Boring story, no response, who cares, no mention in newspapers, and the fact that the floating tin can currently up there will not get any larger for a few months does not stir the soul.
Consider the alternative universe I just visited, where a similar slashdot story was just posted but with the final phrase replaced by...
...slow down the assembly of IMME, the International Manned Mars Explorer.
"We just want to get everything right for the big trip," says Mark Shuttleworth, NASA's chief pilot in the twenty-nation effort to reach the red planet in 2010. "We're not pushing NASA or the ESA or anyone else involved in this project. They're working as fast as they can."
Preparations continue in Baikonur Cosmodrome for the launch of the Martian Factory Base Unit, scheduled for launch later this year. The MFBU will land on Mars in September 2003 and start producing fuel from the Martian soil and atmosphere in preparation for the astronauts' return journey.
President Taco refused to comment on the delay.
Oh, and by "NASA twerps" I don't mean everyone at NASA, the vast majority of whom are fine, hardworking geniuses. I just mean the people at the top who made the bizarre space station decision. I mean, the whole purpose of the Space Shuttle (check your history books, friends) was to resupply Skylab, which was an excellent space station. Roomy, simple, and one-piece, it was launched by a Saturn V and took the place of what would, on a moon shot, have been the third stage fuel tank. Then the Space Shuttle turned out to be more complicated to build than first thought, so it didn't make it up in time to rescue the station.
So, what were the thought processes jumping around the head of the collective imbecile which is the NASA beuracracy? "Shuttle built. Shuttle must go to station. Station dead... Build new station! Brilliant! Champagne and caviar all round."
I doubt that there was much talk about whether we need a space station or not. It just seemed obvious. Arthur C put one in orbit in 2001, every science fiction book has a couple of them floating around. But... what is the station for? Skylab was designed to observe the sun, but now we have SOHO, which does a better job. In fact, for any zero-gravity long-term space observation mission I can think of, launching an unmanned instrument package is far preferrable to sending humans.
"Um. It's for studying the microgravity environment! We can grow crystals. We can observe the effects on the human body." Fair enough, But now the station budget has been cut back to the extent that the station is just good enough to keep people alive inside, as long as those people are 90% dedicated to keeping the station running to keep themselves alive. There is little time left to do the science that is supposedly the reason it's up there.
Now I'm all depressed. Screw you guys, I'm going back to the alternative universe, and post a message on the alternative slashdot about our mad neighbors in the universe next door.
...induce currents in just about anything electronic and degauss anything magnetic nearby.
And the reason nobody thought of plugging on one of these suckers just outside One Microsoft Way is...?
Last line of the movie
on
HighWLAN
·
· Score: 5, Funny
If they ever make this into a movie (goddam there should have been a video camera operator in each car too) the final scene would have been a closeup on the driver's smiling face at the Perl conference, with a voice over...
"Some called me lame, some called me cool, but they all called me geek."
No, I pointed out that every specialist AV shop, and all the big supermarkets (including Asda, who are owned by Walmart) does this, and it's completely legal.
I was trying to be funny - evidently without much success:)
All I was saying is that the DMCA can be taken to absurd lengths. Technically, you provided me with a service (posting a message on slashdot for me to read) on how to break the DRM measure known as "region encoding". You told me I can buy unencoded players in Europe. If you are in the US, or if you ever visit the US, you can now probably be arrested for giving me this information.
I'm seriously considering making all my visits to the sights in the US (Space shuttle launch, Disneyland, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and CmdrTaco's collection of amusingly shaped turnips) very soon, because I'm bound to break the DMCA sooner or later, and the FBI will subsequently arrest me at the airport.
It's okay for the audience, as a representative of the general public, to show their outrage... It is NOT okay for panel members to engage in NOR to endorse such behaviour.
Absolutely, if i gave the impression that i feel its ok for panelists to cause a ruckus, i'm sorry. I only meant that a ruckus is the best way to be heard when nobody wants to listen. If you are an invited panelist, that's different, you are given time to clearly and politely state your views.
(sorry, cant type a long coherent followup - i'm on a handheld)
When you show up for these sorts of events, WEAR A SUIT! Yes, it it ananthema to our kind. Yes, many of us don't have to wear suits on a regular basis. BUT THAT'S HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED!
Absolutely! Very good point!
Suits, people. They're badges that the little brains inside business leaders and politicians use to signal to each other "Hey! I'm one of you! Listen to what I have to say!" One Brett Wynkoop worked that one out for himself.
Be polite - let the other side have their say, no matter how BS it may be. Then, when you get a chance to speak...
I think the point was that the geeks were not given a proper chance to speak at the table. They had to interject from the gallery, and so vented their frustration emotionally. The points they made were not the Gettysburg Address or the Sermon on the Mount, but who can blame them?
Reasonable is for usenet discussion, weblogs, email, and pamphlets. Reasonable is for individual representations, newspaper articles, editorials, and letters. Reasonable works when you have someone listening to you.
In this forum, a ruckus gets results. Not breaking chairs, smashing faces and petrol bombs ruckus, but angry, frustrated displays of feeling, which the people on the panel probably did not expect. They may not agree, but the message probably got through to the government that this difference of views is not between the tech companies and the hollywood companies, but is a three-way conflict between tech companies, hollywood companies, and the public interest.
Prediction [bookmark this space!] Next round-table discussion will either have a representative of the OSS community, or will be held behind locked doors. Either way, the meeting will be an intelligent, reasonable, and civilised discussion.
Myself, I'll stop laughing when Microsoft stop making jokes. My favourite joke this year was the marketing hype around XP: Apparently it "makes your computer faster" when you "upgrade your hardware"! Wow! Gotta get me some of that.
If you want to improve a piece of free software, you can help enormously by reporting bugs, improving artwork, testing bleeding-edge versions.
The KDE project suggests "Go to apps.kde.com and Freshmeat.NET and do a search for the application you are thinking of writing or just browse the lists there. If you find in these lists something of interest to you, you might want to contact the author(s) of the code and offer your help directly."
If you can design websites, offer to become a project's webmaster. If you can write music, find a game to contribute music to.
In short, if you have any skill at all, you can probably find a project on freshmeat you can contribute your spare time to.
Build your own computer? You're a terrorist. Run an "unsecured" operating system? You're a terrorist. Share files? Terrorist. Complain about corporate abuse? Terrorist. Demand your Fair Use rights? Terrorist. Fail to consume your fair share? Terrorist.
Shooting people to pursue political gain? Not sure. Depends. Holding a population hostage via threats of violence? Depends who does it.
"Laywers should learn how to clean up their source code. "For one, they should give clauses names or ID's. Then they can have phrases like: "If ($trans and $horgton) or $rollsNice or $tamper5 or ($beforeExpire7 and $gasoline) then coveredUnderStateStatute("Nebraska", 43726)"
What you read in a patent application isn't soure code, it's an executable designed to run on the US justice system. You are not supposed to understand it. In fact, a patent has greater value to the person who files the patent if it is (1) meaningful and yet (2) impossible to understand.
Of course if you try to disassemble a patent, the labels will be meaningless mumbo jumbo which you have to decipher, without the benefit of a symbol table.
IANAL but if I did become AL I'd write an open-source legalese compiler. Then any programmer can produce complex gobbledygook to jam up the works of the US legal system, rather than relying on money and teams of paralegals. Onward the revolution!
"I just hope that open source software is legal in most countries in a couple of years... "
I share your worries, brother. My guess is MS has been brewing DRM/Palladium in the X-labs ever since Linux was declared enemy number one: The Black Magic Anti-GPL.
"Once you've accepted the EULA..."
If I ever buy MS software (which I can't remember ever doing) I'll send a fax to MS support to tell them I don't accept the EULA, then click the shaded rectangle in order to install the software.
"I think they are trying to cause a reaction and get people upset. They can point to this and say, Look at how uncivil and mean these people are..."
I can't make it to the conference myself, but could the local Linux LUG please organise some sort of community bodyguard group to protect the MS booth from the attacks of childish morons? I don't want to see headlines in Slashdot the day after the event "MS booth flour-bombed" or "Stink-bomb ruckus at MS booth".
But for the masses, they take what they get, and they use it.
The masses are hard to educate, but as a herd they can be scared pretty easily.
Don't bother trying to explain, just say "todays computers will be made illegal" or "you can't play MP3s on computers in the future". If questioned how this can be, try starting with "I'm a computer expert, trust me." As a computer nerd, the temptation is always to explain how things work first, and allow the audience to use their brains to work it out for themselves.
"Tell me it aint so. Something insecure in a Linux/Unix app? "
Sheesh. For the first time in living memory we have had TWO security patches to install IN THE SAME WEEK! Omigod the walls are closing in! I must migrate immediately to Microsoft products, they'll save me!
Richard Feynman (the nobel prize winning physicist) once worked as a bodyguard to a professional gambler. The details can be found in "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman".
From memory, the gambler had a combination of "mathematics as well as data and strategy analysis" and combined that with knowing a few little tricks, like side betting. Strictly not allowed (like all money-making schemes in a casino) side betting involves ignoring the house, and betting on outcomes privately between gamblers. He would overhear "I'm sure this next spin will be black, I just know it", and casually reply "I bet it's not". That sort of thing. Anyway, read the book.
My badly laboured point is, a professional gambler is someone who knows the rules intimately, knows that the odds are heavily stacked against him, and therefore knows that he has to play slightly outside the accepted rules in order to win.
Sounds ideal for a CEO of a company selling Linux-based products..
"Yeah, we may have four new security holes (two critical) in our flagship secure commerce server, and three new holes in WMP, but YOU guys had a possible exploit (with a simple workaround) in OpenSSH! HA! Nyer nyer. Thhhhhpt."
Re:I do not write code with bugs
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
I write code with bugs... except once.
I once wrote a (quite complex) Mandelbrot set generator in Pascal, which worked perfectly first time. Gave me quite a shock.
"I think the market is silently going to take care of this. Would you rather buy an intentionally crippled product, or an 'open' competing product? "
They're going to let you switch it off. However, if you switch it off, you wont be able to generate or use "trusted" content, and if 80% of people do not accept your "untrusted" content (with a little help from some cunningly-worded MS error messages), you're up shit creek (to use a common engineering term).
The carrot will be Hollywood DRM content, and the stick will be in creating the perception that MP3s, Oggs and Linux are in some way "untrusted".
According to my sshd configuration under Mandrake 8.0, this is already set to "n". In fact, the comment above the line makes things even more clear:
# Comment to enable s/key passwords or PAM interactive authentication # NB. Neither of these are compiled in by default. Please read the # notes in the sshd(8) manpage before enabling this on a PAM system. ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
Slashdot Mirror
Boring story, no response, who cares, no mention in newspapers, and the fact that the floating tin can currently up there will not get any larger for a few months does not stir the soul.
Consider the alternative universe I just visited, where a similar slashdot story was just posted but with the final phrase replaced by...
Oh, and by "NASA twerps" I don't mean everyone at NASA, the vast majority of whom are fine, hardworking geniuses. I just mean the people at the top who made the bizarre space station decision. I mean, the whole purpose of the Space Shuttle (check your history books, friends) was to resupply Skylab, which was an excellent space station. Roomy, simple, and one-piece, it was launched by a Saturn V and took the place of what would, on a moon shot, have been the third stage fuel tank. Then the Space Shuttle turned out to be more complicated to build than first thought, so it didn't make it up in time to rescue the station.
So, what were the thought processes jumping around the head of the collective imbecile which is the NASA beuracracy? "Shuttle built. Shuttle must go to station. Station dead... Build new station! Brilliant! Champagne and caviar all round."
I doubt that there was much talk about whether we need a space station or not. It just seemed obvious. Arthur C put one in orbit in 2001, every science fiction book has a couple of them floating around. But
"Um. It's for studying the microgravity environment! We can grow crystals. We can observe the effects on the human body." Fair enough, But now the station budget has been cut back to the extent that the station is just good enough to keep people alive inside, as long as those people are 90% dedicated to keeping the station running to keep themselves alive. There is little time left to do the science that is supposedly the reason it's up there.
Now I'm all depressed. Screw you guys, I'm going back to the alternative universe, and post a message on the alternative slashdot about our mad neighbors in the universe next door.
You are an evil, evil little man.
...induce currents in just about anything electronic and degauss anything magnetic nearby.
And the reason nobody thought of plugging on one of these suckers just outside One Microsoft Way is...?
If they ever make this into a movie (goddam there should have been a video camera operator in each car too) the final scene would have been a closeup on the driver's smiling face at the Perl conference, with a voice over...
"Some called me lame, some called me cool, but they all called me geek."
Final theme music, roll credits.
...emulating top windows games...
#Wine Is Not an Emulator.
s/emulating/supporting
#If Wine gets good enough, we won't even have
#to call them windows games anymore.
No, I pointed out that every specialist AV shop, and all the big supermarkets (including Asda, who are owned by Walmart) does this, and it's completely legal.
:)
I was trying to be funny - evidently without much success
All I was saying is that the DMCA can be taken to absurd lengths. Technically, you provided me with a service (posting a message on slashdot for me to read) on how to break the DRM measure known as "region encoding". You told me I can buy unencoded players in Europe. If you are in the US, or if you ever visit the US, you can now probably be arrested for giving me this information.
I'm seriously considering making all my visits to the sights in the US (Space shuttle launch, Disneyland, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and CmdrTaco's collection of amusingly shaped turnips) very soon, because I'm bound to break the DMCA sooner or later, and the FBI will subsequently arrest me at the airport.
You go to a shop in almost any country in Europe, and buy a DVD player that has been hacked by the shop or the manufacturer.
Excuse me, but did you just offer to the public a means to circumvent a technological control measure?
It's okay for the audience, as a representative of the general public, to show their outrage...
It is NOT okay for panel members to engage in NOR to endorse such behaviour.
Absolutely, if i gave the impression that i feel its ok for panelists to cause a ruckus, i'm sorry. I only meant that a ruckus is the best way to be heard when nobody wants to listen. If you are an invited panelist, that's different, you are given time to clearly and politely state your views.
(sorry, cant type a long coherent followup - i'm on a handheld)
When you show up for these sorts of events, WEAR A SUIT! Yes, it it ananthema to our kind. Yes, many of us don't have to wear suits on a regular basis. BUT THAT'S HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED!
Absolutely! Very good point!
Suits, people. They're badges that the little brains inside business leaders and politicians use to signal to each other "Hey! I'm one of you! Listen to what I have to say!" One Brett Wynkoop worked that one out for himself.
Be polite - let the other side have their say, no matter how BS it may be. Then, when you get a chance to speak...
I think the point was that the geeks were not given a proper chance to speak at the table. They had to interject from the gallery, and so vented their frustration emotionally. The points they made were not the Gettysburg Address or the Sermon on the Mount, but who can blame them?
These people aren't interested in reasonable.
Reasonable is for usenet discussion, weblogs, email, and pamphlets. Reasonable is for individual representations, newspaper articles, editorials, and letters. Reasonable works when you have someone listening to you.
In this forum, a ruckus gets results. Not breaking chairs, smashing faces and petrol bombs ruckus, but angry, frustrated displays of feeling, which the people on the panel probably did not expect. They may not agree, but the message probably got through to the government that this difference of views is not between the tech companies and the hollywood companies, but is a three-way conflict between tech companies, hollywood companies, and the public interest.
Prediction [bookmark this space!]
Next round-table discussion will either have a representative of the OSS community, or will be held behind locked doors. Either way, the meeting will be an intelligent, reasonable, and civilised discussion.
...not to you at least, obviously.
Myself, I'll stop laughing when Microsoft stop making jokes. My favourite joke this year was the marketing hype around XP: Apparently it "makes your computer faster" when you "upgrade your hardware"! Wow! Gotta get me some of that.
Would there be a way for non-coders to make a contribution to GNU software?
GNU project has a page on How to Help the GNU Project.
If you want to improve a piece of free software, you can help enormously by reporting bugs, improving artwork, testing bleeding-edge versions.
The KDE project suggests "Go to apps.kde.com and Freshmeat.NET and do a search for the application you are thinking of writing or just browse the lists there. If you find in these lists something of interest to you, you might want to contact the author(s) of the code and offer your help directly."
If you can design websites, offer to become a project's webmaster. If you can write music, find a game to contribute music to.
In short, if you have any skill at all, you can probably find a project on freshmeat you can contribute your spare time to.
It may take only one ring to rule them all, but it takes four disks to watch it.
Build your own computer? You're a terrorist.
Run an "unsecured" operating system? You're a terrorist.
Share files? Terrorist.
Complain about corporate abuse? Terrorist.
Demand your Fair Use rights? Terrorist.
Fail to consume your fair share? Terrorist.
Shooting people to pursue political gain? Not sure. Depends.
Holding a population hostage via threats of violence? Depends who does it.
"Laywers should learn how to clean up their source code.
"For one, they should give clauses names or ID's. Then they can have phrases like:
"If ($trans and $horgton) or $rollsNice or $tamper5 or ($beforeExpire7 and $gasoline) then coveredUnderStateStatute("Nebraska", 43726)"
What you read in a patent application isn't soure code, it's an executable designed to run on the US justice system. You are not supposed to understand it. In fact, a patent has greater value to the person who files the patent if it is (1) meaningful and yet (2) impossible to understand.
Of course if you try to disassemble a patent, the labels will be meaningless mumbo jumbo which you have to decipher, without the benefit of a symbol table.
IANAL but if I did become AL I'd write an open-source legalese compiler. Then any programmer can produce complex gobbledygook to jam up the works of the US legal system, rather than relying on money and teams of paralegals. Onward the revolution!
"I just hope that open source software is legal in most countries in a couple of years... "
I share your worries, brother. My guess is MS has been brewing DRM/Palladium in the X-labs ever since Linux was declared enemy number one: The Black Magic Anti-GPL.
"Once you've accepted the EULA..."
If I ever buy MS software (which I can't remember ever doing) I'll send a fax to MS support to tell them I don't accept the EULA, then click the shaded rectangle in order to install the software.
"I think they are trying to cause a reaction and get people upset. They can point to this and say, Look at how uncivil and mean these people are..."
I can't make it to the conference myself, but could the local Linux LUG please organise some sort of community bodyguard group to protect the MS booth from the attacks of childish morons? I don't want to see headlines in Slashdot the day after the event "MS booth flour-bombed" or "Stink-bomb ruckus at MS booth".
But for the masses, they take what they get, and they use it.
The masses are hard to educate, but as a herd they can be scared pretty easily.
Don't bother trying to explain, just say "todays computers will be made illegal" or "you can't play MP3s on computers in the future". If questioned how this can be, try starting with "I'm a computer expert, trust me." As a computer nerd, the temptation is always to explain how things work first, and allow the audience to use their brains to work it out for themselves.
Joe doesn't think that way.
I think that things are gonna get interesting.
Better than getting totalitarian, I guess.
"Tell me it aint so. Something insecure in a Linux/Unix app? "
Sheesh. For the first time in living memory we have had TWO security patches to install IN THE SAME WEEK! Omigod the walls are closing in! I must migrate immediately to Microsoft products, they'll save me!
Richard Feynman (the nobel prize winning physicist) once worked as a bodyguard to a professional gambler. The details can be found in "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman".
From memory, the gambler had a combination of "mathematics as well as data and strategy analysis" and combined that with knowing a few little tricks, like side betting. Strictly not allowed (like all money-making schemes in a casino) side betting involves ignoring the house, and betting on outcomes privately between gamblers. He would overhear "I'm sure this next spin will be black, I just know it", and casually reply "I bet it's not". That sort of thing. Anyway, read the book.
My badly laboured point is, a professional gambler is someone who knows the rules intimately, knows that the odds are heavily stacked against him, and therefore knows that he has to play slightly outside the accepted rules in order to win.
Sounds ideal for a CEO of a company selling Linux-based products..
"Yeah, we may have four new security holes (two critical) in our flagship secure commerce server, and three new holes in WMP, but YOU guys had a possible exploit (with a simple workaround) in OpenSSH! HA! Nyer nyer. Thhhhhpt."
I write code with bugs... except once.
I once wrote a (quite complex) Mandelbrot set generator in Pascal, which worked perfectly first time. Gave me quite a shock.
"I think the market is silently going to take care of this. Would you rather buy an intentionally crippled product, or an 'open' competing product? "
They're going to let you switch it off. However, if you switch it off, you wont be able to generate or use "trusted" content, and if 80% of people do not accept your "untrusted" content (with a little help from some cunningly-worded MS error messages), you're up shit creek (to use a common engineering term).
The carrot will be Hollywood DRM content, and the stick will be in creating the perception that MP3s, Oggs and Linux are in some way "untrusted".
"Naaah, OSS has no security holes."
According to my sshd configuration under Mandrake 8.0, this is already set to "n". In fact, the comment above the line makes things even more clear:
# Comment to enable s/key passwords or PAM interactive authentication
# NB. Neither of these are compiled in by default. Please read the
# notes in the sshd(8) manpage before enabling this on a PAM system.
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no