Once you start seeing cookies as a privacy issue, it becomes logical to also see them as an opt-in thing instead of an opt-out thing. That removes the entire issue of keeping track of who opted out - you simply assume everyone who doesn't already have a cookie doesn't want one until they ask for it.
I've often pondered that question, and I keep coming to the conclusion that a perfectly good system exists for that: RSS feeds. A lot of proper blogging services (LiveJournal et al) provide RSS by default with any blog. Twitter doesn't, afaik, and neither does Facebook - they prefer to keep all the users in their own walled-off ecosystem, just like AOL did once upon a time.
Straight RSS feeds don't allow for comments and/or replies, of course, so it's effectively limited to following; but then you can always reply on the actual service, or "retweet" a comment on your own preferred service.
And, best of all, RSS is already incorporated in most products people use. I have a load of RSS feeds nicely plugged into my Mozilla bookmarks. I suspect IE, Chrome and Opera also support a similar mechanism. There's Google Feed Reader or whatever it's called, and uncountable ticker widgets for the desktop of your choice.
No, I utterly fail to see the technical problem. The main issue, I think, is the current obsession with "social media" - popularity measured by the number of people who click "friend" or "I like" on you; whcih is of course heavily encouraged by Zucherberg et al so they can keep mining everyone's data.
Yes, and no. It may be more expensive in the short term, but it will breed them their own class of security engineers who can then both track other bugs, and provide better design and coding guidelines to prevent future bugs.
If a security firm, that presumably probes a variety of different softwares, can make a profit by asking 5k for a found vulnerability, then it's almost a given that in the long term you will be cheaper off with your own people watching fewer programs and having access to the actual codebase.
As quite a few commenters have already stated, there are plenty of examples that go against your argument. Personally, I suspect that "MAFIAA is good for you" type comments fail to get a lot of upvotes for the plain and simple reason that none of the people posting such manage to provide a clear, concise and coherent argument in favour; provide that and you're bound to get some upmods - the system is designed for (and seems to roughly succeed in) moderation based on quality instead of personal agreement. I'm perfectly able to mod a post interesting even though I don't agree with your premise, as long as you actually provide me with insights I didn't have before. That's a major improvement compared to a "like/don't like" system.
Of course, the continued inability of people to provide proper argument as to why, for example, the RIAA would be a good thing may be interpreted as it being impossible to argue that, because it isn't. In that shape there does appear some form of group concensus, but that is not the same as that group concensus being imposed to the detriment of differing opinions.
It's a matter of cause and effect, and my feeling is that the group concensus on/. is effect, not cause.
I've seen that claim before. It's clear that/. is US-spawned and -hosted, but I'm not quite as convinced that the actual majority of people on here are American. Some proper statistics might be interesting.
Nobody forced anybody, but if you leave your doors unlocked, it's your own god damned fault if you get robbed. Personal responsability, such a wonderful concept.
>>...As it is now, freebsd and OS X become fragmented, and some fixes in one aren't present in the other. > That is untrue. Apple has contributed to FreeBSD. Apple has even contributed code that was formerly proprietary, HFS+ (file system) code for example.
By saying that the original statement is untrue, you are effectively claiming that *all* fixes Apple made have been pushed back to BSD. I'd like to see some evidence of that, please.
You are assuming that groupon failing is a problem for the owners.
As you say, running costs aren't particularly high, and given how they've spread, long since recouped. As long as it keeps going, they're making a killing at the current rates. If it starts to decline, sell in time to some schmart corporation or keep going until profit becomes too small, then close shop and start a new sca- err, venture.
I was simplifying, but if you really want to be nitpicking, the GPL licenses say "your project must also be available under the GPL if you use any of my code" - not simply "open sourced".
"Within five years" seems a bit fast for "everything". My first thought, however, is that the keys that are also in my pocket would quickly make interesting holes in the device. Interesting in the sense that they'll clearly show where the vital points are:-D
I got a machine rootkitted a few months ago, and it apparently came in through Exim. Took some time to clean up the mess, and then discovered that the hoster set up the preinstalled Debian with their own copy of the security repositories. They had some problem around that time and were running a few days behind - the original repos already had an update for the packages. One more thing added to my checklist when setting up a new machine.
So yes, there definitely is malware out there in the wild. Not keeping up with patching is a problem on all systems:-)
I agree, Windows has slowly become more secure. Not quite there yet, but a lot better than what it used to be. The largest part of the attack vectors, however - as you suggest at the end of your post - is still mostly Windows for the moment, though: stupid users. An onfortunate, but as logical as it is damaging consequence of that, is stupid admins.
And right there is going to be the eternal damnation of the computer world: the users. Oh, how wonderful our job would be without them. That is, if there would be anyone around to pay us for it:-)
Apologies if this rapes your fanboi sensitivities, but Sony offering "proof" means precious little to me until independent, competent entities have reviewed it.
I'm by no means wealthy, nor a member of a ruling class. Hell, I'm not even an American, nor have I ever been there.
All this in no way prevents me from confidently stating that the interests of "her wealthy ruling class" are in no way, shape or form related to the interests of "the United States".
"Strong-arming people into open source" ? You're exaggerating quite a bit, aren't you. Nobody is "strong-arming" anyone into open source.
I write some code. That code can be useful to you for basing one of your projects off of. It seems reasonable that I'm recompensed for my work if you use it, doesn't it? The classic recompense is monetary, of course. If I don't want anything at all for my work, I can license it under BSD. If I CHOOSE (no, I'm not being strong-armed) to license my code under GPL, that's saying "the recompense I want from you for using my work, is that you freely offer your enhancements back to the community in turn".
It is, for some people, an unusual form of recompense, but it is a valid one nonetheless. If you find that opening up the enhancements you plan to make is too much to pay for my work, then you simply do not "buy" it and write your own or find someone else who wants different recompense. Nobody is strong-arming you, either.
Also, nothing stops me from offering multiple licences on my code. I can offer it to the public under the GPL, and if RandomCompany comes to me and says "we could save three years of development by using your stuff but don't want our stuff public" then I'm free to license the exact same code to them under a different license, against a difference compensation of our mutual agreement.
The GPL also does not prevent anyone from *selling*, only from witholding the source code. You are right that there is not a major demand amongst end users for source code. You unfortunately fail to conclude that that means not many end users are willing to roll their own, so there is definitely a market for pre-built, easy-to-install software, regardless of the license it's under.
Given that you had none since october, that makes it three times in eight months. I'll admit that seems quite a bit lower than what I get, although it's been a month or so by now, too.
I'm sure the allotment of modpoints isn't entirely random, probably takes a few user statistics into account. I also noticed I seem to be less likely to get new ones soon if I haven't spent all the ones I had.
Winning something in the lottery three times in eight months isn't all that unusual, I'd think. Making a profit over those eight months while playing every week is a lot more unlikely, and winning the jackpot three times in eight months, well...:-)
Slashdot Mirror
You're free to spoof your agent string or connect through a proxy.
Once you start seeing cookies as a privacy issue, it becomes logical to also see them as an opt-in thing instead of an opt-out thing. That removes the entire issue of keeping track of who opted out - you simply assume everyone who doesn't already have a cookie doesn't want one until they ask for it.
Rightly so, given that this is a US-centric site, but that was not my question :-)
You are also, obviously, right on my lazily mixing USian and American; although to be fair I'm ignoring 77% of two continents :-p
I've often pondered that question, and I keep coming to the conclusion that a perfectly good system exists for that: RSS feeds. A lot of proper blogging services (LiveJournal et al) provide RSS by default with any blog. Twitter doesn't, afaik, and neither does Facebook - they prefer to keep all the users in their own walled-off ecosystem, just like AOL did once upon a time.
Straight RSS feeds don't allow for comments and/or replies, of course, so it's effectively limited to following; but then you can always reply on the actual service, or "retweet" a comment on your own preferred service.
And, best of all, RSS is already incorporated in most products people use. I have a load of RSS feeds nicely plugged into my Mozilla bookmarks. I suspect IE, Chrome and Opera also support a similar mechanism. There's Google Feed Reader or whatever it's called, and uncountable ticker widgets for the desktop of your choice.
No, I utterly fail to see the technical problem. The main issue, I think, is the current obsession with "social media" - popularity measured by the number of people who click "friend" or "I like" on you; whcih is of course heavily encouraged by Zucherberg et al so they can keep mining everyone's data.
Yes, and no. It may be more expensive in the short term, but it will breed them their own class of security engineers who can then both track other bugs, and provide better design and coding guidelines to prevent future bugs.
If a security firm, that presumably probes a variety of different softwares, can make a profit by asking 5k for a found vulnerability, then it's almost a given that in the long term you will be cheaper off with your own people watching fewer programs and having access to the actual codebase.
As quite a few commenters have already stated, there are plenty of examples that go against your argument. Personally, I suspect that "MAFIAA is good for you" type comments fail to get a lot of upvotes for the plain and simple reason that none of the people posting such manage to provide a clear, concise and coherent argument in favour; provide that and you're bound to get some upmods - the system is designed for (and seems to roughly succeed in) moderation based on quality instead of personal agreement. I'm perfectly able to mod a post interesting even though I don't agree with your premise, as long as you actually provide me with insights I didn't have before. That's a major improvement compared to a "like/don't like" system.
Of course, the continued inability of people to provide proper argument as to why, for example, the RIAA would be a good thing may be interpreted as it being impossible to argue that, because it isn't. In that shape there does appear some form of group concensus, but that is not the same as that group concensus being imposed to the detriment of differing opinions.
It's a matter of cause and effect, and my feeling is that the group concensus on /. is effect, not cause.
Aides for everyone ?
I've seen that claim before. It's clear that /. is US-spawned and -hosted, but I'm not quite as convinced that the actual majority of people on here are American. Some proper statistics might be interesting.
I stand corrected. Thank you for that information.
Have you tried explaining this brilliant concept to your insurance, and have them pay half of the damages?
No, I didn't think so.
Nobody forced anybody, but if you leave your doors unlocked, it's your own god damned fault if you get robbed. Personal responsability, such a wonderful concept.
>> ...As it is now, freebsd and OS X become fragmented, and some fixes in one aren't present in the other.
> That is untrue. Apple has contributed to FreeBSD. Apple has even contributed code that was formerly proprietary, HFS+ (file system) code for example.
By saying that the original statement is untrue, you are effectively claiming that *all* fixes Apple made have been pushed back to BSD. I'd like to see some evidence of that, please.
You are assuming that groupon failing is a problem for the owners.
As you say, running costs aren't particularly high, and given how they've spread, long since recouped. As long as it keeps going, they're making a killing at the current rates. If it starts to decline, sell in time to some schmart corporation or keep going until profit becomes too small, then close shop and start a new sca- err, venture.
> I don't see why companies are falling over each other to get into this business space.
Because, just like with patents, it's "on a computer".
I was simplifying, but if you really want to be nitpicking, the GPL licenses say "your project must also be available under the GPL if you use any of my code" - not simply "open sourced".
Compared to Sony, I consider the regulars at 4chan a gentle, civilised people.
Yep, which is why I have screen protectors. A device that thin and supple, though, might be a lot easier to plain perforate.
"Within five years" seems a bit fast for "everything". My first thought, however, is that the keys that are also in my pocket would quickly make interesting holes in the device. Interesting in the sense that they'll clearly show where the vital points are :-D
I got a machine rootkitted a few months ago, and it apparently came in through Exim. Took some time to clean up the mess, and then discovered that the hoster set up the preinstalled Debian with their own copy of the security repositories. They had some problem around that time and were running a few days behind - the original repos already had an update for the packages. One more thing added to my checklist when setting up a new machine.
So yes, there definitely is malware out there in the wild. Not keeping up with patching is a problem on all systems :-)
I agree, Windows has slowly become more secure. Not quite there yet, but a lot better than what it used to be. The largest part of the attack vectors, however - as you suggest at the end of your post - is still mostly Windows for the moment, though: stupid users. An onfortunate, but as logical as it is damaging consequence of that, is stupid admins.
And right there is going to be the eternal damnation of the computer world: the users. Oh, how wonderful our job would be without them. That is, if there would be anyone around to pay us for it :-)
No, some other part might have done it.
Apologies if this rapes your fanboi sensitivities, but Sony offering "proof" means precious little to me until independent, competent entities have reviewed it.
I'm by no means wealthy, nor a member of a ruling class. Hell, I'm not even an American, nor have I ever been there.
All this in no way prevents me from confidently stating that the interests of "her wealthy ruling class" are in no way, shape or form related to the interests of "the United States".
This tends to hold true in most countries.
"Strong-arming people into open source" ? You're exaggerating quite a bit, aren't you. Nobody is "strong-arming" anyone into open source.
I write some code. That code can be useful to you for basing one of your projects off of. It seems reasonable that I'm recompensed for my work if you use it, doesn't it? The classic recompense is monetary, of course. If I don't want anything at all for my work, I can license it under BSD. If I CHOOSE (no, I'm not being strong-armed) to license my code under GPL, that's saying "the recompense I want from you for using my work, is that you freely offer your enhancements back to the community in turn".
It is, for some people, an unusual form of recompense, but it is a valid one nonetheless. If you find that opening up the enhancements you plan to make is too much to pay for my work, then you simply do not "buy" it and write your own or find someone else who wants different recompense. Nobody is strong-arming you, either.
Also, nothing stops me from offering multiple licences on my code. I can offer it to the public under the GPL, and if RandomCompany comes to me and says "we could save three years of development by using your stuff but don't want our stuff public" then I'm free to license the exact same code to them under a different license, against a difference compensation of our mutual agreement.
The GPL also does not prevent anyone from *selling*, only from witholding the source code. You are right that there is not a major demand amongst end users for source code. You unfortunately fail to conclude that that means not many end users are willing to roll their own, so there is definitely a market for pre-built, easy-to-install software, regardless of the license it's under.
Given that you had none since october, that makes it three times in eight months. I'll admit that seems quite a bit lower than what I get, although it's been a month or so by now, too.
I'm sure the allotment of modpoints isn't entirely random, probably takes a few user statistics into account. I also noticed I seem to be less likely to get new ones soon if I haven't spent all the ones I had.
Winning something in the lottery three times in eight months isn't all that unusual, I'd think. Making a profit over those eight months while playing every week is a lot more unlikely, and winning the jackpot three times in eight months, well... :-)
> the wisdom of the crowds
Yep, thought as much. *plonk*