I don't know about you but now days as long as the processor is faster then 400mhz I really don't care that much.
Most people don't. The many people that do are the people who run CPU-bound applications like 3D games, CAD, simulations, or kludges like Office 2000.
Right now, I run Slackware and GNOME on a AMD K6 200MHz CPU with an overclocked memory bus (100MHz), and everything works pretty well. Mozilla takes a while to load, but it really isn't bad. Nautilus is unusable, but I don't use graphical shells, anyway, and don't care. The other less intensive applications, such as Gnumeric and GNUCash, work just fine.
The only reason to get a faster CPU is when it truly increases productivity or makes something practical that previously was not. For general productivity applications, computers have been adequate for a very long time.
Yes but school isnt about competition, we didnt have much competition, our focus was on education, we did go out, but at the time I was in middleschool, I wasnt demanding freedom, most dont demand freedom until around 14-15, I was 12-13. This is why I say it should be done in middleschool and not highschool.
After experiencing the awkwardness of being a capable adult but not legally an adult while away from home, I agree that a school focused on younger children would be a good bet. Perhaps the key age group would be one where the children haven't become too aware of the opposite sex and the freedoms of adulthood. This would have alleviated a lot of the frustration associated with the school I went to.
One possible problem is that some of the students could still cave into high school. I am always mystified when I see young children who are really nice and then see high school students who are trash. Somewhere along the line, the children lost something. However, with a good experience in middle school, the odds are probably better that the kids will stay on track.
about 40 percent of all families are single parent households
This is what troubles me, and I have difficulty understanding it. Just how much time, these days, do kids get to spend with their parents? While growing up, I had two parents around for my entire childhood (typical working dad and stay-at-home mom). There simply wasn't a need to dump me into an attention-starved daycare, and I didn't come home to an empty house after school.
In a worst-case, a single parent working two jobs must just come home and want to go to bed. Do the children ever get real home-cooked meals, or do they eat out of wrappers, boxes, and cans all the time?
I just don't see these sorts of households being as relaxed and stable as traditional households (on average, that is; I know that some households are just plain dysfunctional no matter how many parents are around).
Changing the subject, I just realized exactly what you meant by a residential school (earlier I had just read the first sentence of your post). I went to a residential school for the last two years of high school, and it was both an excellent experience and a mediocre one.
The excellent side of it was the 24/7 education you mentioned. There was a lot of intra-dorm interaction concerning homework, hobbies, games, etc. Also, it was a self-contained campus, where the dorms and classroom buildings were all on the same block. In this respect it really was great.
The mediocre side is that being under 18 at a residential school really sucked. They set absolute policies about curfews, no cars, and no opposite-sex visits in the dorms (except during pre-approved time slots). This wasn't a religious school, either; it was just a school where the parents were way too paranoid and wanted these policies for their "comfort".
These restrictions made socialization very strained, overall, and hampered our ability to compete against other local schools in Science Olympiads-type comptetitions. Imagine trying to build something when you don't have a car, can't go off campus for too long fearing the curfew, and don't have garages and basements full of junk to draw from. In these competitions, we ended up performing weakly, simply because the other schools came up with awesome contraptions that were beyond our means.
Another mediocre aspect of the school was the burn out. Going to this school was essentially another two years of college before the regular four years of college, and quite a few kids just didn't make it. Some dropped out of college, and others just didn't shine as brightly as they could have. I'm not sure what proportion of students fit into this category, since there were certainly those who flew right through college going on to get Ivy-League Ph.D.s
I have met countless Americans with liberal arts backgrounds who have tremendously difficulty dealing with even the most basic concepts of logic, reasoning, argument and math.
I wonder what these people actually accomplished in college. I can't think of any well-regarded discipline that doesn't require an understanding of logic, reasoning, and argument.
Even painting is a logical process, in a way. The art just doesn't spew from some magical fountain, does it? An artist's knowledge and vocabulary will be different, but their reasoning and insight, in principle, isn't too far removed from that of a scientist.
The kid thought that the first question read as "sixty-(what) minus five equals sixty-three" ?
Some kids just think in unique ways. One of my teachers told us a story about one student who couldn't learn addition until the teacher changed the vocabulary: "You just 'tote' the numbers up." It turned out the student already knew how to add but didn't think in terms of "add".
You do realize alot of parents work 2 jobs dont you?
I wish I understood why the single-income household is getting rarer. How can anyone enjoy the miserable existence of seeing family only an hour a day or only on weekends. When each parent has only one job, free time is still spent doing chores and trying to pack a day's worth of quality time into an hour.
If there isn't a trend back to single-income households some day, I fear our society will simply fall apart.
Your post just highlights your social inability. Just because you didnt like being in school and had only a few friends doesnt make it a bad establishment, it just didnt fit your social quirks, most kids dont like school for one reason or another.
I disagree, because modern schools really are rigid establishments that cater to the center of the "bell curve." The accepted fringes are retarded kids, gifted kids, and criminals, where "gifted" means you get to take AP courses. There are so many complex aspects of people that don't fit in this standardized structure of schools that outcast individuals are the product of the system rather than an unrelated side-effect.
If you were -that- good and truly needed further education above and beyond the rest im sure it would have been provided.
Who would be so generous? The one-kid-in-a-thousand scholarship providers? Most kids just trudge along without such encouragement.
Did students ask questions too? Sure. And *gasp* -- they can now too.
Not really. So many teachers are incompetent that students' questions would be offensive to them.
I once had a teacher so terribly incompetent, that she made things up to answer my questions rather than admit ignorance. Another teacher just kept avoiding admiting ignorance by asking questions back. Yet another teacher was so convinced of rote learning that homework assignments were dozens of variations of the same problem. It wasn't until college that the average quality of teachers was acceptible.
I find it excrutiatingly sad that teachers, somehow, have been delegated to the bottom of the economic food chain in the U.S. They are not paid well, yet they hold the second-most important responsibility outside of basic parental care: education.
The quality of public schools and many private schools makes me think hard about home schooling. I haven't decided, because I really don't understand all the tradeoffs, yet. The ability to better control the quality of teaching, however, is an enticing aspect of home schooling.
Do you know what literacy rates were prior to mandatory education? How many of the illiterate learned basic math, much less algebra?
This is all fine, but the real problem is that the current education system has already peaked, reached stagnation, and is falling behind in most aspects of maintainence. It is pretty clear that things can be better. Unfortunately, I don't see big improvements on the horizon.
The issue is not how much better we are now than before; it is that progress has stalled.
The steps you outlined are exactly how Microsoft is trying to get Passport,.NET, and, eventually, Palladium, adopted.
It is very interesting--and saddening--that large groups of people respond so predictably to this recipe. This fact truly blurs the distinctions among social psychology research, mass marketing, and cult recruitment techniques. I fear greatly that Microsoft and the media companies behind things like DVD have become so good at brainwashing the public using these techniques that the point of no return is long past. Let's hope that this fear is unfounded.
What is does outlaw is the *distribution* of these tools or the information about them. If we all figured out how to do DeCSS on our own it wouldn't be a violation. It is the distribution of the code that is the violation.
Would this mean that commercially-produced screwdrivers are illegal, but ones we forge ourselves are okay?
And since you accepted the EULA that comes with your Palladium PC which says that Microsoft may, at any time, search your computer, you have no recourse...
This means Palladium will be the ultimate abuse of a EULA. I wonder what will happen when the public at large finally understands that there are no locks on their "trustworthy" computer.
Now anyone who knows anything about cars will understand that a car with 260 hp is not necessarily twice as fast (either in top speed or acceleration) than a car with 130 hp.
Also, almost no one ever sees that 260 HP or 130 HP, since that power is available only when the engine is at full throttle and running at a specific RPM.
The few people that actually do routinely see that amount of power are probably the people that have cars who perform like crap after a relatively short while due to worn camshafts, piston rings, or other components designed for regular driving (that is, unless, you drive a production car like a BMW M3, for example).
Also, the side-effects of where that max horsepower occurs in relationship to max torque in the RPM band isn't captured in the simplistic label of "230 HP", since a car that produces max torque at under 3000 RPM would be a real beast on the highway but won't win any races.
It is probably accurate to say the complexity of car performance is similar to that of computer performance. One has the engine, transmission, differential, tires, chassis, suspension, etc., and the other has CPU, data busses, RAM, disks, etc. All these components really do work together.
This law about cell phones does not rank with the book-burners' wishes that only they have protection under the First Amendment.
Cell phones ringers and, similarly, overpowered personal stereo equipment are not protected by the Constitution, in my opinion. They inhibit other people's Constitutional rights to enjoy uninterrupted theatrical performances, listen their own music at a reasonable volume, or even enjoy a book, for cripes sake. If I had a dollar for everytime a passing ear drum-busting car interrupted something I was doing, I would have enough money for a new computer.
Find a registry tool that does search-and-replace...
1) This is an added per-host software installation to address the inherent flaws in the Windows Registry and the poor design of most Windows applications.
2) If the added Registry tool requires purchasing per-host licenses, then you will never have enough licenses nor have it installed when you really need it.
Windows scripting host.
How do you get by the almost non-existant set of useful system utilities that Microsoft bundles with Windows. Solaris has nearly 800 command line utilities available, by default, under/usr, each providing a nugget of usefulness in scripts.
Windows XP has fast user switching.
It's too bad that Windows XP doesn't have fast user adoption.
You write a script using WSH or DOS batch scripting, and you put it in the startup commands that Windows runs whenever you log on to the domain.
So, a person has to log out, first? I stay logged into Solaris months at a time, but I can update the service configurations on-the-fly with only momentary service interuptions (the time it takes to restart a specific daemon).
Only if you don't know how to properly administer it, and believe me, you don't.
Thank you for expressing the issue better than I could. The aspect of e-mail, where it should work regardless of a network connection, is a good point. Once a message is delivered, the recipient should be able to read it on-line, off-line, or even printed out. An e-mail with links to the WWW is, essentially, an e-mail that was never completely delivered.
Re:Periodicals are advertising supported...
on
RIP: The Perl Journal
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It's not about content versus pretty pictures; it's about audience size and how much of that audience is willing to pay for things.
I still agree with the parent post. Most technical print magazines have very little useful content. The only reasons I keep a magazine subscription going is to know what the buzzwords-of-the-month are and to see what the hot-products-of-the-month are. In this respect, the advertisements are actually the content.
Quite honestly, if I were to take the things I see in a magazine seriously, I would have a record number of failed projects that no one else can maintain to claim responsibility for. The fact is, if a magazine publishes something as a bold-faced headline, odds are that technology is so immature or vaporous that it will disappear into obscurity before I even understand what it is. This is true for nearly any technology domain, regardless of which company is backing the brand names and acronyms.
Conclusion: magazines are good for buzzwords and "the bleeding edge", but look elsewhere for things on which one can risk a reputation.
You also have Microsoft software that runs on Macintosh, Solaris, HP-UX and FreeBSD computers.
I work on Solaris every day...where's the Microsoft software? I know that IE is available for Solaris, but I certainly wouldn't be so stupid as to actually install it.
...there will be about 92 (I'm taking out the non-Windows, non-Linux users) people who receive the Microsoft fix
Your giving the Windows users too much credit. The fraction of KDE users who will eventually upgrade KDE is much higher than the fraction of Windows users who will ever bother to patch their systems.
Considering that there are hundreds of millions of people on the Internet, and hundreds of BILLIONS of different hardware configurations, the chance that a Microsoft fix will break something is much higher than the chance that a KDE fix will break something.
Actually, a patch that breaks something because of an odd hardware configuration simply indicates architectural flaws in the OS.
It's funny how most people who run Linux don't trust their vendor enough to release patches in a timely manner, and actually whine about fixes being easy to get.
??.
I don't have time to sit on SecurityFocus all day and make sure I'm not affected by the myriad set of would-be bugs on my servers...
You should at least read up on what is being delivered to you during an "up2date" session, so you know what the configuration of your servers is at any moment. Software changes can have complex ramifications, if done blindly.
I think the rabid Linux people you are going after simply are the people who want to know where they actually are at any given moment. This is actually a responsible attitude towards system administration. If you don't have time for it, perhaps you are overworked and need an assistant?
The people I see who are the most rabid advocates of open source are also the most rabid advocates of doing everything themselves...
So certain Peruvian congressmen are uber-elite system administrators? People who simply want a non-proprietary Office format also write their own kernel modules?
I'm really trying to see a difference, but I just don't.
Another way of putting it that I just thought of:
We have a right to read our mail privately in our homes with no one peering in. We generally dispense with a notion of privacy when going away from home.
The gray area between e-mail and web browsing is due to them frequently occurring on the same computer over the same network connection; however, I just tend to view them in the same way as traditional activities. My habits tend to reflect this, as I use separate tools for e-mail and web browsing, and I ensure my web browser isn't configured to do e-mail-like activities. If I wanted to take things further, I would run my web browser in a separate and limited user account (which I already do for my Windows VM, but that's a different matter) or even configure a special browsing-only workstation that has specific firewall privileges. This isolation helps protect my computer from the fact that the browser automatically processes whatever data is sent to it.
As long as my e-mail is never automatically rendered and is always displayed as text, it is generally not as risky as web browsing and doesn't require as much isolation to be safe.
An XML word processor might end up being a very poor word processor indeed.
If the architects of the new file format do their job well, the structure will be transparent to end users who don't know or care about it.
Given a person who uses the word processor simply as a point and click "make this italic and that green" type editor, the software should be able to adapt the structure to accomodate this. The file itself will be messy with structural overhead for each whim of the user, but it will still be a correct and interchangable file.
A person who wants to carefully lay out the content and design a separate stylesheet should be able to do that, too. The resulting file will be cleaner but still correct and interchangable.
Let's just hope that the people developing the new file format have learned from history and will make something that is useful and flexible without being a kludge. Good document formats have been designed already; it is mainly a matter of taking the best ideas and reimplementing them.
I generally have feelings about JavaScript that mirror my feelings about HTML e-mail, and the underlying problem of bad default software configurations is the same. But I'll defer ranting about JavaScript, for now.
I agree that browsing doesn't always seem "opt in", but I was trying to point out that browsing is actively going out and about, which is different than reading through e-mail.
HTML and JavaScript in e-mail is more like a disease-loaded letter in a person's own mailbox (no one asked for it, no one needs it, it's just there, and it's dangerous). WWW browsing, on the other hand, really is more like shopping or traveling. There are real risks in going out into the world into unknown places, but we accept them as small and not worth sheltering ourselves because of them.
Just because your e-mail client is braindead doesn't mean everyone has to be afraid of HTML e-mail.
I wasn't refering to my e-mail client. It's VM within Emacs and works very nicely.
I could be indignant and refuse it, or simply use a client which allows me to render it on my terms.
As I have done. My rant about HTML e-mail is mainly pointed at the shortsightedness of software publishers who put HTML rendering into their e-mail clients. HTML rendering is usually turned on by default, which is the original scene of the crime. This is why I have to write posts whining about HTML e-mail in the first place; if the software were to come better configured, this whole conversation would have never happened.
Isn't it better to worry about the 'evil' html up on web pages rather than in emails?
For most people, HTML e-mail is not "opt in". Just by browsing their inbox, they could be sending out requests to spammers' websites, thanks to e-mail clients that have preview features and HTML-rendering features.
Actively browsing the WWW, such as going to a warez site, is "opt in" just like going to the shopping mall. Browsers, such as Mozilla, which allow user control over JavaScript and cookies can help mitigate the risk of browsing the WWW (just like hiding things under the seat can help prevent your car from being stolen).
And by posting information on Slashdot that everyone knows and that the public doesn't care about, you are surely providing a sound solution to the problem of spam.
Not everyone knows, and not everyone doesn't care. Awareness is an important part of dealing with spam, and posting to Slashdot can be a good starting place to popularize information, such as that about HTML e-mail.
By not rendering HTML e-mail, I am doing a small part to deter a spammer's success. They use the image tags to build a database of "who reads what", and my denying them that information puts a very small dent in their efforts. Public awareness can make that dent bigger.
I would like to see statistics about how many unique visitors there are each day to Slashdot. I imagine there are many many thousands (millions?) of readers all over the Earth.
On top of that, there are at least a few influential people who read, or are at least aware of, Slashdot, and there are many readers from within many big corporations.
If I say something truly worthwhile, a few moderators out there will recognize that. If I post slanderous crap, I will be treated accordingly. While there is some corporate-sponsored posting and moderation on Slashdot, the noise introduced by it is still too small to drown out honest voices.
So, if posting something to Slashdot is not a good way to say something to a broad audience, what other forum is better?
The spam message is entirely contained as an/image/ within the html.
Thankfully, my e-mail client is set up to not render any HTML in an e-mail. I have yet to send back any information to a spammer via specially-coded image tags and am proud of it.
HTML-based e-mail is fundamentally insecure and really should be used by no one (except those who simply don't care about privacy). Go here to learn just what a spammer--or anyone who sends you an HTML-based e-mail--can learn about you with just one "click" of your mouse.
Yes, the spammer can learn what browser version you use, what OS you use, and even what city you live in (via the traceroute). An unusually savvy spammer could use this information to install spyware via known exploits in certain browsers and operating systems.
In short, HTML e-mail is damn scary knowing that so many people us it not knowing just how much information they are giving away for free!
...they can nail you well before you actually carry out the act. That's the definition of conspiracy.
This is fine, but what if the conspiracy is totally stored within the mind? In either case, whether the movies are in my house on cassettes or on my hard drive, there is no clear external sign of intent.
The point I'm trying to get at is that Palladium might be a means of allowing me to be labeled a conspirator without there being real proof of it. In my post, the movie had simply been copied to the hard disk, which, in itself, doesn't break the law. The intent to distribute it isn't stored on the hard disk but the mind. Without proof of that intent, Microsoft, the RIAA, and/or the MPAA are, in my opinion, infringing on my Fourth Amendment rights by sneaking in to perform their brand of justice.
While we're at it, the First Amendment (free speech) and the Sixth Amendment (the right to a trial) should be considered, too. If Microsoft, the RIAA, and the MPAA think they can bypass the U.S. Constitution, of all things, in trying to preserve their way of life, they are arrogant beyond belief.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about you but now days as long as the processor is faster then 400mhz I really don't care that much.
Most people don't. The many people that do are the people who run CPU-bound applications like 3D games, CAD, simulations, or kludges like Office 2000.
Right now, I run Slackware and GNOME on a AMD K6 200MHz CPU with an overclocked memory bus (100MHz), and everything works pretty well. Mozilla takes a while to load, but it really isn't bad. Nautilus is unusable, but I don't use graphical shells, anyway, and don't care. The other less intensive applications, such as Gnumeric and GNUCash, work just fine.
The only reason to get a faster CPU is when it truly increases productivity or makes something practical that previously was not. For general productivity applications, computers have been adequate for a very long time.
Yes but school isnt about competition, we didnt have much competition, our focus was on education, we did go out, but at the time I was in middleschool, I wasnt demanding freedom, most dont demand freedom until around 14-15, I was 12-13. This is why I say it should be done in middleschool and not highschool.
After experiencing the awkwardness of being a capable adult but not legally an adult while away from home, I agree that a school focused on younger children would be a good bet. Perhaps the key age group would be one where the children haven't become too aware of the opposite sex and the freedoms of adulthood. This would have alleviated a lot of the frustration associated with the school I went to.
One possible problem is that some of the students could still cave into high school. I am always mystified when I see young children who are really nice and then see high school students who are trash. Somewhere along the line, the children lost something. However, with a good experience in middle school, the odds are probably better that the kids will stay on track.
about 40 percent of all families are single parent households
This is what troubles me, and I have difficulty understanding it. Just how much time, these days, do kids get to spend with their parents? While growing up, I had two parents around for my entire childhood (typical working dad and stay-at-home mom). There simply wasn't a need to dump me into an attention-starved daycare, and I didn't come home to an empty house after school.
In a worst-case, a single parent working two jobs must just come home and want to go to bed. Do the children ever get real home-cooked meals, or do they eat out of wrappers, boxes, and cans all the time?
I just don't see these sorts of households being as relaxed and stable as traditional households (on average, that is; I know that some households are just plain dysfunctional no matter how many parents are around).
Changing the subject, I just realized exactly what you meant by a residential school (earlier I had just read the first sentence of your post). I went to a residential school for the last two years of high school, and it was both an excellent experience and a mediocre one.
The excellent side of it was the 24/7 education you mentioned. There was a lot of intra-dorm interaction concerning homework, hobbies, games, etc. Also, it was a self-contained campus, where the dorms and classroom buildings were all on the same block. In this respect it really was great.
The mediocre side is that being under 18 at a residential school really sucked. They set absolute policies about curfews, no cars, and no opposite-sex visits in the dorms (except during pre-approved time slots). This wasn't a religious school, either; it was just a school where the parents were way too paranoid and wanted these policies for their "comfort".
These restrictions made socialization very strained, overall, and hampered our ability to compete against other local schools in Science Olympiads-type comptetitions. Imagine trying to build something when you don't have a car, can't go off campus for too long fearing the curfew, and don't have garages and basements full of junk to draw from. In these competitions, we ended up performing weakly, simply because the other schools came up with awesome contraptions that were beyond our means.
Another mediocre aspect of the school was the burn out. Going to this school was essentially another two years of college before the regular four years of college, and quite a few kids just didn't make it. Some dropped out of college, and others just didn't shine as brightly as they could have. I'm not sure what proportion of students fit into this category, since there were certainly those who flew right through college going on to get Ivy-League Ph.D.s
I have met countless Americans with liberal arts backgrounds who have tremendously difficulty dealing with even the most basic concepts of logic, reasoning, argument and math.
I wonder what these people actually accomplished in college. I can't think of any well-regarded discipline that doesn't require an understanding of logic, reasoning, and argument.
Even painting is a logical process, in a way. The art just doesn't spew from some magical fountain, does it? An artist's knowledge and vocabulary will be different, but their reasoning and insight, in principle, isn't too far removed from that of a scientist.
The kid thought that the first question read as "sixty-(what) minus five equals sixty-three" ?
Some kids just think in unique ways. One of my teachers told us a story about one student who couldn't learn addition until the teacher changed the vocabulary: "You just 'tote' the numbers up." It turned out the student already knew how to add but didn't think in terms of "add".
You do realize alot of parents work 2 jobs dont you?
I wish I understood why the single-income household is getting rarer. How can anyone enjoy the miserable existence of seeing family only an hour a day or only on weekends. When each parent has only one job, free time is still spent doing chores and trying to pack a day's worth of quality time into an hour.
If there isn't a trend back to single-income households some day, I fear our society will simply fall apart.
Your post just highlights your social inability. Just because you didnt like being in school and had only a few friends doesnt make it a bad establishment, it just didnt fit your social quirks, most kids dont like school for one reason or another.
I disagree, because modern schools really are rigid establishments that cater to the center of the "bell curve." The accepted fringes are retarded kids, gifted kids, and criminals, where "gifted" means you get to take AP courses. There are so many complex aspects of people that don't fit in this standardized structure of schools that outcast individuals are the product of the system rather than an unrelated side-effect.
If you were -that- good and truly needed further education above and beyond the rest im sure it would have been provided.
Who would be so generous? The one-kid-in-a-thousand scholarship providers? Most kids just trudge along without such encouragement.
Did students ask questions too? Sure. And *gasp* -- they can now too.
Not really. So many teachers are incompetent that students' questions would be offensive to them.
I once had a teacher so terribly incompetent, that she made things up to answer my questions rather than admit ignorance. Another teacher just kept avoiding admiting ignorance by asking questions back. Yet another teacher was so convinced of rote learning that homework assignments were dozens of variations of the same problem. It wasn't until college that the average quality of teachers was acceptible.
I find it excrutiatingly sad that teachers, somehow, have been delegated to the bottom of the economic food chain in the U.S. They are not paid well, yet they hold the second-most important responsibility outside of basic parental care: education.
The quality of public schools and many private schools makes me think hard about home schooling. I haven't decided, because I really don't understand all the tradeoffs, yet. The ability to better control the quality of teaching, however, is an enticing aspect of home schooling.
Do you know what literacy rates were prior to mandatory education? How many of the illiterate learned basic math, much less algebra?
This is all fine, but the real problem is that the current education system has already peaked, reached stagnation, and is falling behind in most aspects of maintainence. It is pretty clear that things can be better. Unfortunately, I don't see big improvements on the horizon.
The issue is not how much better we are now than before; it is that progress has stalled.
The steps you outlined are exactly how Microsoft is trying to get Passport, .NET, and, eventually, Palladium, adopted.
It is very interesting--and saddening--that large groups of people respond so predictably to this recipe. This fact truly blurs the distinctions among social psychology research, mass marketing, and cult recruitment techniques. I fear greatly that Microsoft and the media companies behind things like DVD have become so good at brainwashing the public using these techniques that the point of no return is long past. Let's hope that this fear is unfounded.
What is does outlaw is the *distribution* of these tools or the information about them. If we all figured out how to do DeCSS on our own it wouldn't be a violation. It is the distribution of the code that is the violation.
Would this mean that commercially-produced screwdrivers are illegal, but ones we forge ourselves are okay?
And since you accepted the EULA that comes with your Palladium PC which says that Microsoft may, at any time, search your computer, you have no recourse...
This means Palladium will be the ultimate abuse of a EULA. I wonder what will happen when the public at large finally understands that there are no locks on their "trustworthy" computer.
Now anyone who knows anything about cars will understand that a car with 260 hp is not necessarily twice as fast (either in top speed or acceleration) than a car with 130 hp.
Also, almost no one ever sees that 260 HP or 130 HP, since that power is available only when the engine is at full throttle and running at a specific RPM.
The few people that actually do routinely see that amount of power are probably the people that have cars who perform like crap after a relatively short while due to worn camshafts, piston rings, or other components designed for regular driving (that is, unless, you drive a production car like a BMW M3, for example).
Also, the side-effects of where that max horsepower occurs in relationship to max torque in the RPM band isn't captured in the simplistic label of "230 HP", since a car that produces max torque at under 3000 RPM would be a real beast on the highway but won't win any races.
It is probably accurate to say the complexity of car performance is similar to that of computer performance. One has the engine, transmission, differential, tires, chassis, suspension, etc., and the other has CPU, data busses, RAM, disks, etc. All these components really do work together.
Slashdot: Protect My Rights, The Hell With Yours!
This law about cell phones does not rank with the book-burners' wishes that only they have protection under the First Amendment.
Cell phones ringers and, similarly, overpowered personal stereo equipment are not protected by the Constitution, in my opinion. They inhibit other people's Constitutional rights to enjoy uninterrupted theatrical performances, listen their own music at a reasonable volume, or even enjoy a book, for cripes sake. If I had a dollar for everytime a passing ear drum-busting car interrupted something I was doing, I would have enough money for a new computer.
Find a registry tool that does search-and-replace...
/usr, each providing a nugget of usefulness in scripts.
1) This is an added per-host software installation to address the inherent flaws in the Windows Registry and the poor design of most Windows applications.
2) If the added Registry tool requires purchasing per-host licenses, then you will never have enough licenses nor have it installed when you really need it.
Windows scripting host.
How do you get by the almost non-existant set of useful system utilities that Microsoft bundles with Windows. Solaris has nearly 800 command line utilities available, by default, under
Windows XP has fast user switching.
It's too bad that Windows XP doesn't have fast user adoption.
You write a script using WSH or DOS batch scripting, and you put it in the startup commands that Windows runs whenever you log on to the domain.
So, a person has to log out, first? I stay logged into Solaris months at a time, but I can update the service configurations on-the-fly with only momentary service interuptions (the time it takes to restart a specific daemon).
Only if you don't know how to properly administer it, and believe me, you don't.
Who does?
Thank you for expressing the issue better than I could. The aspect of e-mail, where it should work regardless of a network connection, is a good point. Once a message is delivered, the recipient should be able to read it on-line, off-line, or even printed out. An e-mail with links to the WWW is, essentially, an e-mail that was never completely delivered.
It's not about content versus pretty pictures; it's about audience size and how much of that audience is willing to pay for things.
I still agree with the parent post. Most technical print magazines have very little useful content. The only reasons I keep a magazine subscription going is to know what the buzzwords-of-the-month are and to see what the hot-products-of-the-month are. In this respect, the advertisements are actually the content.
Quite honestly, if I were to take the things I see in a magazine seriously, I would have a record number of failed projects that no one else can maintain to claim responsibility for. The fact is, if a magazine publishes something as a bold-faced headline, odds are that technology is so immature or vaporous that it will disappear into obscurity before I even understand what it is. This is true for nearly any technology domain, regardless of which company is backing the brand names and acronyms.
Conclusion: magazines are good for buzzwords and "the bleeding edge", but look elsewhere for things on which one can risk a reputation.
You also have Microsoft software that runs on Macintosh, Solaris, HP-UX and FreeBSD computers.
...there will be about 92 (I'm taking out the non-Windows, non-Linux users) people who receive the Microsoft fix
I work on Solaris every day...where's the Microsoft software? I know that IE is available for Solaris, but I certainly wouldn't be so stupid as to actually install it.
Your giving the Windows users too much credit. The fraction of KDE users who will eventually upgrade KDE is much higher than the fraction of Windows users who will ever bother to patch their systems.
Considering that there are hundreds of millions of people on the Internet, and hundreds of BILLIONS of different hardware configurations, the chance that a Microsoft fix will break something is much higher than the chance that a KDE fix will break something.
Actually, a patch that breaks something because of an odd hardware configuration simply indicates architectural flaws in the OS.
It's funny how most people who run Linux don't trust their vendor enough to release patches in a timely manner, and actually whine about fixes being easy to get.
??.
I don't have time to sit on SecurityFocus all day and make sure I'm not affected by the myriad set of would-be bugs on my servers...
You should at least read up on what is being delivered to you during an "up2date" session, so you know what the configuration of your servers is at any moment. Software changes can have complex ramifications, if done blindly.
I think the rabid Linux people you are going after simply are the people who want to know where they actually are at any given moment. This is actually a responsible attitude towards system administration. If you don't have time for it, perhaps you are overworked and need an assistant?
The people I see who are the most rabid advocates of open source are also the most rabid advocates of doing everything themselves...
So certain Peruvian congressmen are uber-elite system administrators? People who simply want a non-proprietary Office format also write their own kernel modules?
I'm really trying to see a difference, but I just don't.
Another way of putting it that I just thought of:
We have a right to read our mail privately in our homes with no one peering in. We generally dispense with a notion of privacy when going away from home.
The gray area between e-mail and web browsing is due to them frequently occurring on the same computer over the same network connection; however, I just tend to view them in the same way as traditional activities. My habits tend to reflect this, as I use separate tools for e-mail and web browsing, and I ensure my web browser isn't configured to do e-mail-like activities. If I wanted to take things further, I would run my web browser in a separate and limited user account (which I already do for my Windows VM, but that's a different matter) or even configure a special browsing-only workstation that has specific firewall privileges. This isolation helps protect my computer from the fact that the browser automatically processes whatever data is sent to it.
As long as my e-mail is never automatically rendered and is always displayed as text, it is generally not as risky as web browsing and doesn't require as much isolation to be safe.
An XML word processor might end up being a very poor word processor indeed.
If the architects of the new file format do their job well, the structure will be transparent to end users who don't know or care about it.
Given a person who uses the word processor simply as a point and click "make this italic and that green" type editor, the software should be able to adapt the structure to accomodate this. The file itself will be messy with structural overhead for each whim of the user, but it will still be a correct and interchangable file.
A person who wants to carefully lay out the content and design a separate stylesheet should be able to do that, too. The resulting file will be cleaner but still correct and interchangable.
Let's just hope that the people developing the new file format have learned from history and will make something that is useful and flexible without being a kludge. Good document formats have been designed already; it is mainly a matter of taking the best ideas and reimplementing them.
Javascripts
I generally have feelings about JavaScript that mirror my feelings about HTML e-mail, and the underlying problem of bad default software configurations is the same. But I'll defer ranting about JavaScript, for now.
I agree that browsing doesn't always seem "opt in", but I was trying to point out that browsing is actively going out and about, which is different than reading through e-mail.
HTML and JavaScript in e-mail is more like a disease-loaded letter in a person's own mailbox (no one asked for it, no one needs it, it's just there, and it's dangerous). WWW browsing, on the other hand, really is more like shopping or traveling. There are real risks in going out into the world into unknown places, but we accept them as small and not worth sheltering ourselves because of them.
Just because your e-mail client is braindead doesn't mean everyone has to be afraid of HTML e-mail.
I wasn't refering to my e-mail client. It's VM within Emacs and works very nicely.
I could be indignant and refuse it, or simply use a client which allows me to render it on my terms.
As I have done. My rant about HTML e-mail is mainly pointed at the shortsightedness of software publishers who put HTML rendering into their e-mail clients. HTML rendering is usually turned on by default, which is the original scene of the crime. This is why I have to write posts whining about HTML e-mail in the first place; if the software were to come better configured, this whole conversation would have never happened.
Isn't it better to worry about the 'evil' html up on web pages rather than in emails?
For most people, HTML e-mail is not "opt in". Just by browsing their inbox, they could be sending out requests to spammers' websites, thanks to e-mail clients that have preview features and HTML-rendering features.
Actively browsing the WWW, such as going to a warez site, is "opt in" just like going to the shopping mall. Browsers, such as Mozilla, which allow user control over JavaScript and cookies can help mitigate the risk of browsing the WWW (just like hiding things under the seat can help prevent your car from being stolen).
And by posting information on Slashdot that everyone knows and that the public doesn't care about, you are surely providing a sound solution to the problem of spam.
Not everyone knows, and not everyone doesn't care. Awareness is an important part of dealing with spam, and posting to Slashdot can be a good starting place to popularize information, such as that about HTML e-mail.
By not rendering HTML e-mail, I am doing a small part to deter a spammer's success. They use the image tags to build a database of "who reads what", and my denying them that information puts a very small dent in their efforts. Public awareness can make that dent bigger.
I would like to see statistics about how many unique visitors there are each day to Slashdot. I imagine there are many many thousands (millions?) of readers all over the Earth.
On top of that, there are at least a few influential people who read, or are at least aware of, Slashdot, and there are many readers from within many big corporations.
If I say something truly worthwhile, a few moderators out there will recognize that. If I post slanderous crap, I will be treated accordingly. While there is some corporate-sponsored posting and moderation on Slashdot, the noise introduced by it is still too small to drown out honest voices.
So, if posting something to Slashdot is not a good way to say something to a broad audience, what other forum is better?
The spam message is entirely contained as an /image/ within the html.
Thankfully, my e-mail client is set up to not render any HTML in an e-mail. I have yet to send back any information to a spammer via specially-coded image tags and am proud of it.
HTML-based e-mail is fundamentally insecure and really should be used by no one (except those who simply don't care about privacy). Go here to learn just what a spammer--or anyone who sends you an HTML-based e-mail--can learn about you with just one "click" of your mouse.
Yes, the spammer can learn what browser version you use, what OS you use, and even what city you live in (via the traceroute). An unusually savvy spammer could use this information to install spyware via known exploits in certain browsers and operating systems.
In short, HTML e-mail is damn scary knowing that so many people us it not knowing just how much information they are giving away for free!
...they can nail you well before you actually carry out the act. That's the definition of conspiracy.
/or the MPAA are, in my opinion, infringing on my Fourth Amendment rights by sneaking in to perform their brand of justice.
This is fine, but what if the conspiracy is totally stored within the mind? In either case, whether the movies are in my house on cassettes or on my hard drive, there is no clear external sign of intent.
The point I'm trying to get at is that Palladium might be a means of allowing me to be labeled a conspirator without there being real proof of it. In my post, the movie had simply been copied to the hard disk, which, in itself, doesn't break the law. The intent to distribute it isn't stored on the hard disk but the mind. Without proof of that intent, Microsoft, the RIAA, and
While we're at it, the First Amendment (free speech) and the Sixth Amendment (the right to a trial) should be considered, too. If Microsoft, the RIAA, and the MPAA think they can bypass the U.S. Constitution, of all things, in trying to preserve their way of life, they are arrogant beyond belief.