So you're saying "one vulnerability" on Windows which effects every program running on the OS being less significant than "100 vulnerabilities" in which different applications you might not have installed being exploitable, listed by each string of values that as input could be used in an exploit, is not "at best a silly form of pseudomathematics"? Perhaps you missed the point of the word as used.
Bill White, Commander American National Socialist Workers Party
You make the same mistake a lot of so-called socialist make. You think that equality and fairness is for your followers, who are all inferior to you. If you considered them your equals, you wouldn't be commanding them. It's an interesting choice of title for someone who's supposed to be for the body of the people.
Not so much, no. A solar cell uses what is called "renewable energy". A 1-watt solar panel produces 1 watt whenever it is under full sun for the lifetime of the cell. A 1-watt lump of coal produces 1 watt ever. To get a watt hour from coal, you need to continuously burn 1-watt lumps of coal for the hour. To get 1 watt hour from a 1-watt solar cell, you expose it to direct sunlight for an hour and the cost doesn't change.
The solar cell will depreciate out and need to be replaced eventually. The coal won't be replaced at all. It will be gone, and the coal like it from the same mine will eventually all be gone, too. You'll need to substitute other coal from a deeper, more dangerous mine that's more expensive to mine and will cause more direct damage to the environment through the mining process itself. That mine will likely be farther from its point of use than the previous mine, so more other energy will go into its transportation besides the extra energy in mining it.
Plus, not only do solar cells not produce energy-trapping CO2, but they're actually taking energy from the sun's rays that otherwise could go back into higher layers of the atmosphere and become trapped heat.
I'm frankly too lazy to do the math right now, but maybe they're counting on installations closer to consumption sites with less delivery loss. The cost of generation in large centralized plants is one thing, but line attenuation and impedance loss are another.
The NSA wiretaps that make use of AT&T switches that AT&T's customers get billed for aren't used only against the enemy in a time of war. Why will this be different?
There used to be a virus that slipped past the OS and triggered a BIOS flash on certain boards, and flashed the virus into the BIOS. The only ways to get it out were to buy a new MB, buy a new BIOS chip from the MB or BIOS manufacturer, flash the chip in a dedicated chip data loader, or replace it temporarily with a friend's BIOS chip, boot, swap out the chips on the live board, reflash, and hope you didn't fry the board or the chip. The board generally wasn't dual-BIOS, and worst of all IIRC was that the BIOS chip for many of the affected boards was soldered instead of socketed. The virus was called CIH or Chernobyl.
There was back in the days of DOS and ESDI, MFM, and early IDE drives, when it was the user's responsibility to run a drive head parking utility (properly configured for the right cylinder count for parking out past the edge of the drive) before physically moving the machine because auto-parking wasn't built into drives yet, a virus that did something really nasty. It'd take the cylinder count for your drive, cut that in half, set your park cylinder to that number, and tell the drive to park and shut down. The heads would move to the center of the platters, the spindle would slow down on its way to stopping, the air cushion between head and platter went away, and the heads plowed into the platters either then or when the drive would spin back up. I don't recall the name of this one.
Either of these could be considered bricking actual hardware, but you probably won't ever have to worry about Chernobyl and the other is obsolete.
IANAL and I don't know what specifically is the law in Pennsylvania. However, some jurisdictions in the US (South Carolina, for example) compel computer technicians to report child pornography just like social workers, teachers, and medical professionals are often required to report suspected abuse.
The technician in this case apparently, according to TFA, was searching for random video files on the customer's PC to burn using the newly installed DVD burner to make sure everything was working. He got suspicious based on the names of some files, including one listing a male name and a number he thought was an age of 13 or 14. Upon deciding he'd probably found child porn, he contacted authorities. This doesn't sound like rifling through all the guy's files at all if that's the way it really happened.
The judge decided the test was a commercially common and acceptable way to test a DVD burner -- by searching for video files on the user's drive. I'm not sure how common it is these days to do it that way, but it certainly sounds reasonable and not nefarious to test it that way.
The appellate court also decided that you have no privilege of confidentiality with a computer store like you would with a doctor or lawyer.
Anything around here that allows you to hook up to a PC is ridiculously expensive and works like crap, and they still reserve the right to mysteriously cap your "unlimited" usage or to bill you extra if you go over that limit. That's the plans that do allow hooking up to a PC at all. Mine, like many, is "unlimited" for the phone, but I still have to pay per kB to hook it to another device and let that use the connection.
There was a news story not long ago about a guy on a plan like mine in Canada who ran up an $85,000 phone bill because he didn't see the distinction in the fine print. Yahoo, DSL Reports, The Huffington Post, CNet UK, Canada.com, Geek.com, and/.'s own Firehose have had the story, among many other sources.
I can get Sprint, AT&T, or possibly Verizon (haven't check on their coverage and plans here lately for data) here that will allow me to hook up to my PC for "unlimited" data transfer, but it runs about $100 a month on top of a required voice plan, and although most phones will do it only certain phones or a dedicated cell modem is allowed to have the plan. Sprint says theirs is both "unlimited" and "broadband", but they also say it's not to be used to replace a leased line Internet service. So which is it?
Great post overall. I can agree Supreme Commander has its faults, but if you've been playing it on GPGNet and think the gameplay is too slow, you're probably picking the wrong opponents. Or did you mean slow performance?
Greater variety of units would be great. Better performance would be nice, but I recognize my system is dated. The minimap could be a bit more useful. Slow gameplay simply isn't a problem in multiplayer for me, though.
I've seen people with experimental troops 15 or 17 minutes into the game. I've seen bases overrun and commanders killed in 3 minutes. It can be a very aggressive and frenzied game. I haven't spent much time on single player, though, so that might be different.
I love this game. It's an old family favorite of my wife's family, and I was only introduced to it this year. Now, my mother-in-law gets it out every time we visit.
Do you want Kindle, Sony's eBook reader, PDF reader, TeX, LyX, Ghostview, or IrfanView?
If you get your eBooks in a nice format like PDF, PostScript, or EPS then you can use any reader for those formats. A PDF reader is available for just about every platform. PostScript, TeX, and EPS aren't far behind. HTML's even a pretty good choice. If you can get your books in one of these formats, you can probably choose your device.
If you choose your device first, there's a good chance you can't choose your format.
IANAL, but doesn't gross negligence is lack of specific intent, but still requires the defendant should have known to do something and didn't care enough to do it? I doubt these people went outside specifically thinking that they'd use this tool to look at stars together, health and safety of the police and public be damned. That's not specific intent to hurt the officer, but it's still intent to be careless. More likely they just didn't know, and had no reason to suspect a helicopter would be flying through the path of their laser.
TFA says the copter was at 500 feet, not the mile some Slashdotters have speculated about. It also says the pilot was briefly exposed to the beam and the flash of it reflecting inside the cockpit. It would be relatively easy, although statistically improbable by sheer chance, for the helicopter and the laser to have crossed paths momentarily. TFA and the text of the news release from the US Attorney's office both state that the exposure was brief, but that the pilot and another person in the helicopter were able to pinpoint where it was coming from, meaning the light source was active for much longer than the brief exposure. The point of the trial will definitely be to prove that they targeted the aircraft, as that's what the US Attorney's office said was illegal in the press release. They are being charged with interfering with the safe operation of the chopper.
More deadly things have been regarded as accidents. People run over kids in the street without speeding like maniacs. People accidentally shoot fellow hunters. I accidentally hooked my father's face when casting a fishing line when I was a kid, because he'd moved on the bank and I didn't realize it. I could have had his eye. People go skating on frozen ponds, and some of them break through the ice. That doesn't mean the people with them or the pond owners were necessarily negligent. It means there was a calculated risk taken by the skaters, and the threat of the risk turned out to come to pass.
Most cell plans offer browsing on the phone itself, but not use as a modem. It's close, I'll give you that.
DVD Audio and SuperAudio CD shipped a small number of player units, but almost no content was ever available. The companies involved never even marketed it. The players might be a market failure, but the media was mostly a launch abort.
FiOS is good, if you're with Verizon. It's later than expected and still only one major carrier has it in the US. AT&T's FTTH is still vapor.
Is service on the Iridium network even available? I know someone bought the $5,000,000,000 network of satellites for $25,000,000. Are they actually giving us a way to buy access through them? Where do I go to shop for that?
I'll agree they were probably already working on passing Acid2. I'm not willing to assume they didn't finish up the last bit of work on it faster than they would have otherwise to create a marketing opportunity. Microsoft's main advantage as a software company has always been their effective marketing. If some other companies had the effective marketing department Microsoft has, most of us here might be running Crusoe-powered machines running OS/2 with our Opera browsers, sipping our Diet Ski and wearing Lee jeans. The merits of some of MS's software make it worthwhile for its own sake, but that's never been the case for Windows or IE AFAIAC.
Except that much coal comes from strip mining. They cut all the trees, tear up the ground, and take the coal out. Then, when there's no more coal or it's too expensive to get more out, they either make it a lake or they put the rock and dirt back and plant trees. Lakes and forests both take up CO2.
One thing people don't remember about burning trees is that you burn the tree one year after it's been growing and taking up that CO2 slowly over 20, 50, 100, maybe 150 years. Burning dried corn really is a more efficient way to heat a home, and it produces much less smoke and soot.
Speaking of lifetime achievement awards... Isn't Wired a general geek rag?
I've been waiting a while for DNF, sure. I've been waiting my whole life for my flying car.
How about ubiquitous mobile Internet access? They're awarding 802.11n but not 802.16 WiMax? 802.16's been around since 1999 and had an approved standard in 2001. 802.11 already works, and most of the draft stuff for 802.11n already works together. 802.11a, b, and g are commonplace. The working group is only a couple of years older, yet we've been using the tech for years now. The 802.11n folks are getting shit for not having the fourth working tech standardized from the 802.11 line while we're still waiting for any semblance of penetration from anything 802.16 has done?
Realistic-looking VR?
DVD Audio? SuperAudio CD?
FTTH?
LEO satellite phone and internet service?
Sprayable solar cell arrays?
Politicians and bureaucrats who aren't complete tech outsiders?
It's not a cost of execution time, as you and the other respondent assumed. It's a maintenance cost. In simple interpolations, it's clear enough what's going on. In longer ones with lots of variables, it's often clearer (to me anyway) to explicitly concatenate the values.
My Firefox right now is using 55MB, and it's Firefox 2.0.0.10 which has been open just a couple of minutes. This system is quietly downloading the Firefox 2.0.0.11 as I type this, and that's the browser version that my other XP Pro machine has. That's the one with the tight loop problem. This machine doesn't have the same set of extensions installed, so perhaps I'll find there's something to the problem there. In fact, my 2.0.0.8 memory issues could have been related as much to an extension as to the browser itself I guess.
Here's a list of the extensions I use for comparison:
Palette Grabber (only at work, normally disabled) Mozilla Accessibility Extension (normally disabled) Firebug (normally enabled) DOM Inspector (normally enabled) HTML Validator (normally enabled at work, normally disabled here at home) YSlow (only installed at work, normally disabled there) Sage (only at work, normally disabled) Talkback (normally enabled)
Now 56MB, but almost no processor usage. 2.0.0.10 still grows, but not like 2.0.0.8 did. I'm hoping to isolate the 2.0.0.11 tight loop problem, but so far I've had no time to test so I've been using Opera, FF 3 beta 1, and IE instead of FF 2 on that system.
No. I don't honestly think that. I do honestly think the blog post about a browser that's far from the light of day was made and publicized in direct response to that complaint, though. Remember, my post was in response to someone actually asking for an anti-MS spin, so it's deliberately anti-MS spin. Some of if sticks when thrown against the wall, though.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying "one vulnerability" on Windows which effects every program running on the OS being less significant than "100 vulnerabilities" in which different applications you might not have installed being exploitable, listed by each string of values that as input could be used in an exploit, is not "at best a silly form of pseudomathematics"? Perhaps you missed the point of the word as used.
You make the same mistake a lot of so-called socialist make. You think that equality and fairness is for your followers, who are all inferior to you. If you considered them your equals, you wouldn't be commanding them. It's an interesting choice of title for someone who's supposed to be for the body of the people.
Not so much, no. A solar cell uses what is called "renewable energy". A 1-watt solar panel produces 1 watt whenever it is under full sun for the lifetime of the cell. A 1-watt lump of coal produces 1 watt ever. To get a watt hour from coal, you need to continuously burn 1-watt lumps of coal for the hour. To get 1 watt hour from a 1-watt solar cell, you expose it to direct sunlight for an hour and the cost doesn't change.
The solar cell will depreciate out and need to be replaced eventually. The coal won't be replaced at all. It will be gone, and the coal like it from the same mine will eventually all be gone, too. You'll need to substitute other coal from a deeper, more dangerous mine that's more expensive to mine and will cause more direct damage to the environment through the mining process itself. That mine will likely be farther from its point of use than the previous mine, so more other energy will go into its transportation besides the extra energy in mining it.
Plus, not only do solar cells not produce energy-trapping CO2, but they're actually taking energy from the sun's rays that otherwise could go back into higher layers of the atmosphere and become trapped heat.
"2kwh per hour" ... so, 2kw?
I'm frankly too lazy to do the math right now, but maybe they're counting on installations closer to consumption sites with less delivery loss. The cost of generation in large centralized plants is one thing, but line attenuation and impedance loss are another.
The NSA wiretaps that make use of AT&T switches that AT&T's customers get billed for aren't used only against the enemy in a time of war. Why will this be different?
There used to be a virus that slipped past the OS and triggered a BIOS flash on certain boards, and flashed the virus into the BIOS. The only ways to get it out were to buy a new MB, buy a new BIOS chip from the MB or BIOS manufacturer, flash the chip in a dedicated chip data loader, or replace it temporarily with a friend's BIOS chip, boot, swap out the chips on the live board, reflash, and hope you didn't fry the board or the chip. The board generally wasn't dual-BIOS, and worst of all IIRC was that the BIOS chip for many of the affected boards was soldered instead of socketed. The virus was called CIH or Chernobyl.
There was back in the days of DOS and ESDI, MFM, and early IDE drives, when it was the user's responsibility to run a drive head parking utility (properly configured for the right cylinder count for parking out past the edge of the drive) before physically moving the machine because auto-parking wasn't built into drives yet, a virus that did something really nasty. It'd take the cylinder count for your drive, cut that in half, set your park cylinder to that number, and tell the drive to park and shut down. The heads would move to the center of the platters, the spindle would slow down on its way to stopping, the air cushion between head and platter went away, and the heads plowed into the platters either then or when the drive would spin back up. I don't recall the name of this one.
Either of these could be considered bricking actual hardware, but you probably won't ever have to worry about Chernobyl and the other is obsolete.
IANAL and I don't know what specifically is the law in Pennsylvania. However, some jurisdictions in the US (South Carolina, for example) compel computer technicians to report child pornography just like social workers, teachers, and medical professionals are often required to report suspected abuse.
The technician in this case apparently, according to TFA, was searching for random video files on the customer's PC to burn using the newly installed DVD burner to make sure everything was working. He got suspicious based on the names of some files, including one listing a male name and a number he thought was an age of 13 or 14. Upon deciding he'd probably found child porn, he contacted authorities. This doesn't sound like rifling through all the guy's files at all if that's the way it really happened.
The judge decided the test was a commercially common and acceptable way to test a DVD burner -- by searching for video files on the user's drive. I'm not sure how common it is these days to do it that way, but it certainly sounds reasonable and not nefarious to test it that way.
The appellate court also decided that you have no privilege of confidentiality with a computer store like you would with a doctor or lawyer.
Anything around here that allows you to hook up to a PC is ridiculously expensive and works like crap, and they still reserve the right to mysteriously cap your "unlimited" usage or to bill you extra if you go over that limit. That's the plans that do allow hooking up to a PC at all. Mine, like many, is "unlimited" for the phone, but I still have to pay per kB to hook it to another device and let that use the connection.
/.'s own Firehose have had the story, among many other sources.
There was a news story not long ago about a guy on a plan like mine in Canada who ran up an $85,000 phone bill because he didn't see the distinction in the fine print. Yahoo, DSL Reports, The Huffington Post, CNet UK, Canada.com, Geek.com, and
I can get Sprint, AT&T, or possibly Verizon (haven't check on their coverage and plans here lately for data) here that will allow me to hook up to my PC for "unlimited" data transfer, but it runs about $100 a month on top of a required voice plan, and although most phones will do it only certain phones or a dedicated cell modem is allowed to have the plan. Sprint says theirs is both "unlimited" and "broadband", but they also say it's not to be used to replace a leased line Internet service. So which is it?
Well, both are true. Mine's truer in theory. Unfortunately yours seems to be truer in practice sometimes.
100 free classic books? Wow! Just 16,900 more to go and they'll have Project Gutenberg!
Nobody cares about your mini city, you racist, lying troll.
Great post overall. I can agree Supreme Commander has its faults, but if you've been playing it on GPGNet and think the gameplay is too slow, you're probably picking the wrong opponents. Or did you mean slow performance?
Greater variety of units would be great. Better performance would be nice, but I recognize my system is dated. The minimap could be a bit more useful. Slow gameplay simply isn't a problem in multiplayer for me, though.
I've seen people with experimental troops 15 or 17 minutes into the game. I've seen bases overrun and commanders killed in 3 minutes. It can be a very aggressive and frenzied game. I haven't spent much time on single player, though, so that might be different.
I love this game. It's an old family favorite of my wife's family, and I was only introduced to it this year. Now, my mother-in-law gets it out every time we visit.
Do you want Kindle, Sony's eBook reader, PDF reader, TeX, LyX, Ghostview, or IrfanView?
If you get your eBooks in a nice format like PDF, PostScript, or EPS then you can use any reader for those formats. A PDF reader is available for just about every platform. PostScript, TeX, and EPS aren't far behind. HTML's even a pretty good choice. If you can get your books in one of these formats, you can probably choose your device.
If you choose your device first, there's a good chance you can't choose your format.
A state granted monopoly (temporary) on something you invented yourself which is not someone else's prior art is EXACTLY what a patent provides.
There, fixed that for you.
IANAL, but doesn't gross negligence is lack of specific intent, but still requires the defendant should have known to do something and didn't care enough to do it? I doubt these people went outside specifically thinking that they'd use this tool to look at stars together, health and safety of the police and public be damned. That's not specific intent to hurt the officer, but it's still intent to be careless. More likely they just didn't know, and had no reason to suspect a helicopter would be flying through the path of their laser.
TFA says the copter was at 500 feet, not the mile some Slashdotters have speculated about. It also says the pilot was briefly exposed to the beam and the flash of it reflecting inside the cockpit. It would be relatively easy, although statistically improbable by sheer chance, for the helicopter and the laser to have crossed paths momentarily. TFA and the text of the news release from the US Attorney's office both state that the exposure was brief, but that the pilot and another person in the helicopter were able to pinpoint where it was coming from, meaning the light source was active for much longer than the brief exposure. The point of the trial will definitely be to prove that they targeted the aircraft, as that's what the US Attorney's office said was illegal in the press release. They are being charged with interfering with the safe operation of the chopper.
More deadly things have been regarded as accidents. People run over kids in the street without speeding like maniacs. People accidentally shoot fellow hunters. I accidentally hooked my father's face when casting a fishing line when I was a kid, because he'd moved on the bank and I didn't realize it. I could have had his eye. People go skating on frozen ponds, and some of them break through the ice. That doesn't mean the people with them or the pond owners were necessarily negligent. It means there was a calculated risk taken by the skaters, and the threat of the risk turned out to come to pass.
Was it one of the ones sold as a pet exerciser under this patent, or will the IP cops need to visit your friend? ;-)
Most cell plans offer browsing on the phone itself, but not use as a modem. It's close, I'll give you that.
DVD Audio and SuperAudio CD shipped a small number of player units, but almost no content was ever available. The companies involved never even marketed it. The players might be a market failure, but the media was mostly a launch abort.
FiOS is good, if you're with Verizon. It's later than expected and still only one major carrier has it in the US. AT&T's FTTH is still vapor.
Is service on the Iridium network even available? I know someone bought the $5,000,000,000 network of satellites for $25,000,000. Are they actually giving us a way to buy access through them? Where do I go to shop for that?
I'll agree they were probably already working on passing Acid2. I'm not willing to assume they didn't finish up the last bit of work on it faster than they would have otherwise to create a marketing opportunity. Microsoft's main advantage as a software company has always been their effective marketing. If some other companies had the effective marketing department Microsoft has, most of us here might be running Crusoe-powered machines running OS/2 with our Opera browsers, sipping our Diet Ski and wearing Lee jeans. The merits of some of MS's software make it worthwhile for its own sake, but that's never been the case for Windows or IE AFAIAC.
Except that much coal comes from strip mining. They cut all the trees, tear up the ground, and take the coal out. Then, when there's no more coal or it's too expensive to get more out, they either make it a lake or they put the rock and dirt back and plant trees. Lakes and forests both take up CO2.
One thing people don't remember about burning trees is that you burn the tree one year after it's been growing and taking up that CO2 slowly over 20, 50, 100, maybe 150 years. Burning dried corn really is a more efficient way to heat a home, and it produces much less smoke and soot.
Speaking of lifetime achievement awards... Isn't Wired a general geek rag?
I've been waiting a while for DNF, sure. I've been waiting my whole life for my flying car.
How about ubiquitous mobile Internet access? They're awarding 802.11n but not 802.16 WiMax? 802.16's been around since 1999 and had an approved standard in 2001. 802.11 already works, and most of the draft stuff for 802.11n already works together. 802.11a, b, and g are commonplace. The working group is only a couple of years older, yet we've been using the tech for years now. The 802.11n folks are getting shit for not having the fourth working tech standardized from the 802.11 line while we're still waiting for any semblance of penetration from anything 802.16 has done?
Realistic-looking VR?
DVD Audio? SuperAudio CD?
FTTH?
LEO satellite phone and internet service?
Sprayable solar cell arrays?
Politicians and bureaucrats who aren't complete tech outsiders?
It's not a cost of execution time, as you and the other respondent assumed. It's a maintenance cost. In simple interpolations, it's clear enough what's going on. In longer ones with lots of variables, it's often clearer (to me anyway) to explicitly concatenate the values.
My Firefox right now is using 55MB, and it's Firefox 2.0.0.10 which has been open just a couple of minutes. This system is quietly downloading the Firefox 2.0.0.11 as I type this, and that's the browser version that my other XP Pro machine has. That's the one with the tight loop problem. This machine doesn't have the same set of extensions installed, so perhaps I'll find there's something to the problem there. In fact, my 2.0.0.8 memory issues could have been related as much to an extension as to the browser itself I guess.
Here's a list of the extensions I use for comparison:
Palette Grabber (only at work, normally disabled)
Mozilla Accessibility Extension (normally disabled)
Firebug (normally enabled)
DOM Inspector (normally enabled)
HTML Validator (normally enabled at work, normally disabled here at home)
YSlow (only installed at work, normally disabled there)
Sage (only at work, normally disabled)
Talkback (normally enabled)
Now 56MB, but almost no processor usage. 2.0.0.10 still grows, but not like 2.0.0.8 did. I'm hoping to isolate the 2.0.0.11 tight loop problem, but so far I've had no time to test so I've been using Opera, FF 3 beta 1, and IE instead of FF 2 on that system.
No. I don't honestly think that. I do honestly think the blog post about a browser that's far from the light of day was made and publicized in direct response to that complaint, though. Remember, my post was in response to someone actually asking for an anti-MS spin, so it's deliberately anti-MS spin. Some of if sticks when thrown against the wall, though.