I found myself wondering if this is also a clue as to why some people take a while to get their brains online in the morning, while others are fully functional from the moment they open their eyes.
I'm the sort who boots and loads the OS in a matter of seconds, so I'm completely awake by the time my feet hit the floor. I'm also a "morning person" and am at my best when I get up with the sun. Occurs to me to wonder if this is really a single trait, generated by a thalamus with a higher CPU speed.:)
You and I could read thru a config file and make sense of comments... but this isn't intended for "tough software", rather for newbies using any of the linux desktops, and just starting to dabble beneath the surface. As things now stand, you're either a n00b or an expert, and there's no good way to let n00bs learn-by-doing, the only method that really works.
I support and train enough new users (and I don't mean kids who are eager to dig thru the guts) to have become quite aware of this. They can RTFM all day long, or view comments for hours, and it just doesn't mean anything to them until they have something help them visualize it. And they don't want to remain ignorant, yet there's no intermediate step available to them, where they can see-and-learn.
Yep. But to a large extent, religion is about "mind control" (steering you into only having Correct Thoughts), and the concept of "thought crime" goes hand in hand with that. (Somehow I'm reminded of China's "Great Leap Backward"...)
It's easy to see how this could INCREASE crime -- if punishments for the thought and the act are equal, you might as well do the act.
"A better place to focus on would be how easy it is to understand what a particular option does, whether it's a checkbox or a line in a config file."
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make. If the GUI shows you the possible options, and *simultaneously* you can see what each option actually *does* to the config file itself, then you can "learn by doing" the syntax without trying to puzzle it out in the abstract (by RTFM'ing, which rarely works for newbies -- they simply don't have anything to relate the info to as yet. It's like studying a dictionary for a language you don't speak.)
In some cities, the police are required to live in the same area they work in, so they'll have an incentive to do well in their own neighbourhoods. Elected officials are supposed to live in their own districts too, but in practice it doesn't always work that way.
But most of the time, you're absolutely right -- the people who make and enforce the laws are so far removed from the PEOPLE, that how regular people think, act, and live is just an abstract notion.
It used to be that if you saw a kid damaging property or beating someone up, you'd stop and chase off the bad kid or even knock some sense into him, and that would be the end of it. Now, fear of lawsuits (and fear of retribution in gang areas) has put an end to this sort of self-policing by neighbourhood residents. This wasn't vigilantism, either -- it's just plain keeping order on the spot, in a reasonable way and without assuming all kids are bad and all grannies are victims.
That's a helluva spiffy idea. Now.. is it feasible from a programming standpoint?
My first thought was something along the line of having the "innocuous" decryption key turn the files into ordinary images, say of pseudo-fractals or fantasy spacescapes. That way there's room for the "protected" data to remain hidden among the visual noise, and if there's variation -- well, that's the vagaries of computer-generated images.
Another thought might be to use your own digital photos (so it's something obviously *yours*) as the "innocent" part that gets extracted, while the real (protected) data is discarded. [note to self: have offsite backups.]
Obviously a cryptologist could defeat both schemes, but the idea here is just to have an "innocent" key to wave at the cops when it's demanded, not to further hide your data.
In reply to my post, an AC makes a very good point, which I'll relay here for a wider audience:
========== Shouldn't that read like this?:
"Imagine killing _a fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing _said fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??"
Clearly, premeditating murder of an actual person could be construed as threatening, but premeditating the murder of a fictional character seems somewhat less so. ===========
I still don't think *considering* a murder should be a crime (if it were, there'd be no kids left outside of reform school) but otherwise, that's a more accurate parallel, indeed.
I'm wondering how this really differs from "thought crime".
Imagine doing a heinous act with a child. Not a crime (yet).
Draw a picture of said heinous act. Now it's a crime, even tho *no actual children were harmed*.
A parallel:
Imagine killing someone, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing someone, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??
Occurs to me that a great way for a real terrorist to direct attention elsewhere, is to have one member of the team play "nervous terrorist", thus giving security someone else to focus on. The "nervous terrorist" will prove just plain nervous, but innocent, and meanwhile the rest of the team goes their merry way.
The problem is, the beginner usually doesn't have a clue where to FIND the config files, so a config GUI that knows how to find them and how to read them would be a lifesaver.
As to comments in config files, they're too often written in programmerspeak, which is frequently backwards of how everyone else thinks, because of the nature of sourcecode-style yes/no statements. And very often they use terms that mean something to an experienced user, but nothing at all to a novice. Tho this does give me the idea that the GUI should be able to lift the comments and utilize them as quick-help, if they're consistently formatted.
As to *affecting* the file in realtime, it should exhibit the expected behaviour one sees in most editors -- you see the result onscreen, but it's not *saved to disk* til you TELL it Save. That makes an Ooops a matter of simply "exit and start over", a technique most novices intuitively grok.
As of yesterday, Google is once again using a referrer system rather than just giving you the link. So when I do a search for, say, "sun", all the search results (not just the sponsored links) provide links that look like this:
I assume that's some sort of referrer and tracking hash. Regardless, it's very annoying, as it screws up the link for other uses unless I first edit it.
When I used the blackboxsearch and scroogle proxies, the link was in the sane and expected form:
["sun" used as the test example because it's short to type and has at least one known result]
As to things that don't work, I've noticed that Mozilla sometimes ignores lines in my HOSTS file; it still *contacts* blocked sites and sometimes still downloads data from them. The problem seems to be lines that include a subdomain or a path beyond the root domain. I don't know how "normal" that is??
Side note: my everyday browser loads neither images nor javascript nor CSS, tho I do allow cookies because I use them for a number of logins (frex, Slashdot:)
Something I've suggested several times, but since IANAProgrammer, cannot implement myself:
A linux configuration tool that shows *both* the nice friendly GUI with checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., AND the raw config file that the GUI is actually editing, updated in realtime -- so you can SEE what the checkbox just altered in the config file, and have a chance to learn about the various settings on the fly.
And let the user pick if they want to see one, the other, or both configuration methods.
This system is how some HTML editors work (with simultaneous WYSIWYG and raw HTML modes) and that makes it very easy to learn what you're doing, without having to initially struggle with the syntax. Since even some rather primitive editors do this, the UI itself can't be rocket science.
I'd be fine with a "no-nonsense license" akin to Borland's:
"You may rip, burn, format-shift, edit, mangle, karioke, or whatever the hell else you want to do with this CD or DVD, within the privacy of your own personal equipment. However, you may not redistribute it in any form, except as permitted under Fair Use."
That's all either users or the content providers really need. Watermark the damned things if you like, I don't care. But don't inconvenience me beyond what I expect from an ordinary non-DRM'd purchased hardcopy, or I won't buy it at all.
Firstoff, I'm a pro dog trainer/breeder with 37 years and some 1800 dogs worth of experience.
I've seen about a dozen cases of what I suspect is a contact-contagious cancer in dogs, but the tumours produced are limited to skin and fat, are not aggressive or progressive (in fact are generally self-limiting), and are never fatal.
What you describe, given the not-so-old age of your dog, was probably inherited, and secondary to immuno-deficiency (which does occur in Border Collies). There's nothing you can do about that; it's just bad luck.
Most canine cancers that are not due to the systemic failings of late old age, are in fact familial, and in-depth pedigree histories (including all siblings and cousins) will demonstrate that. (Pedigree analysis wrt tracing defects is one of my specialties.)
So.. it's nothing you did or didn't do, and don't let it stop you from enjoying your next dog to the fullest.
The immune response is interesting... I've observed an apparently contact-contagious tumour in dogs, and have also noticed that these tumours tend to be self-limiting or sometimes even regress.
[Hat: I am a professional dog trainer and breeder with 37 years experience.]
I first noticed an apparently-contagious tumour in dogs about 15 years ago. Transmission seems to require direct contact (not necessarily venereal), and the growth is always located in or just under the skin. Superficially, it resembles an ordinary fatty tumour. Under the microscope it looks like it's not exactly benign, but not like a "hot" cancer either. I've never seen one develop into anything serious.
I should probably archive my main inbox folder by year (that makes perfect sense), but in reality the way they get broken up is "more than 20mb or so per folder makes Netscape cranky".:)
My BBS mail gets archived when it nears a total of 999 old packets, the limit of my offline mail reader's file list (cuz it renames yesterday's packet using the extension --.001,.002, etc.)
And 99% of it is never looked at again, and only gets saved at all because, well, I know any stuff I *might* need to look up someday is in there somewhere, awaiting a session with GREP.:)
All in all, more a matter of convenience as dictated by my preferred software, than any sort of proper mail sorting:)
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno, but mine came with the following documentation:
HUMAN BEING: 8.4 GB of RAM. (Not entirely addressable by current operating system.)
I found myself wondering if this is also a clue as to why some people take a while to get their brains online in the morning, while others are fully functional from the moment they open their eyes.
:)
I'm the sort who boots and loads the OS in a matter of seconds, so I'm completely awake by the time my feet hit the floor. I'm also a "morning person" and am at my best when I get up with the sun. Occurs to me to wonder if this is really a single trait, generated by a thalamus with a higher CPU speed.
I can think of a few politicians whose score would be an imaginary number!!
You and I could read thru a config file and make sense of comments... but this isn't intended for "tough software", rather for newbies using any of the linux desktops, and just starting to dabble beneath the surface. As things now stand, you're either a n00b or an expert, and there's no good way to let n00bs learn-by-doing, the only method that really works.
I support and train enough new users (and I don't mean kids who are eager to dig thru the guts) to have become quite aware of this. They can RTFM all day long, or view comments for hours, and it just doesn't mean anything to them until they have something help them visualize it. And they don't want to remain ignorant, yet there's no intermediate step available to them, where they can see-and-learn.
Yep. But to a large extent, religion is about "mind control" (steering you into only having Correct Thoughts), and the concept of "thought crime" goes hand in hand with that. (Somehow I'm reminded of China's "Great Leap Backward"...)
It's easy to see how this could INCREASE crime -- if punishments for the thought and the act are equal, you might as well do the act.
"A better place to focus on would be how easy it is to understand what a particular option does, whether it's a checkbox or a line in a config file."
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make. If the GUI shows you the possible options, and *simultaneously* you can see what each option actually *does* to the config file itself, then you can "learn by doing" the syntax without trying to puzzle it out in the abstract (by RTFM'ing, which rarely works for newbies -- they simply don't have anything to relate the info to as yet. It's like studying a dictionary for a language you don't speak.)
That's a good question. Did I just violate some nebulous "thought crime" statute by looking at it?
A better place for the law to start would be, "Were any real children harmed by following that link?"
Bravo. Couldn't have said it better.
In some cities, the police are required to live in the same area they work in, so they'll have an incentive to do well in their own neighbourhoods. Elected officials are supposed to live in their own districts too, but in practice it doesn't always work that way.
But most of the time, you're absolutely right -- the people who make and enforce the laws are so far removed from the PEOPLE, that how regular people think, act, and live is just an abstract notion.
It used to be that if you saw a kid damaging property or beating someone up, you'd stop and chase off the bad kid or even knock some sense into him, and that would be the end of it. Now, fear of lawsuits (and fear of retribution in gang areas) has put an end to this sort of self-policing by neighbourhood residents. This wasn't vigilantism, either -- it's just plain keeping order on the spot, in a reasonable way and without assuming all kids are bad and all grannies are victims.
That's a helluva spiffy idea. Now.. is it feasible from a programming standpoint?
My first thought was something along the line of having the "innocuous" decryption key turn the files into ordinary images, say of pseudo-fractals or fantasy spacescapes. That way there's room for the "protected" data to remain hidden among the visual noise, and if there's variation -- well, that's the vagaries of computer-generated images.
Another thought might be to use your own digital photos (so it's something obviously *yours*) as the "innocent" part that gets extracted, while the real (protected) data is discarded. [note to self: have offsite backups.]
Obviously a cryptologist could defeat both schemes, but the idea here is just to have an "innocent" key to wave at the cops when it's demanded, not to further hide your data.
In reply to my post, an AC makes a very good point, which I'll relay here for a wider audience:
==========
Shouldn't that read like this?:
"Imagine killing _a fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing _said fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??"
Clearly, premeditating murder of an actual person could be construed as threatening, but premeditating the murder of a fictional character seems somewhat less so.
===========
I still don't think *considering* a murder should be a crime (if it were, there'd be no kids left outside of reform school) but otherwise, that's a more accurate parallel, indeed.
As you imply, a strong military could conceivably intervene on behalf of The People, in the event of a generalized crackdown against our freedoms.
One wonders at what point such "laws of the land" become "illegal orders", which military personnel are *obligated* to disobey.
I'm wondering how this really differs from "thought crime".
Imagine doing a heinous act with a child. Not a crime (yet).
Draw a picture of said heinous act. Now it's a crime, even tho *no actual children were harmed*.
A parallel:
Imagine killing someone, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing someone, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??
I'm reminded of the classic no-win question:
"Have you stopped beating your wife??"
.
.
.
.
.
(Correct answer: "Which one?")
Occurs to me that a great way for a real terrorist to direct attention elsewhere, is to have one member of the team play "nervous terrorist", thus giving security someone else to focus on. The "nervous terrorist" will prove just plain nervous, but innocent, and meanwhile the rest of the team goes their merry way.
The problem is, the beginner usually doesn't have a clue where to FIND the config files, so a config GUI that knows how to find them and how to read them would be a lifesaver.
As to comments in config files, they're too often written in programmerspeak, which is frequently backwards of how everyone else thinks, because of the nature of sourcecode-style yes/no statements. And very often they use terms that mean something to an experienced user, but nothing at all to a novice. Tho this does give me the idea that the GUI should be able to lift the comments and utilize them as quick-help, if they're consistently formatted.
As to *affecting* the file in realtime, it should exhibit the expected behaviour one sees in most editors -- you see the result onscreen, but it's not *saved to disk* til you TELL it Save. That makes an Ooops a matter of simply "exit and start over", a technique most novices intuitively grok.
As of yesterday, Google is once again using a referrer system rather than just giving you the link. So when I do a search for, say, "sun", all the search results (not just the sponsored links) provide links that look like this:
w w.sun.com/&e=10401&sig=__2EeDlnaab7EWyO2SbtTK5ClAc PE=
:)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://w
I assume that's some sort of referrer and tracking hash. Regardless, it's very annoying, as it screws up the link for other uses unless I first edit it.
When I used the blackboxsearch and scroogle proxies, the link was in the sane and expected form:
http://www.sun.com/
["sun" used as the test example because it's short to type and has at least one known result]
As to things that don't work, I've noticed that Mozilla sometimes ignores lines in my HOSTS file; it still *contacts* blocked sites and sometimes still downloads data from them. The problem seems to be lines that include a subdomain or a path beyond the root domain. I don't know how "normal" that is??
Side note: my everyday browser loads neither images nor javascript nor CSS, tho I do allow cookies because I use them for a number of logins (frex, Slashdot
Who's to say that metasearch services don't ALSO save your search histories??
Something I've suggested several times, but since IANAProgrammer, cannot implement myself:
A linux configuration tool that shows *both* the nice friendly GUI with checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., AND the raw config file that the GUI is actually editing, updated in realtime -- so you can SEE what the checkbox just altered in the config file, and have a chance to learn about the various settings on the fly.
And let the user pick if they want to see one, the other, or both configuration methods.
This system is how some HTML editors work (with simultaneous WYSIWYG and raw HTML modes) and that makes it very easy to learn what you're doing, without having to initially struggle with the syntax. Since even some rather primitive editors do this, the UI itself can't be rocket science.
Exactly! But since the content providers can't seem to figure that out, I thought I'd rephrase it for them :)
... and for downloaded content.
I'd be fine with a "no-nonsense license" akin to Borland's:
"You may rip, burn, format-shift, edit, mangle, karioke, or whatever the hell else you want to do with this CD or DVD, within the privacy of your own personal equipment. However, you may not redistribute it in any form, except as permitted under Fair Use."
That's all either users or the content providers really need. Watermark the damned things if you like, I don't care. But don't inconvenience me beyond what I expect from an ordinary non-DRM'd purchased hardcopy, or I won't buy it at all.
Firstoff, I'm a pro dog trainer/breeder with 37 years and some 1800 dogs worth of experience.
I've seen about a dozen cases of what I suspect is a contact-contagious cancer in dogs, but the tumours produced are limited to skin and fat, are not aggressive or progressive (in fact are generally self-limiting), and are never fatal.
What you describe, given the not-so-old age of your dog, was probably inherited, and secondary to immuno-deficiency (which does occur in Border Collies). There's nothing you can do about that; it's just bad luck.
Most canine cancers that are not due to the systemic failings of late old age, are in fact
familial, and in-depth pedigree histories (including all siblings and cousins) will demonstrate that. (Pedigree analysis wrt tracing defects is one of my specialties.)
So.. it's nothing you did or didn't do, and don't let it stop you from enjoying your next dog to the fullest.
Great, and here I thought the toy breeds were already too damn small ;)
The immune response is interesting... I've observed an apparently contact-contagious tumour in dogs, and have also noticed that these tumours tend to be self-limiting or sometimes even regress.
[Side note: I am a professional dog trainer.]
[Hat: I am a professional dog trainer and breeder with 37 years experience.]
I first noticed an apparently-contagious tumour in dogs about 15 years ago. Transmission seems to require direct contact (not necessarily venereal), and the growth is always located in or just under the skin. Superficially, it resembles an ordinary fatty tumour. Under the microscope it looks like it's not exactly benign, but not like a "hot" cancer either. I've never seen one develop into anything serious.
I should probably archive my main inbox folder by year (that makes perfect sense), but in reality the way they get broken up is "more than 20mb or so per folder makes Netscape cranky". :)
.001, .002, etc.)
:)
:)
My BBS mail gets archived when it nears a total of 999 old packets, the limit of my offline mail reader's file list (cuz it renames yesterday's packet using the extension --
And 99% of it is never looked at again, and only gets saved at all because, well, I know any stuff I *might* need to look up someday is in there somewhere, awaiting a session with GREP.
All in all, more a matter of convenience as dictated by my preferred software, than any sort of proper mail sorting