I'm in no way an MS fan, I just found it interesting to try and make sense of the per capita statistic...( a challenge actually)
Is it because all software has bugs: the "many eyeballs" idea means that a large user base will find more of them...So if you've got a lot of users and fewer known bugs(low bug/capita) your software is less buggy overall.(Alternatively your users can't tell a bug from a feature)
Sorry folks, that's the best I could come up with....
My first reaction : "Wow, this is completely unexpected." You will forgive me (waves hand) for reading Slashdot daily and not noticing that this was an issue. I've completely managed to miss the daily stories over the last 2 weeks predicting this very event.
In an effort to be fair, I did say to myself, "Maybe this is good journalism. Maybe it's just a case of following up on a story. The editors might have merely been offering complete coverage and analysis of an important issue."
Then the coffee kicked in and I woke up. This is Slashdot.
Security and Convenience are bitter, mortal foes. Using long forgotten and ancient software may be secure(dare I suggest also abandoning ASCII and replacing it with a hieroglyphics-based standard) but it's not really convenient(or practical). Forgive me, but I don't see businesses rushing to downgrade their software. Issues of support, maintainance, licensing, etc. really make this one a tough sell. Security and Convenience just don't get along well...
Awww... But we like giving Verisign a hard time. Trust big bad pinkUZI to spoil all our fun. I read Slashdot for amusement, if I want news that matters I go to the BBC. Besides, I'm a Canadian, and calling up my Senator never really helped me.
Wiretapping is unpopular on/. and so is Verisign. When the two come together it makes for a good/. story. I applaud your effort to stay rational though.
Most of the arguments I've read here have been along the lines of "This is bad because it hurts the Internet". While it does indeed hurt the internet, the above reasoning is flawed. It is reasonable to place some blame on ISPs for the contents of the sites that they host. Before you flame, think about it. If I'm the Mayor of a city and crime rates jump by 300% while I'm in office, the criminals are to blame. But voters will hold me responsible and I'll lose my job. If I'm a banker and all my clients are mobsters, I don't have to break the law to lose my good name and be rejected by society. If I'm 17 and home with my 6 year old sibling, and he jumps out of the second story window, my parents will get really mad at me, and place the responsibiliy on me. I didn't do anything but I'm still to blame.
My point is, just because a lot of things won't work in conjunction with this ruling doesn't mean it's bad. There have been countless/. posts blaming the Music Industry for trying to enforce an obsolete business Model and for being out of touch with the way things are. Sites and ISPs will just have to work with this ruling, not against it.
Are we really that surprised at the Pentagon fiddling about with things that have the capability to destroy? Whereas I'm sure that we should be worried about bugs eating our oil, it's not the biggest threat to the environment that national security has ever come up with. Nuclear fallout, anyone? Napalm, Defoliants? Firestorms from conventional incindiaries? Landmines and undetonated explosive devices cluttering up farmland??
Not to offend any oil reserves, but as I'm a HUMAN and not a hydrocarbon, maybe this isn't such a sin after all.
The number of young men they have is irrelevant: How many American kids dream of becoming astronauts? The ability to find and train brave astronauts is not unique to China.
Red tape is not unique to the U.S. If you think that China doesn't have bureaucrats you're sadly mistaken. As with any government, internal politics will rage, and I'd not be surprised about a little corruption either, perhaps. It could be that the general will to set up the moonbase is a little stronger and a little more universal than it might be in the U.S, but there are plenty of forms to be filled out.
Sabotage? I have to admit that while a Chinese moonbase is not the U.S dream, it's not going to be stopped by sabotage. Russia managed quite well in their space program during the height of the cold war, with saboteurs running wild. Sabotage will at most slow the project. I think that even with Bush in the White House, the US will try other methods to hinder this project.
I think they'll pull it off. I certainly hope so. Just remember, when Louis Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind", either he really meant it or he meant "an American" and "America". Are we going to space as a race or as a Race? I certainly hope that the latter is true, and that Armstrong wasn't merely a rhetoric slinging nationalist.
I'm currently got a Hotmail account, and while I've toyed with leaving it, this is the last straw for me. Can anyone suggest a good email provider with reasonable privacy, one which is not going to spam me to death or otherwise torment me??
You're absolutely correct in that dual-boot is the best thing to happen for newbies since the Linux Documentation Project. As a newbie I am in no condition to give up my Windows partition and use Linux for all my daily tasks. I'm unfamiliar with both the applications and the system. I probably will eventually stop using Windows, but not until I've got Wine and DosEmu finely tuned. Until then I use windows for my daily computer tasks(I try to use Linux whenever I can) and I work at learning more about Linux, and setting it up so it will do what I want.
I currently run RedHat 7.1 and will update to 7.3 as soon as I can lay my hands on a free copy.(Yes, I have a 56k modem and I'm not going to disconnect my phone for 3 days to download). Why RedHat? It was the first distro I encountered. I'm not anxious to change distros, and I won't until I understand RedHat enough to know if I've got a problem with it. I doubt that most newbies are secure enough to try and switch distros for a 10 dollar rebate.
I think you have to just look at this rebate in perspective. RedHat are trying to stay healthy as a company, and are looking to gather more revenues from people running other Linux distros. You might ask why they're trying to target Linux users, buy hey, it's a source of income like anything else.
Let the research scientists say what they will. There's more than one geek out there who will build HAL the instant the technology exists such that it becomes economically feasible.
Spyware will do what is necessary for it to be effective. Kind of a non-story this, because I wouldn't expect anything else from spyware... Of course it's going to disable things that can find and remove it!
I'm a Canadian, and I'm curious. It isn't just your post that makes me say this, but a lot of stuff I've seen on/. and elsewhere. Does this bill have anything at all to do with US law or the constitution or anything legislatory in nature at all? Or is it just a big fight between mighty corporations who use congressmen and senators as their mindless pawns? I certainly hope and pray that the U.S. Legislation system hasn't come to that yet, but I can never be quite sure...
Well, we can definately that if 15 million consumer level CPUs are capable of pulling the moon into the earth, than it should be a piece of cake for Brilliant Digital to hack into Norad, public net connection or not. In regards to number 2, they're too late. Hasn't M$ already done that with XP and its registration keys?
As a Canadian, I can identify perfectly with your point of view. I am forced to question why exactly Canadian troops are taking an aggressive, attacking role against Taleban troops without a declaration of war against Afghanistan, or any legal arguement to ratify their actions. The simple fact is, that the US has gone about making it the world's business. The entire world is not drastically affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center, but they are surely affected by the actions which the US have taken following the attacks. We're being sucked into a mess which is not ours and that's a real shame.
Re:Penis Envy (was Re:America is better.)
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 1
Actually, you yourself touch on a point which you don't actually follow through upon. This is that every great nation/culture/civilization has its day, and that every civilization will collapse. There hasn't been a single "great" nation/empire which has lasted.
There have been several periods in history when historians were convinced that it was the end of history and that the world had settled into a permanent state of affairs. Needless to say, it hasn't happened yet and it's not ever likely to.
If anything I would attribute American arrogance to the fact that Americans largely ignore their obvious fate. Your Chinese friend is quite right in this regard. By showing disrespect to the greatness of nations which are now fallen, you're quite clearly ignoring the fact that America will not stay at the peak of civilization forever. Respect both what they were and what they have become, because America won't write the history books forever. America won't be rich forever, and she won't enjoy cultural dominance forever.
Alexander sure didn't take 227 years to vanquish the entire civilized world. What have you been doing with your time? Just don't take yourselves too seriously.;)
(IANAC) I am not a cryptographer. But... There's a couple holes in this which indicate that it is not perfect(and what is)?
The file contains a program to generate random encryption keys, so that the keys themselves don't have to be sent over the network connection.
The "book" method cannot be cracked by intercepting the message, true. How to solve this method? Steal the book. As has been pointed out in several previous stories of this genre, encoded data at some point has to be decoded and that makes it vulnerable.
The client generates a series of random numbers to use as an encryption key.
There's no such thing as a truely random number. There will be a way, no matter how difficult, to predict pseudorandom numbers. Especially if you've got a copy of the random number charts already. (Perhaps stolen the book?)
Exceptionally difficult to break, this encryption may be. But it is not unbreakable.
I don't know about this. The quality of material on the internet is only as good as the stuff people are willing to place there. Possibly now that more and more people are posting poor content to the net(pictures of their cats, promotional sites, poorly informed drivel on obscure issues, etc., etc.) it's easy to lose sight of the quality content. There still is lots of quality content, and it's steadily growing.
Everytime some new webmaster puts up a well informed/useful/entertaining site, the Net becomes more valuable. Percentagewise, there's no arguing that the good content is dropping. But if you can find it(a big if, I know) the Web has more high quality material than previously.
I haven't seen anything recently that comes near this in terms of killing innovation. Am I the only one who envisions people everywhere hoarding dinosaur computers running ancient yet empowered software? Coders in hidden bunkers with a stockpile of unhampered obsolete motherboards, and vast cd librarys of ancient kernels and applications ??
Every dollar I didn't write off on my tax return: that is, every dollar that the government actually kept. If I was given back a nickel for every one of those, I'd get almost an entire nickel on the dollar (5% increase compared to my total taxes) extra on my tax return. A poorly phrased comment on gov't efficiency.
Yes, but where does this argument hold with the infamous "subpoena filter"? Block the reception of the subpoena, and you need never know that it ever came. How do you notify a blind deaf mute of a subpoena??
Slashdot Mirror
Is it because all software has bugs: the "many eyeballs" idea means that a large user base will find more of them...So if you've got a lot of users and fewer known bugs(low bug/capita) your software is less buggy overall.(Alternatively your users can't tell a bug from a feature)
Sorry folks, that's the best I could come up with....
In an effort to be fair, I did say to myself, "Maybe this is good journalism. Maybe it's just a case of following up on a story. The editors might have merely been offering complete coverage and analysis of an important issue."
Then the coffee kicked in and I woke up. This is Slashdot.
Security and Convenience are bitter, mortal foes. Using long forgotten and ancient software may be secure(dare I suggest also abandoning ASCII and replacing it with a hieroglyphics-based standard) but it's not really convenient(or practical). Forgive me, but I don't see businesses rushing to downgrade their software. Issues of support, maintainance, licensing, etc. really make this one a tough sell. Security and Convenience just don't get along well...
A sad precaution but a necessary one. You wouldn't want MS to have any evidence that opensource is a terrorist's dream come true, would you?
What's funny is that you're posting this on /.
Wiretapping is unpopular on /. and so is Verisign. When the two come together it makes for a good /. story. I applaud your effort to stay rational though.
I had the strangest premontion yesterday that something like this was going to happen.
My point is, just because a lot of things won't work in conjunction with this ruling doesn't mean it's bad. There have been countless /. posts blaming the Music Industry for trying to enforce an obsolete business Model and for being out of touch with the way things are. Sites and ISPs will just have to work with this ruling, not against it.
Not to offend any oil reserves, but as I'm a HUMAN and not a hydrocarbon, maybe this isn't such a sin after all.
The number of young men they have is irrelevant: How many American kids dream of becoming astronauts? The ability to find and train brave astronauts is not unique to China.
Red tape is not unique to the U.S. If you think that China doesn't have bureaucrats you're sadly mistaken. As with any government, internal politics will rage, and I'd not be surprised about a little corruption either, perhaps. It could be that the general will to set up the moonbase is a little stronger and a little more universal than it might be in the U.S, but there are plenty of forms to be filled out.
Sabotage? I have to admit that while a Chinese moonbase is not the U.S dream, it's not going to be stopped by sabotage. Russia managed quite well in their space program during the height of the cold war, with saboteurs running wild. Sabotage will at most slow the project. I think that even with Bush in the White House, the US will try other methods to hinder this project.
I think they'll pull it off. I certainly hope so. Just remember, when Louis Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind", either he really meant it or he meant "an American" and "America". Are we going to space as a race or as a Race? I certainly hope that the latter is true, and that Armstrong wasn't merely a rhetoric slinging nationalist.
I'm currently got a Hotmail account, and while I've toyed with leaving it, this is the last straw for me. Can anyone suggest a good email provider with reasonable privacy, one which is not going to spam me to death or otherwise torment me??
I currently run RedHat 7.1 and will update to 7.3 as soon as I can lay my hands on a free copy.(Yes, I have a 56k modem and I'm not going to disconnect my phone for 3 days to download). Why RedHat? It was the first distro I encountered. I'm not anxious to change distros, and I won't until I understand RedHat enough to know if I've got a problem with it. I doubt that most newbies are secure enough to try and switch distros for a 10 dollar rebate.
I think you have to just look at this rebate in perspective. RedHat are trying to stay healthy as a company, and are looking to gather more revenues from people running other Linux distros. You might ask why they're trying to target Linux users, buy hey, it's a source of income like anything else.
Search your souls, you know I'm right....
Need I say more?
Spyware will do what is necessary for it to be effective. Kind of a non-story this, because I wouldn't expect anything else from spyware... Of course it's going to disable things that can find and remove it!
I'm a Canadian, and I'm curious. It isn't just your post that makes me say this, but a lot of stuff I've seen on /. and elsewhere. Does this bill have anything at all to do with US law or the constitution or anything legislatory in nature at all? Or is it just a big fight between mighty corporations who use congressmen and senators as their mindless pawns? I certainly hope and pray that the U.S. Legislation system hasn't come to that yet, but I can never be quite sure...
Well, we can definately that if 15 million consumer level CPUs are capable of pulling the moon into the earth, than it should be a piece of cake for Brilliant Digital to hack into Norad, public net connection or not. In regards to number 2, they're too late. Hasn't M$ already done that with XP and its registration keys?
As a Canadian, I can identify perfectly with your point of view. I am forced to question why exactly Canadian troops are taking an aggressive, attacking role against Taleban troops without a declaration of war against Afghanistan, or any legal arguement to ratify their actions. The simple fact is, that the US has gone about making it the world's business. The entire world is not drastically affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center, but they are surely affected by the actions which the US have taken following the attacks. We're being sucked into a mess which is not ours and that's a real shame.
There have been several periods in history when historians were convinced that it was the end of history and that the world had settled into a permanent state of affairs. Needless to say, it hasn't happened yet and it's not ever likely to.
If anything I would attribute American arrogance to the fact that Americans largely ignore their obvious fate. Your Chinese friend is quite right in this regard. By showing disrespect to the greatness of nations which are now fallen, you're quite clearly ignoring the fact that America will not stay at the peak of civilization forever. Respect both what they were and what they have become, because America won't write the history books forever. America won't be rich forever, and she won't enjoy cultural dominance forever.
Alexander sure didn't take 227 years to vanquish the entire civilized world. What have you been doing with your time? Just don't take yourselves too seriously. ;)
The file contains a program to generate random encryption keys, so that the keys themselves don't have to be sent over the network connection.
The "book" method cannot be cracked by intercepting the message, true. How to solve this method? Steal the book. As has been pointed out in several previous stories of this genre, encoded data at some point has to be decoded and that makes it vulnerable.
The client generates a series of random numbers to use as an encryption key.
There's no such thing as a truely random number. There will be a way, no matter how difficult, to predict pseudorandom numbers. Especially if you've got a copy of the random number charts already. (Perhaps stolen the book?)
Exceptionally difficult to break, this encryption may be. But it is not unbreakable.
Everytime some new webmaster puts up a well informed/useful/entertaining site, the Net becomes more valuable. Percentagewise, there's no arguing that the good content is dropping. But if you can find it(a big if, I know) the Web has more high quality material than previously.
I haven't seen anything recently that comes near this in terms of killing innovation. Am I the only one who envisions people everywhere hoarding dinosaur computers running ancient yet empowered software? Coders in hidden bunkers with a stockpile of unhampered obsolete motherboards, and vast cd librarys of ancient kernels and applications ??
Every dollar I didn't write off on my tax return: that is, every dollar that the government actually kept. If I was given back a nickel for every one of those, I'd get almost an entire nickel on the dollar (5% increase compared to my total taxes) extra on my tax return. A poorly phrased comment on gov't efficiency.
Yes, but where does this argument hold with the infamous "subpoena filter"? Block the reception of the subpoena, and you need never know that it ever came. How do you notify a blind deaf mute of a subpoena??
If I had a nickel for every tax dollar wasted... I'd be pushing 5% extra value on my tax return.