That seems doubtful. No mysterious charges appeared on our bank accounts or credit card statements, and the tax return was correctly calculated. If it was a copycat, they did a good job on our taxes and a lousy job at stealing our money or our identities.
We used online TurboTax for the 2011 tax return. At the end, it emailed us a complete PDF of our state and federal returns, with a header saying that they would be filed online on a specific day. Then it failed to file either one. We only found out a year later when the IRS and the state tax board sent us letters asking why we didn't file our taxes. When we called the TurboTax people, they claimed that we had never had any kind of account with them, even though we showed them the email. We had to pay penalties and interest because of their bad software.
So privacy is not the only reason to avoid online tax software. Sometimes it just loses all your information.
We attempted to opt-out of Yellow Pages deliveries in our local area in California, but it doesn't work. The guys who throw these things on everyone's front porch do not care whether you are on the list or not. I'm not even sure that they have a list. You will still get phone books.
GPLv2 says that source code includes "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable". GPLv3 is even more explicit. So they are likely, depending on the details, just violating the GPL, not using any kind of loophole.
As I understand it: Git is not good at tracking large files, because it keeps a full copy of every version of a file. A Git repository that contains 10 versions of a 32 MB file will be 320 MB in size (before compression: Git uses gzip).
I have a brand new IBM ThinkPad T30
with a TCPA chip, and I have been running Debian GNU/Linux on it from day one. In fact,
the Microsoft OS it came with has never been booted. If I could just get ATI
to give me specs on the video card, so that I could make suspend/resume work
better, I'd be entirely satisfied with it.
Now, this is not to say that TCPA
does not have some unsettling implications. For now, TCPA-enabled machines can
boot "trusted" or "untrusted" OSes. What worries me is what might happens
years in the future, when TCPA or its moral equivalent is in just about every
machine and "trusted" OSes are the exception, not the rule, on mainstream
users' PCs (should that ever come to pass). At that point, I'll start getting
worried about the possibility that manufacturers might turn off the ability
to boot an untrusted OS.
I mailed this letter to my representative and senators today:
As a registered voter in your district, I am writing to you regarding
the disaster that so suddenly focused our nation's attention this past
Sept. 11. The most important work in the aftermath of this terrible
attack is to care for the survivors and mourn for the departed, and
furthermore to track down and punish those responsible for the
attack. I encourage any efforts along these lines. However, I am
also concerned about other issues.
In particular, I wish to draw to your attention to the potential for
unnecessary legislative assault on personal freedom in the United
States in the coming weeks and months. There is the worrisome
possibility that new laws will be passed and signed in the name of
national security, applying less than a prudent or usual amount of
scrutiny to negative effects. Historically, such laws have proven
difficult to repeal, making their passage even less desirable.
An example lies in the misguided call for a ban on the use of
encryption for electronic mail, because terrorist Osama bin Laden is
known to make use of encryption. Proponents of such a ban obviously
mean well, intending to make it more difficult for terrorists to
communicate. They do not understand that such software is freely
available from many sources throughout the world, not just within the
United States, so a ban would have no practical effect on availability
of encryption, and even if bin Laden were prevented from using
encryption, his organization would many other options for secure
communication.
In addition, encryption has many legitimate uses. Electronic mail
sent unencrypted is easily read and intercepted by a third party
without the knowledge of sender or recipient, in the same way that
information written on a postcard can be read as it passes through the
postal system. Encryption is the only practical way for ordinary
citizens to provide basic security against tampering that a simple
paper envelope provides for paper mail. This in itself is enough
reason to allow and even promote the use of encryption, but there are
many other positive uses, as illustrated in books such as Schneier's
Applied Cryptography.
In summary, I encourage you now in this time of crisis to consider
bills on their merits and pay close scrutiny to negative effects on
individual liberty, in the careful same way that you would do so at
any other time. Do not be allow yourself to be swayed by hysterical
(but understandable) reactions to the magnitude of the present
disaster. As Benjamin Franklin once said, ``They that can give up
essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety.'' When the safety in question is in fact
illusory, this adage is even more applicable.
Sincerely,
Ben Pfaff.
Re:When our campus got Ethernet in the dorms...
on
Dorm Storm?
·
· Score: 1
This reminds me of what I did a few times on
Michigan State campus for fun. Personal machines
on the MSU campus have hostnames of the form
.user.msu.edu, where is
derived from + . So it's
pretty easy to figure out enough of a person's
real name from their hostname to look them up
in the campus directory. So, once in a while,
I would read my webserver log, figure out where
whoever was looking at my webpage at that moment lived...
then walk over to his room, knock on his
door, and say, "Hi, , how do you like my webpage?" Really freaked
a few people out that way.
Check out GNU libavl for some good binary tree structure code. The stable version is well written C; the development version is a literate program. (Note: I am the author.)
Here's the output from GCC on the ``palindromic C program'':
blp:/raid/home/blp(0)$ gcc -ansi -pedantic c.otto.c
c.otto.c: In function `main':
c.otto.c:30: invalid lvalue in assignment
c.otto.c:33: invalid lvalue in increment
The problem is that the program contains two assignments of the form ``(int) x = y;''. Now, the problem with that is that the result of a cast is not an "lvalue" in C; that is, a cast cannot appear on the left side of an assignment operator.
I'm tired of seeing 3dfx threaten everyone under the sun for making GLIDE clones. If they try to sue a large company and get slapped down in court, then they'll have no leg to stand on to threaten poor defenseless high school students and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh how I wish Groklaw were still publishing so that I'd know the whole story here.
That seems doubtful. No mysterious charges appeared on our bank accounts or credit card statements, and the tax return was correctly calculated. If it was a copycat, they did a good job on our taxes and a lousy job at stealing our money or our identities.
We used online TurboTax for the 2011 tax return. At the end, it emailed us a complete PDF of our state and federal returns, with a header saying that they would be filed online on a specific day. Then it failed to file either one. We only found out a year later when the IRS and the state tax board sent us letters asking why we didn't file our taxes. When we called the TurboTax people, they claimed that we had never had any kind of account with them, even though we showed them the email. We had to pay penalties and interest because of their bad software.
So privacy is not the only reason to avoid online tax software. Sometimes it just loses all your information.
We attempted to opt-out of Yellow Pages deliveries in our local area in California, but it doesn't work. The guys who throw these things on everyone's front porch do not care whether you are on the list or not. I'm not even sure that they have a list. You will still get phone books.
The average 2-year-old is about 34 inches tall, plus or minus 3 inches or so. This will be the world's tallest toddler.
GPLv2 says that source code includes "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable". GPLv3 is even more explicit. So they are likely, depending on the details, just violating the GPL, not using any kind of loophole.
As I understand it: Git is not good at tracking large files, because it keeps a full copy of every version of a file. A Git repository that contains 10 versions of a 32 MB file will be 320 MB in size (before compression: Git uses gzip).
...then I think his video must have metastatized, instead of going viral.
Now, this is not to say that TCPA does not have some unsettling implications. For now, TCPA-enabled machines can boot "trusted" or "untrusted" OSes. What worries me is what might happens years in the future, when TCPA or its moral equivalent is in just about every machine and "trusted" OSes are the exception, not the rule, on mainstream users' PCs (should that ever come to pass). At that point, I'll start getting worried about the possibility that manufacturers might turn off the ability to boot an untrusted OS.
I mailed this letter to my representative and senators today:
As a registered voter in your district, I am writing to you regarding
the disaster that so suddenly focused our nation's attention this past
Sept. 11. The most important work in the aftermath of this terrible
attack is to care for the survivors and mourn for the departed, and
furthermore to track down and punish those responsible for the
attack. I encourage any efforts along these lines. However, I am
also concerned about other issues.
In particular, I wish to draw to your attention to the potential for
unnecessary legislative assault on personal freedom in the United
States in the coming weeks and months. There is the worrisome
possibility that new laws will be passed and signed in the name of
national security, applying less than a prudent or usual amount of
scrutiny to negative effects. Historically, such laws have proven
difficult to repeal, making their passage even less desirable.
An example lies in the misguided call for a ban on the use of
encryption for electronic mail, because terrorist Osama bin Laden is
known to make use of encryption. Proponents of such a ban obviously
mean well, intending to make it more difficult for terrorists to
communicate. They do not understand that such software is freely
available from many sources throughout the world, not just within the
United States, so a ban would have no practical effect on availability
of encryption, and even if bin Laden were prevented from using
encryption, his organization would many other options for secure
communication.
In addition, encryption has many legitimate uses. Electronic mail
sent unencrypted is easily read and intercepted by a third party
without the knowledge of sender or recipient, in the same way that
information written on a postcard can be read as it passes through the
postal system. Encryption is the only practical way for ordinary
citizens to provide basic security against tampering that a simple
paper envelope provides for paper mail. This in itself is enough
reason to allow and even promote the use of encryption, but there are
many other positive uses, as illustrated in books such as Schneier's
Applied Cryptography.
In summary, I encourage you now in this time of crisis to consider
bills on their merits and pay close scrutiny to negative effects on
individual liberty, in the careful same way that you would do so at
any other time. Do not be allow yourself to be swayed by hysterical
(but understandable) reactions to the magnitude of the present
disaster. As Benjamin Franklin once said, ``They that can give up
essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety.'' When the safety in question is in fact
illusory, this adage is even more applicable.
Sincerely,
Ben Pfaff.
This reminds me of what I did a few times on Michigan State campus for fun. Personal machines on the MSU campus have hostnames of the form .user.msu.edu, where is derived from + . So it's pretty easy to figure out enough of a person's real name from their hostname to look them up in the campus directory. So, once in a while, I would read my webserver log, figure out where whoever was looking at my webpage at that moment lived... then walk over to his room, knock on his door, and say, "Hi, , how do you like my webpage?" Really freaked a few people out that way.
Check out GNU libavl for some good binary tree structure code. The stable version is well written C; the development version is a literate program. (Note: I am the author.)
Here's the output from GCC on the ``palindromic C program'':
blp:/raid/home/blp(0)$ gcc -ansi -pedantic c.otto.c
c.otto.c: In function `main':
c.otto.c:30: invalid lvalue in assignment
c.otto.c:33: invalid lvalue in increment
The problem is that the program contains two assignments of the form ``(int) x = y;''. Now, the problem with that is that the result of a cast is not an "lvalue" in C; that is, a cast cannot appear on the left side of an assignment operator.
Other than that, very cool!
The Greater Lansing Linux User Group resources webpage has pointers to a few tutorials that we've cooked up for use at meetings.
The SCSL is not an Open Source license, so it doesn't qualify.
USB is in 2.2. I have and use a USB mouse all the time under 2.2.9.
I'm tired of seeing 3dfx threaten everyone under the sun for making GLIDE clones. If they try to sue a large company and get slapped down in court, then they'll have no leg to stand on to threaten poor defenseless high school students and so on.