile, there are *plenty* of reasons, as mentioned by irix and blakestah, to include exploit code. So not including the code gains you nothing, while including it gains you something. Guess which is the better option?
All of these worms made use of security flaws in the systems they attacked, and if there hadn?t been security vulnerabilities in Windows®, Linux, and Solaris®
For that matter, Linux® is also a registered trademark.
My favorite part, though, is "This is a true statement...." It's true in the same sense that "Hitler, Mahatma Ghandi, and Mother Teresa were collectively responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews" is a true statement.
Considering that this essay is from Microsoft, I think it reads clearly as a thinly veiled threat to sue anyone who points out vulnerabilities in Microsoft products (UCITA, anyone?). In Microsoft logic, if people stop publishing vulnerabilities for fear of being sued, then the problem of people exploiting known vulnerabilities goes away. This logic is akin to leaving a bank vault wide open, but turning off the lights so thieves won't see it.
In the land of real people, litigation will not solve the problem, and Microsoft needs to know this. The first security expert to get sued will be screwed, but by that time the vulnerability will have been made public, and thus be exploitable. This lawsuit will leave a bad taste in the mouths of the "self-described security community," so that the next exploit that is found will be exploited rather than published. When people start abandoning their products en masse because of constant security problems, Microsoft may realize that they shouldn't've angered the people who point out the chinks in their armor.
Recumbents aren't used in road races because they wouldn't affect the outcome. What most people don't understand about the Tour de France (or any serious bike race) is that it's not an individual sport, but a team sport. No single rider can maintain a fast pace unassisted for any length of time. In the Tour, riders have to travel about 200 km per day most days for 20 days (okay, they get one day off in the middle). This year, Armstrong averaged 40.01 kph for 3452 km. Could he do that on his own? No chance. The reason he was able to maintain that speed was that he rode in a group -- the peloton -- that took turns fighting wind resistance. The peloton (a French word meaning "a bunch of guys on bikes" -- at least 90% of the riders on any given day) is made up of many teams, all riding together in one big group. The people at the front of the peloton put out an extra effort to fight wind resistance, so the rest of the group doesn't have to. Various teams take turns at the front, so that no one team gets worn out. The strategy of the Tour involves teams trying to control the speed of the peloton, either speeding up or slowing down, by spending extra time at the front either riding hard (to speed up the group to catch cyclists trying to break away) or riding slow (to slow down the group and let their team's star ride away with the victory). Of course there's more to it than that, but that's the basic idea. And that basic idea would not change if the riders were all on recumbents. Whether you're riding at 40 kph or 70 kph, your basic foe is wind resistance, and the rules of the peloton still apply. So allowing recumbents would not change the spirit of the race (which is really more like chess than like sprinting), but would increase the danger to all the participants. Is that a good idea? I think not.
I wish more people would realize this -- chairs, or more generally "things", are not expensive to a company. Sure, each of us might balk at spending $700 on a chair, but that amount of money falls below the radar of most companies, compared to their biggest expense: employees. I don't have the exact numbers, but in silicon valley the starting salary for tech workers has to be at least $50,000/yr (anything less, and the employees couldn't even afford to live in a shack in a garlic field in Gilroy). Add to that the cost of providing health insurance, retirement benefits, stock options, office space, electricity, a computer, etc., and it costs the company roughly double the employee's salary per year to have the employee work there. Now, compare the cost of a $700, one-time expense for a chair to the cost of a $100,000 yearly expense for the employee. Sure, the employee's going to spend a day or two fiddling with the settings. But over the course of a year, if a comfortable chair increases the employee's productivity by just 1% (that's 5 minutes a day spent working rather than stretching ones back or standing at the window), the company gets an effective return on its investment in the first year! Personally, I have more faith in a company that is willing to spend money to optimize the productivity of its employees than a company that sacrifices employee performance to save a few dollars. "Penny wise, pound foolish," I believe, is the proverb that applies here.
Okay, I guess /. filters .sigs. Go to this page to see the code that virus checkers object to.
As an aside, adding my .sig to the top of any web page (without the tags) should annoy most people running virus checkers.