Uhm yeah, but it also means that if Joe Blow is using the backdoored version, it's easy to assume that the non-backdoored ones must therefore be of some 'secret' nature. Intelligence does not neccesarily ONLY need to know the actual contents, but just finding out who is intentionally sending uncrackable messages is relevant information.
Yeah, except the Richter scale is logaritmic. So a Richter 4 is 10 times as strong as a Richter 3. So to cause a Richter 10, 10^7 * 1M people would need to be bouncing up and down.
You know, modding down the above raises an interesting question. If you don't get any
replies on emails asking why you never get
moderation points, even when you have indicated
to be willing to moderate, and questions about
it on this board get modded down... How
ARE you supposed to find out what's wrong?
It would be interesting to do this 'moderation' thing some time. I had hoped that the new SlashCode would accidentally give me moderation points every now and then, but gee, even though my 'karma' now is at 35, I've yet to see any moderation points. I'd email CmdrTaco... oh wait, I *have* emailed CmdrTaco, but he never replied, silly me.
I guess this is just the way things go isn't it? Every now and then a visionary is born, JFK, Gorbatsov, Jesus... you name 'em. I wouldn't compare Richard Stallman to any of those, but look at the analogies. Here's somebody with some great vision and a dedication to fulfill that vision. All is good as long as the group of 'followers' is small and one to one communication is possible and the vision can be explained in vivid detail to a few leaders who actually understand what the vision means, could mean.
The leaders get the responsibility to help turn this vision into reality. But no matter how good the explanation, always some of the full extent of the vision goes missing when transferring it to somebody. So each of the leaders try to fulfill the vision in a slightly different manner, they are slightly worse explainers and chances are the new people are slightly worse understanders. This misunderstanding grows bigger and bigger, and today there are 'Christians' who really think that attending the house of god every weekend is enough to make them a good person.
So, Stallman has a nasty personality? Maybe. I don't know him. Control freak? No I don't think so, just a man with vision who sees his vision pulverising as the rats start gnawing at it. Maybe I'm coloring it a little bit too rosy, but still, everybody who understands where opensource comes from, where GNU comes from, can probably at least recognise that we as a 'community' (although I don't really feel part of the hissing, popping and whizzing group of people that now call themselves the 'community') owe Richard Stallman a whole lot. Instead of ventilating your dumbfounded (not all of you) meaningless 'opinions' after reading a few lines of what a regular 'meanie' RMS is, you could just shut your big trap for a while and at least show some R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Ofcourse it would be mega-cool to find that there's other 'life' out there, but more as a 'new gadget' kind of thing than anything else. If we were to find 'life' on any planet, their development would either be much ahead or much behind our own development. Sure, perhaps we could learn a thing or two when they're ahead of us. And maybe we can dissect a thing or two when they're behind us. But is that really so important?
Earth is quickly running out of resources. Fusion reactors seem to become promising but commercial use is still decades away. Nuclear reactors create too big a waste problem. Oil is running out (ofcourse I'm thinking 'decades' here). The number of humans on this planet is going up dramatically. Hopefully before the time comes that we're out of energy sources, we will somehow be able to set out on a trip to a planet that could support us.
I really don't think the people who wrote the original copyright by-laws would refer to widespread, global, profitless redistribution of their product to millions of people
Maybe you should leave the thinking to the horse; they got much bigger heads than you do. Instead of 'I really don't think', why don't you enlighten me and try to explain why they did write those copyright by-laws.
Well yeah wisenut could contend... if it wasn't running on IIS!! We all know how sensitive to worms IIS is, don't we. It would be neat to send a Code Red at wisenut and then reverse some of the search results through the root shell. I can think of ALL sorts of funny reversals/replacements.
hehe would you believe that deep down in my heart I'm fiercely opposed to capitalism in the extreme? I think it shows through in my original post, but you may have missed it. Anyway, I agree.
Besides, who says you (and your pals) need to live in California. Life is much cheaper just some few hundred KM from there. Maybe you would not have many of the things you enjoy now, but at least you would not starve. Maybe your current company would even allow you to work over internet.
Well, since you speak KM, I'll assume you're European or something like it. This also shows from what you say. Ever been to California? I wish you luck living a few 100 kilometres outside of Los Angeles, hehe. There's dessert. Or is it desert? Anyway you know what I mean. Seriously, that's in many cases not an option. And although in Holland I would love to live a long way away from the cities, here.... well.... hmmm... I'm not sure if I should remark on average intelligence.. ehr... well, ever seen Jerry Springer? if so, you may know what I mean.
And the 'allow to work over the internet'... that's a nice illusion. I'm sure one day it will work, when the whole damn generation of old management that needs to see your body to know if you're working is dead.
Re:Different Cultures: Europe vs. the USA
on
The Assembly In Review
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Hmm, an interesting opinion. Regarding the first paragraph:
I'm glad to see the demo scene finally mentioned in an article on Slashdot. I was starting to think that Slashdot was only interested in covering topics of interest
USian readers.
If you read through the FAQ on slashdot you'll see that the FAQ clearly says that slashdot very much IS US centric. The staff is mostly American I believe, and US news is more interesting to Americans than the rest of the world.
It is in the third paragraph however where you get just a little bit too generalizing:
Coders in the US are too focused on monetary rewards or political posturing.
And later:
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed.
I am a european (Dutch) who lives in California. I have met a lot of highly skilled individuals out here, people that I like to hang out with not only for their technical skills, but because they're often rather pleasant people to hang out with. Before you start talking about 'greed', you must realize that life here is:
More expensive. California is one of those ridiculously expensive places to live.
More competitive.
It's not so much 'greed' that prevails as it is 'survival'. Maybe a wolf is a greedy animal... I don't know. It survives though. When companies are given the power to work their employees over 10 hours a day and not pay them extra because they are exempt from Labor Law (sometimes I believe all of California is exempt) that does tend to shape the attitude. When everybody does it, you'd be strange and unwanted when you don't do it.
Mind you, I have worked on both sides of the fence, so I know what I'm talking about. In Europe it's not unusual that people spend lots of time on hobbies. They have more free time. Their hobbies CAN and often DO trickle through in their work. To employees this is a good thing. To employers not always. Here in the US when you spend a bit too much time slacking, it can cost you your job IMMEDIATELY since everybody here in the high tech business gets hired 'at will'. This makes people more carefull, sometimes appearing more obsessed, or, as you wish, more 'greedy'.
So as you see, there are some good reasons why things are the way you perceive them to be. Your labelling is somewhat inaccurate though in my opinion.
Now, I do think that the USA has a lot to learn from some European countries. Wellbeing will beat Wellfare down the line. Really, feeling 'happy' with the little things you have counts much more than not feeling so 'happy' with your yuppy SUV because your supervisor has a bigger one. And happy people work better. And if you have a lot of unhappy people, they produce crap like Microsoft Windows.
What you fail to mention is that Europe can also learn a LOT from the USA. And then I'm not talking about DMCA crap or corrupted buyable governments; Those exist everywhere, also in Europe, whether they get bought by the maffia in Italy or by corporations in the USA (or by tulip growers in the Netherlands). Don't forget there is a reason many things fly over from the USA and set foot in Europe. This is because some of the things as they are done here plain simple WORK better. A survival of the fittest attitude tends to make companies lean and mean and competitive with others. And no matter what fancy-smancy-socialist-touchy-feely exposure some companies in Europe may have, their bottom line is to make money, and do it better than anybody else in your business. American companies are more agressive, so they beat European companies often. However, IMHO not often on quality. This, to them, does not matter. Think about the bottom line.
Well, I live in the USA. Hopefully not too much longer. This country sucks for more reasons than the DMCA. I had planned to take my kids out of this unhealthy society already anyways, but particularly after this incident I want to get the hell out of this backwards country that has gone on it's own little with hunt again.
Talking here about the DMCA obfuscates the more important question "Why were Dmytri's rights under the Vienna Convention trampled by the USA?". Nobody in the rest of the world cares about faulty USA laws, most of the people abroad KNOW the USA is fsck'ed. I wonder if I will have to go wear a yellow star or something sometime soon because I'm a computer programmer and know a fair bit about security.
For you who don't know what the Vienna Convention is: It is the international law proposed by the USA and signed unanimously by all countries that when somebody gets imprisoned in a foreign country, he/she has a right to have consular contact. And that doesn't mean he can run to his embassy and not be put in jail or anything. It means somebody from the Russian embassy can assist and help him dealing with this foreign country's law as well as possible. Somebody can explain to him what's the issue IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE.
Now he gets an American Attorney through the EFF. The EFF has the right intention, nothing bad about them, but how do you think Dmytri will feel about being represented by an American attorney?
Barbarians.
I like to use junkbuster, even if it was only to confuse my former colleagues at WB Online when some marketing droid asks them why the ad serve numbers don't match the page views:P
That's real nice, mod this down as 'overrated' and then start a whole discussion about it. Oh well.
Anyway, to address the discussion below, the way I understand it is that the cable is prepared for double the capacity it is running at now. Fine, there's a WHOLE bunch of unused fiber in there. Good engineering thinking. On such a cable they should probably put at least 4 times the fiber in there so you can always repair or redo something on one idle bundle while the other idle bundle is hot standby to cover anything going wrong in the main bundle while you're working on the one backup bundle.
Redundancy and reliability is NOT rocket science. It's just expensive. I recently interviewed at a company that routes 150 thousand phonecalls per day. Walked through their server room, and they were proud (can't blame 'em) to say that EVERYTHING is set up in a triple configuration. They have T1's coming out of their ears. Their uptime last year? 100%. NO outages at all. But ofcourse the 'internet' is so much more complex and oh, yeah if you have 'one guy' repairing a multimillion dollar cable it COULD take 15 hours. Bah. When have you ever seen 'one guy' try to fix a dike by putting his finger in it trying to stop the water (well that's what most Americans know about the country I'm from:) ? That's a TEAM that does that, not 'one guy'.
IMHO, they have already succeeded in making the web an experts-only club.
What nonsense. The web has become SO easy to use (and to create webpages for) through such a plethora of tools (frontpage, dreamweaver, just to name a bunch of idiotproof tools). Who are the 'they' you talk about? 'black / gray hats' ? How in the world do they make the web something for 'experts'?
Listen, most people who want to create their own webpage as beginners go to geocities or something like that. If you get a bit more advanced, you go to a somewhat more advanced hosting provider. You get your own domain even, perhaps. If you get even more advanced, you may have your own DSL line or T1 line. But by the time you get there, you are SUPPOSED to know about security and be vigilant about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think most of the world by now realizes that treaties with the US only last for 4 years anyways, if even.
>
Because we can?
Uhm yeah, but it also means that if Joe Blow is using the backdoored version, it's easy to assume that the non-backdoored ones must therefore be of some 'secret' nature. Intelligence does not neccesarily ONLY need to know the actual contents, but just finding out who is intentionally sending uncrackable messages is relevant information.
Toto, this ain't the metric system anymore.
It will create a 3600 Richter earthquake!
Yeah, except the Richter scale is logaritmic. So a Richter 4 is 10 times as strong as a Richter 3. So to cause a Richter 10, 10^7 * 1M people would need to be bouncing up and down.
Enuf said...
Gah, Anonymous Coward should read the next article about education.
You know, modding down the above raises an interesting question. If you don't get any
replies on emails asking why you never get
moderation points, even when you have indicated
to be willing to moderate, and questions about
it on this board get modded down... How
ARE you supposed to find out what's wrong?
It would be interesting to do this 'moderation' thing some time. I had hoped that the new SlashCode would accidentally give me moderation points every now and then, but gee, even though my 'karma' now is at 35, I've yet to see any moderation points. I'd email CmdrTaco... oh wait, I *have* emailed CmdrTaco, but he never replied, silly me.
Check out Big Wheels too, that also seems like a neat little rover.
I guess this is just the way things go isn't it? Every now and then a visionary is born, JFK, Gorbatsov, Jesus... you name 'em. I wouldn't compare Richard Stallman to any of those, but look at the analogies. Here's somebody with some great vision and a dedication to fulfill that vision. All is good as long as the group of 'followers' is small and one to one communication is possible and the vision can be explained in vivid detail to a few leaders who actually understand what the vision means, could mean.
The leaders get the responsibility to help turn this vision into reality. But no matter how good the explanation, always some of the full extent of the vision goes missing when transferring it to somebody. So each of the leaders try to fulfill the vision in a slightly different manner, they are slightly worse explainers and chances are the new people are slightly worse understanders. This misunderstanding grows bigger and bigger, and today there are 'Christians' who really think that attending the house of god every weekend is enough to make them a good person.
So, Stallman has a nasty personality? Maybe. I don't know him. Control freak? No I don't think so, just a man with vision who sees his vision pulverising as the rats start gnawing at it. Maybe I'm coloring it a little bit too rosy, but still, everybody who understands where opensource comes from, where GNU comes from, can probably at least recognise that we as a 'community' (although I don't really feel part of the hissing, popping and whizzing group of people that now call themselves the 'community') owe Richard Stallman a whole lot. Instead of ventilating your dumbfounded (not all of you) meaningless 'opinions' after reading a few lines of what a regular 'meanie' RMS is, you could just shut your big trap for a while and at least show some R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
So why don't you use junkbuster? It's free and can do exactly what you want.
Let's see how long that lasts eh? This country is quickly heading towards a dictatorship.
Did you really have to take a bunch of systems from the original cluster in order to build the new one?!?!
Earth is quickly running out of resources. Fusion reactors seem to become promising but commercial use is still decades away. Nuclear reactors create too big a waste problem. Oil is running out (ofcourse I'm thinking 'decades' here). The number of humans on this planet is going up dramatically. Hopefully before the time comes that we're out of energy sources, we will somehow be able to set out on a trip to a planet that could support us.
Dude, you need a chill-pill :)
Maybe you should leave the thinking to the horse; they got much bigger heads than you do. Instead of 'I really don't think', why don't you enlighten me and try to explain why they did write those copyright by-laws.
Well yeah wisenut could contend... if it wasn't running on IIS!! We all know how sensitive to worms IIS is, don't we. It would be neat to send a Code Red at wisenut and then reverse some of the search results through the root shell. I can think of ALL sorts of funny reversals/replacements.
hehe would you believe that deep down in my heart I'm fiercely opposed to capitalism in the extreme? I think it shows through in my original post, but you may have missed it. Anyway, I agree.
Besides, who says you (and your pals) need to live in California. Life is much cheaper just some few hundred KM from there. Maybe you would not have many of the things you enjoy now, but at least you would not starve. Maybe your current company would even allow you to work over internet.
Well, since you speak KM, I'll assume you're European or something like it. This also shows from what you say. Ever been to California? I wish you luck living a few 100 kilometres outside of Los Angeles, hehe. There's dessert. Or is it desert? Anyway you know what I mean. Seriously, that's in many cases not an option. And although in Holland I would love to live a long way away from the cities, here.... well.... hmmm... I'm not sure if I should remark on average intelligence.. ehr... well, ever seen Jerry Springer? if so, you may know what I mean.
And the 'allow to work over the internet'... that's a nice illusion. I'm sure one day it will work, when the whole damn generation of old management that needs to see your body to know if you're working is dead.
I'm glad to see the demo scene finally mentioned in an article on Slashdot. I was starting to think that Slashdot was only interested in covering topics of interest USian readers.
If you read through the FAQ on slashdot you'll see that the FAQ clearly says that slashdot very much IS US centric. The staff is mostly American I believe, and US news is more interesting to Americans than the rest of the world.
It is in the third paragraph however where you get just a little bit too generalizing:
Coders in the US are too focused on monetary rewards or political posturing.
And later:
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed.
I am a european (Dutch) who lives in California. I have met a lot of highly skilled individuals out here, people that I like to hang out with not only for their technical skills, but because they're often rather pleasant people to hang out with. Before you start talking about 'greed', you must realize that life here is:
- More expensive. California is one of those ridiculously expensive places to live.
- More competitive.
It's not so much 'greed' that prevails as it is 'survival'. Maybe a wolf is a greedy animal... I don't know. It survives though. When companies are given the power to work their employees over 10 hours a day and not pay them extra because they are exempt from Labor Law (sometimes I believe all of California is exempt) that does tend to shape the attitude. When everybody does it, you'd be strange and unwanted when you don't do it.Mind you, I have worked on both sides of the fence, so I know what I'm talking about. In Europe it's not unusual that people spend lots of time on hobbies. They have more free time. Their hobbies CAN and often DO trickle through in their work. To employees this is a good thing. To employers not always. Here in the US when you spend a bit too much time slacking, it can cost you your job IMMEDIATELY since everybody here in the high tech business gets hired 'at will'. This makes people more carefull, sometimes appearing more obsessed, or, as you wish, more 'greedy'.
So as you see, there are some good reasons why things are the way you perceive them to be. Your labelling is somewhat inaccurate though in my opinion.
Now, I do think that the USA has a lot to learn from some European countries. Wellbeing will beat Wellfare down the line. Really, feeling 'happy' with the little things you have counts much more than not feeling so 'happy' with your yuppy SUV because your supervisor has a bigger one. And happy people work better. And if you have a lot of unhappy people, they produce crap like Microsoft Windows.
What you fail to mention is that Europe can also learn a LOT from the USA. And then I'm not talking about DMCA crap or corrupted buyable governments; Those exist everywhere, also in Europe, whether they get bought by the maffia in Italy or by corporations in the USA (or by tulip growers in the Netherlands). Don't forget there is a reason many things fly over from the USA and set foot in Europe. This is because some of the things as they are done here plain simple WORK better. A survival of the fittest attitude tends to make companies lean and mean and competitive with others. And no matter what fancy-smancy-socialist-touchy-feely exposure some companies in Europe may have, their bottom line is to make money, and do it better than anybody else in your business. American companies are more agressive, so they beat European companies often. However, IMHO not often on quality. This, to them, does not matter. Think about the bottom line.
Sorry for my little rant :)
He said 'incoming port 80'. Yeah that'd be swell, blockign outgoing port 80.
Well, I live in the USA. Hopefully not too much longer. This country sucks for more reasons than the DMCA. I had planned to take my kids out of this unhealthy society already anyways, but particularly after this incident I want to get the hell out of this backwards country that has gone on it's own little with hunt again. Talking here about the DMCA obfuscates the more important question "Why were Dmytri's rights under the Vienna Convention trampled by the USA?". Nobody in the rest of the world cares about faulty USA laws, most of the people abroad KNOW the USA is fsck'ed. I wonder if I will have to go wear a yellow star or something sometime soon because I'm a computer programmer and know a fair bit about security. For you who don't know what the Vienna Convention is: It is the international law proposed by the USA and signed unanimously by all countries that when somebody gets imprisoned in a foreign country, he/she has a right to have consular contact. And that doesn't mean he can run to his embassy and not be put in jail or anything. It means somebody from the Russian embassy can assist and help him dealing with this foreign country's law as well as possible. Somebody can explain to him what's the issue IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE. Now he gets an American Attorney through the EFF. The EFF has the right intention, nothing bad about them, but how do you think Dmytri will feel about being represented by an American attorney? Barbarians.
Anyway, to address the discussion below, the way I understand it is that the cable is prepared for double the capacity it is running at now. Fine, there's a WHOLE bunch of unused fiber in there. Good engineering thinking. On such a cable they should probably put at least 4 times the fiber in there so you can always repair or redo something on one idle bundle while the other idle bundle is hot standby to cover anything going wrong in the main bundle while you're working on the one backup bundle.
Redundancy and reliability is NOT rocket science. It's just expensive. I recently interviewed at a company that routes 150 thousand phonecalls per day. Walked through their server room, and they were proud (can't blame 'em) to say that EVERYTHING is set up in a triple configuration. They have T1's coming out of their ears. Their uptime last year? 100%. NO outages at all. But ofcourse the 'internet' is so much more complex and oh, yeah if you have 'one guy' repairing a multimillion dollar cable it COULD take 15 hours. Bah. When have you ever seen 'one guy' try to fix a dike by putting his finger in it trying to stop the water (well that's what most Americans know about the country I'm from:) ? That's a TEAM that does that, not 'one guy'.
What nonsense. The web has become SO easy to use (and to create webpages for) through such a plethora of tools (frontpage, dreamweaver, just to name a bunch of idiotproof tools). Who are the 'they' you talk about? 'black / gray hats' ? How in the world do they make the web something for 'experts'?
Listen, most people who want to create their own webpage as beginners go to geocities or something like that. If you get a bit more advanced, you go to a somewhat more advanced hosting provider. You get your own domain even, perhaps. If you get even more advanced, you may have your own DSL line or T1 line. But by the time you get there, you are SUPPOSED to know about security and be vigilant about it.