> No spellchecker, no access to the grammar and thesaurus tools. I was stunned to find that of the 30 people in the HQ, only I and one other person did not have to resort to those tools to craft a business-grade letter or email.
I'm amazed that access to the grammar tool would help anyone. By coincidence I found http://www.geekgirl101.org/fun/bollocks2.png (Word suggesting replacing correct English with a mistake) just before this story, and from past experience it doesn't suprise me.
But maybe it isn't quite so poor on American grammar.
> > The key CD is now scratched which hangs the authenticator
> how is a programmer expected to deal with the CD being scratched?
By not requiring one specific non-copyable CD as a dongle? At the very least, by putting up an error message saying "sorry, I couldn't read that". _Not_ by rebooting and corrupting the hard disk.
> > a drive filled during a save operation
> Again, a very unexpected and unnatural scenario.
No it isn't. That's the sort of attitude that leads to crap code in the first place.
> How well do cars function when they run out of fuel?
With most cars, you fill them with fuel again and then they continue working (sometimes you might need your injection system cleaned). Word didn't just fail to save his file, it mangled what he already had.
> Ok, and the U.S. government may violate its own constitution?
Not legally. But imagine you are an American working in Hong Kong, and the Chinese government collects information on you. The Chinese government obviously doesn't have to obey the U.S. Constitution, and might (as a hypothetical example) use wiretaps in ways which are legal under Chinese law but would be unconstitutional if done in the U.S.
The U.S. government is generously saying it won't allow that evidence to be used in the U.S. even if the Chinese hand it over - not saying that it will use evidence gathered unconstitutionally by itself.
> The motion picture ratings people rate things in a much more restrictive manner than the government could ever imagine. Just ask Britain. When "Eyes Wide Shut" came out in the US, they digitally altered the footage to make it R, rather than NC17. In Britain, they released it as it was, and they have a government censor.
I think the fact that we got the uncut version is actually because we are more restrictive than you in some ways. Because hardcore porn isn't anything like as available as in the US (or at least some bits of it, I know community standards vary), an 18-rated film here is expected to be mainstream, not porn, so there's no need to avoid it for a movie with an adult target audience. Some of them are cut to be R rated in the US, some of them are R rated in the US but 18 here for the same version.
So your 17-years olds can see things ours aren't allowed to, and your adults can see things ours aren't allowed to, although your adults have to put up with other things being toned down because your 17-years olds are also allowed to see them.
British Board of Film Classification http://www.bbfc.co.uk.
> Is killing a person of a different background/race more heinous than killing someone of the same background/race?
No. Killing someone with intent to frighten and intimidate others as a deliberate side effect as part of a ongoing campaign is more heinous than just killing someone.
Now that doesn't necessarily justify all "hate crime" laws (and there's an AC reply pointing out the ACLU don't support them), or indeed all anti-terrorism laws, but you should at least understand the argument.
> But how hard would it be to crack a 4096 DH/DSS key
A 4096 bit DSA key probably isn't any harder than a 2048 bit one, the maximum the DSS allows, so long as you use SHA-1 as the base (and so a 160-bit prime).
And no, it's not a trivial crack for any system, unless the NSA have some serious mathematical advances we don't know about - brute force with known methods isn't enough.
Re:MS doesn't actually turn a profit.
on
Microsoft's Future
·
· Score: 2
> More background
And http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/mscrash.html
Includes links to http://www.thelinuxshow.com/009_view.shtml, a review of the Bill Parish site, which says "The Bottom Line - Less than 35% of Microsoft's cash-on-hand is from product sales."
Re:MS doesn't actually turn a profit.
on
Microsoft's Future
·
· Score: 2
> In order to support your position you need to show that paying MS employees the market rate (without stock options) would be a significant (or devastating) blow to profits.
There are at least some people who think so.
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html
More background -
http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/ru le maker000217.htm
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/4526.ht ml
> > That bill is called the USA Act.
> Dang, you think they should have named it something a little less Orwellian,
Here in the UK we have the "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act", which in its initial form (among other things) basically forced you to hand over any crypto keys you had access to whenever any government official thought it was convenient, whle making it illegal to mention that your keys had been asked for. It's not _quite_ so bad now (e.g. they've said that putting your key on a revokation list is allowed; they can't ask for a signature only key even if someone does use the public key for encryption instead of verification; if they want a corporate key they have to ask a company officer, not some poor sysadmin who then can't tell his boss what's happened - the government position was still that the Lord's were fussing unnecessarily about civil liberties and there was no need for the changes).
http://www.fipr.org/rip/
Since I have no moderator points, and because it's possible you really are a clueless fuckwit (like whoever moderated you insightful), not a troll, I will try and explain it simply.
There are laws _against_ murder and rape. These laws do not "allow and encourage" murder and rape.
There are laws _requiring_ companies to maximise shareholder profit (as much as they legally can, consistent with their declared business). Taking out dodgy patents is not illegal and may increase shareholder profit. Those laws do allow and encourage dodgy patents.
> And don't forget that before that incident the same terrorist group had tried to use anthrax. They sprayed the shit off a building onto a group of civilians and no one was infected by it.
Possibly only because of the strain they were using.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/bioterrori sm/bioterrorism.jsp?id=23060900
"But now scientists at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff have analysed the fluid sample and found it contains plenty of healthy anthrax bacilli. DNA analysis shows they belong to the Sterne strain, which is used in live anthrax vaccines for animals. Sterne anthrax lacks a fragment of DNA necessary for the bacteria to cause disease, and is easily purchased in the vaccine form."
> Why does Nokia care if the file format on the phone is "protected" or not? Is there some kind of phone-to-phone transfer capability
http://www.nokia.com/phones/5510/spotlight_music .h tml shows a (cartoon) guy copying a song he's just recorded off the radio to his friends phone, and another one from a CD, then uploading them onto his PC.
But from the FAQ, the upload to the PC has to use the Nokia software which uses "encrypted AAC format" to store it, so presumably stops it being freely copied from there.
Maybe the phone-to-phone copy is allowed because you can't use your phone as a server for anyone to download from, only physically close people with a wire? (And maybe it's an analogue connection, or has deliberately introduced generation loss?)
> It's the music industry vs. artists and consumers, writ small.
If I don't want to buy new CDs (especially copy protected ones) I can still listen to live music, music recorded by my friends, second hand records, the radio, CDs I already own, etc..
> > they have been *massively* improved over those 5,000 years
> Can you name a single improvement to the concept of the wheel in those years?
The change from being something that lets a vehicle be towed or pushed to being something driven that propels the vehicle.
Arguably the change from the axle sliding round in plain bearings to rolling in ball or roller bearings. Possibly the change from being a solid round chunk of a single material to being a structure of hub, spokes, and rim.
> Now your patent gives you one advantage, but all the other patented standards just set you back lots.
So the big guys come to cross-licensing arrangements where none of them end up paying much, and the small guys are totally stuffed. I don't think the big guys are blind to this at all.
> for a contest like this where the designs are what are supposed to be competing
I don't think it is supposed to be just about the designs. Most cycling is mainly about the athletes, but they don't make them all use standard bikes - there are strict rules about what they can use, but every team is trying to get any technical advantage they can.
Lance Armstrong's autobiography is called "It's Not About the Bike". And he would be great on almost any reasonable bike, and buying a Lance Armstrong Signature replica of his bike won't make you ride like him. But that doesn't mean he doesn't care what bike he rides - http://www.lancearmstrong.com/tdf2001/bikes.htm
Remember Chris Boardman at the 1992 Olympics? There was a huge amount of discussion about the Lotus monocoque bike he rode.
> and not the one that could hire the best rider
But it's not as simple as there being a single best rider. There's a best rider _for a given bike_. A smaller rider will let you have a smaller frontal area, but may develop less power. A rider who has trained for years on upright bikes may be more powerful than another rider, but only so long as the riding position isn't too different from the standard one. If you follow some of the links, the Blue Yonder bike was wider than some because Jason Queally didn't feel he would be able to develop his full power if he was at all confined - and they didn't get the fastest time, although they had an Olympic champion riding.
A contest just for designs would be interesting, but that doesn't mean there is no place for a contest for the best machine/rider combination. (Though unmanned vehicles with a standard dummy passenger and standard electric motor might be easier to design for than a random pool of riders).
Look at motor racing - they don't use randomly chosen drivers to decide the constructors' championship - who can attract the best drivers to their team is part of the competition.
Re:Imperial vs. Metric: SERIOUSLY OFFTOPIC!
on
Biking @ 80 MPH
·
· Score: 1
> I visited Eire... no way to tell if they were in km or miles.
Older ones are in miles, newer ones km. (They might all be km by now - I don't know where you were, but it was a fairly remote bit in the south-west we found that, and that was some years ago).
On the other hand a friend of mine was once told "it's about a mile down the road, but that's an Irish mile, and an Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the bit can be as much as a mile".
Re:not the quickiest muscle powered human
on
Biking @ 80 MPH
·
· Score: 1
And the speed skiing record is faster than that - if you count using a vehicle slipstream as muscle powered, why not gravity?
> talk about danger riding one of these things on a crowded street...
It's designed and built specifically for the speed record. It's not going to be on a crowded street any more ThrustSSC or Spirit of America are.
http://www.supersoniccars.com
> Why release the oxygen? Bottle it, too. Tanked O2 is used all over the place.
You've still got to compress it and transport it. There's plenty of oxygen in the air anyway, so you don't need to do that where you are generating it, so you might as well go on using your existing oxygen liquification systems.
If you've got energy to spare on site (like a working fusion reactor burning some of the hydrogen), then do the oxygen too. If you're using solar or wave power as someone suggested, you might well want to use it all for the hydrogen.
> Basically, the argument that things get complicated so we have to let them be patented is what I call the "OH MY GOD THE NUMBERS ARE SO BIG THAT I CANT UNDERSTAND THEM SO SOMETHING MAGICAL MUST HAPPEN!!!"
You have to draw the line somewhere. It doesn't follow that a brain can't think because a few neurons can't and adding more neurons doesn't do anything magic - but we don't know exactly where consciousness arises. It doesn't follow that because Americans have the right to bear arms they have the right to bear nuclear missiles which are just bigger arms - but there are still arguments about what exactly gun controls should be in place. You can't say that a stillborn baby is not significantly different from a slightly late period (many fertilized eggs don't implant, or miscarry in very early pregnancy) - but there are still arguments about how late abortion should be allowed.
Similarly the fact that we can't easily point to a line and say "things this side are obvious, things this side aren't" doesn't mean that all things are obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
> it doesn't suprise me.
What's the name of the law that says any complaint or flame about grammar or typing must contain at least one grammar or typing mistake?
> No spellchecker, no access to the grammar and thesaurus tools. I was stunned to find that of the 30 people in the HQ, only I and one other person did not have to resort to those tools to craft a business-grade letter or email.
I'm amazed that access to the grammar tool would help anyone. By coincidence I found http://www.geekgirl101.org/fun/bollocks2.png (Word suggesting replacing correct English with a mistake) just before this story, and from past experience it doesn't suprise me.
But maybe it isn't quite so poor on American grammar.
> > The key CD is now scratched which hangs the authenticator
> how is a programmer expected to deal with the CD being scratched?
By not requiring one specific non-copyable CD as a dongle? At the very least, by putting up an error message saying "sorry, I couldn't read that". _Not_ by rebooting and corrupting the hard disk.
> > a drive filled during a save operation
> Again, a very unexpected and unnatural scenario.
No it isn't. That's the sort of attitude that leads to crap code in the first place.
> How well do cars function when they run out of fuel?
With most cars, you fill them with fuel again and then they continue working (sometimes you might need your injection system cleaned). Word didn't just fail to save his file, it mangled what he already had.
> Ok, and the U.S. government may violate its own constitution?
Not legally. But imagine you are an American working in Hong Kong, and the Chinese government collects information on you. The Chinese government obviously doesn't have to obey the U.S. Constitution, and might (as a hypothetical example) use wiretaps in ways which are legal under Chinese law but would be unconstitutional if done in the U.S.
The U.S. government is generously saying it won't allow that evidence to be used in the U.S. even if the Chinese hand it over - not saying that it will use evidence gathered unconstitutionally by itself.
> The motion picture ratings people rate things in a much more restrictive manner than the government could ever imagine. Just ask Britain. When "Eyes Wide Shut" came out in the US, they digitally altered the footage to make it R, rather than NC17. In Britain, they released it as it was, and they have a government censor.
I think the fact that we got the uncut version is actually because we are more restrictive than you in some ways. Because hardcore porn isn't anything like as available as in the US (or at least some bits of it, I know community standards vary), an 18-rated film here is expected to be mainstream, not porn, so there's no need to avoid it for a movie with an adult target audience. Some of them are cut to be R rated in the US, some of them are R rated in the US but 18 here for the same version.
So your 17-years olds can see things ours aren't allowed to, and your adults can see things ours aren't allowed to, although your adults have to put up with other things being toned down because your 17-years olds are also allowed to see them.
British Board of Film Classification http://www.bbfc.co.uk.
> Is killing a person of a different background/race more heinous than killing someone of the same background/race?
No. Killing someone with intent to frighten and intimidate others as a deliberate side effect as part of a ongoing campaign is more heinous than just killing someone.
Now that doesn't necessarily justify all "hate crime" laws (and there's an AC reply pointing out the ACLU don't support them), or indeed all anti-terrorism laws, but you should at least understand the argument.
> But how hard would it be to crack a 4096 DH/DSS key
A 4096 bit DSA key probably isn't any harder than a 2048 bit one, the maximum the DSS allows, so long as you use SHA-1 as the base (and so a 160-bit prime).
And no, it's not a trivial crack for any system, unless the NSA have some serious mathematical advances we don't know about - brute force with known methods isn't enough.
> More background
And http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/mscrash.html
Includes links to http://www.thelinuxshow.com/009_view.shtml, a review of the Bill Parish site, which says "The Bottom Line - Less than 35% of Microsoft's cash-on-hand is from product sales."
> In order to support your position you need to show that paying MS employees the market rate (without stock options) would be a significant (or devastating) blow to profits.
u le maker000217.htm
t ml
There are at least some people who think so.
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html
More background -
http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/r
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/4526.h
> > That bill is called the USA Act.
> Dang, you think they should have named it something a little less Orwellian,
Here in the UK we have the "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act", which in its initial form (among other things) basically forced you to hand over any crypto keys you had access to whenever any government official thought it was convenient, whle making it illegal to mention that your keys had been asked for. It's not _quite_ so bad now (e.g. they've said that putting your key on a revokation list is allowed; they can't ask for a signature only key even if someone does use the public key for encryption instead of verification; if they want a corporate key they have to ask a company officer, not some poor sysadmin who then can't tell his boss what's happened - the government position was still that the Lord's were fussing unnecessarily about civil liberties and there was no need for the changes).
http://www.fipr.org/rip/
Since I have no moderator points, and because it's possible you really are a clueless fuckwit (like whoever moderated you insightful), not a troll, I will try and explain it simply.
There are laws _against_ murder and rape. These laws do not "allow and encourage" murder and rape.
There are laws _requiring_ companies to maximise shareholder profit (as much as they legally can, consistent with their declared business). Taking out dodgy patents is not illegal and may increase shareholder profit. Those laws do allow and encourage dodgy patents.
Now do you see the difference?
> If they get linux from redhat the money is going to an US firm.
m l
And if they buy it (and support) from SuSE, it doesn't.
http://www.suse.de/de/services/support/index.ht
> And don't forget that before that incident the same terrorist group had tried to use anthrax. They sprayed the shit off a building onto a group of civilians and no one was infected by it.
i sm /bioterrorism.jsp?id=23060900
Possibly only because of the strain they were using.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/bioterror
"But now scientists at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff have analysed the fluid sample and found it contains plenty of healthy anthrax bacilli. DNA analysis shows they belong to the Sterne strain, which is used in live anthrax vaccines for animals. Sterne anthrax lacks a fragment of DNA necessary for the bacteria to cause disease, and is easily purchased in the vaccine form."
> Why does Nokia care if the file format on the phone is "protected" or not? Is there some kind of phone-to-phone transfer capability
c .h tml shows a (cartoon) guy copying a song he's just recorded off the radio to his friends phone, and another one from a CD, then uploading them onto his PC.
http://www.nokia.com/phones/5510/spotlight_musi
But from the FAQ, the upload to the PC has to use the Nokia software which uses "encrypted AAC format" to store it, so presumably stops it being freely copied from there.
Maybe the phone-to-phone copy is allowed because you can't use your phone as a server for anyone to download from, only physically close people with a wire? (And maybe it's an analogue connection, or has deliberately introduced generation loss?)
> I wanna know why no-one put down Sith
Maybe two of them did but that isn't enough to show up on the statistics.
> It's the music industry vs. artists and consumers, writ small.
If I don't want to buy new CDs (especially copy protected ones) I can still listen to live music, music recorded by my friends, second hand records, the radio, CDs I already own, etc..
Doing science that way doesn't work.
> > they have been *massively* improved over those 5,000 years
> Can you name a single improvement to the concept of the wheel in those years?
The change from being something that lets a vehicle be towed or pushed to being something driven that propels the vehicle.
Arguably the change from the axle sliding round in plain bearings to rolling in ball or roller bearings. Possibly the change from being a solid round chunk of a single material to being a structure of hub, spokes, and rim.
> Now your patent gives you one advantage, but all the other patented standards just set you back lots.
So the big guys come to cross-licensing arrangements where none of them end up paying much, and the small guys are totally stuffed. I don't think the big guys are blind to this at all.
> for a contest like this where the designs are what are supposed to be competing
I don't think it is supposed to be just about the designs. Most cycling is mainly about the athletes, but they don't make them all use standard bikes - there are strict rules about what they can use, but every team is trying to get any technical advantage they can.
Lance Armstrong's autobiography is called "It's Not About the Bike". And he would be great on almost any reasonable bike, and buying a Lance Armstrong Signature replica of his bike won't make you ride like him. But that doesn't mean he doesn't care what bike he rides - http://www.lancearmstrong.com/tdf2001/bikes.htm
Remember Chris Boardman at the 1992 Olympics? There was a huge amount of discussion about the Lotus monocoque bike he rode.
> and not the one that could hire the best rider
But it's not as simple as there being a single best rider. There's a best rider _for a given bike_. A smaller rider will let you have a smaller frontal area, but may develop less power. A rider who has trained for years on upright bikes may be more powerful than another rider, but only so long as the riding position isn't too different from the standard one. If you follow some of the links, the Blue Yonder bike was wider than some because Jason Queally didn't feel he would be able to develop his full power if he was at all confined - and they didn't get the fastest time, although they had an Olympic champion riding.
A contest just for designs would be interesting, but that doesn't mean there is no place for a contest for the best machine/rider combination. (Though unmanned vehicles with a standard dummy passenger and standard electric motor might be easier to design for than a random pool of riders).
Look at motor racing - they don't use randomly chosen drivers to decide the constructors' championship - who can attract the best drivers to their team is part of the competition.
> I visited Eire ... no way to tell if they were in km or miles.
Older ones are in miles, newer ones km. (They might all be km by now - I don't know where you were, but it was a fairly remote bit in the south-west we found that, and that was some years ago).
On the other hand a friend of mine was once told "it's about a mile down the road, but that's an Irish mile, and an Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the bit can be as much as a mile".
And the speed skiing record is faster than that - if you count using a vehicle slipstream as muscle powered, why not gravity?
> talk about danger riding one of these things on a crowded street...
It's designed and built specifically for the speed record. It's not going to be on a crowded street any more ThrustSSC or Spirit of America are.
http://www.supersoniccars.com
> Why release the oxygen? Bottle it, too. Tanked O2 is used all over the place.
You've still got to compress it and transport it. There's plenty of oxygen in the air anyway, so you don't need to do that where you are generating it, so you might as well go on using your existing oxygen liquification systems.
If you've got energy to spare on site (like a working fusion reactor burning some of the hydrogen), then do the oxygen too. If you're using solar or wave power as someone suggested, you might well want to use it all for the hydrogen.
The submitter's story in italics says "gas", which is right.
The title says "gasoline", which is wrong.
> Basically, the argument that things get complicated so we have to let them be patented is what I call the "OH MY GOD THE NUMBERS ARE SO BIG THAT I CANT UNDERSTAND THEM SO SOMETHING MAGICAL MUST HAPPEN!!!"
You have to draw the line somewhere. It doesn't follow that a brain can't think because a few neurons can't and adding more neurons doesn't do anything magic - but we don't know exactly where consciousness arises. It doesn't follow that because Americans have the right to bear arms they have the right to bear nuclear missiles which are just bigger arms - but there are still arguments about what exactly gun controls should be in place. You can't say that a stillborn baby is not significantly different from a slightly late period (many fertilized eggs don't implant, or miscarry in very early pregnancy) - but there are still arguments about how late abortion should be allowed.
Similarly the fact that we can't easily point to a line and say "things this side are obvious, things this side aren't" doesn't mean that all things are obvious.