If my understanding of this problem is correct, it occurs only if the system crashes shortly after the KDE apps have updated their configuration files. If so many people think this is a big problem, I'm more worried about the great number of constantly crashing linux machines.
It's not that a ton of Linux boxes are crashing. It's just that it's a computer, and sometimes they crash. ANY computer. Any machine, any OS. They're made by people, and nothing we make is ever perfect.
In the light of that though - what we're striving for is to provide the best performance and the best results under any circumstances, even the rare ones. Worrying about these <1% corner cases is what makes a superior product. A problem handled gracefully is a problem the user hopefully never sees. And that goes a long way towards creating a satisfactory experience. People say things like, "I don't know - I just plugged the scanner in and it died." They never say "I've plugged this scanner in over 1000 times and it's never died!" People remember the negatives, so it always pays to minimize those, however rare they may already be.
This entire fiasco is full of horrible legal arguments. John Doe bulk filesuits, extortion, racketeering, the notion that you are your IP, settlement letters before suit is filed...you name it.
Having it close on a horrible argument would be poetic at this point.
This is the kind of thing that could very likely happen to the oil industry. A couple of guys in a lab somewhere suddenly came up with a cheap and easy way to turn plant matter into gasoline and plastic. The process runs at 120C and is about 50% efficient. Those are damn good numbers, especially for a first pass. That's not a lot of input energy, and 60% and 70% efficiency aren't too far away I'd guess. Maybe more.
Maybe here in 100 years or so your grandkids will be saying the same thing, only instead of talking about the railroad barons they'll be talking about the oil barons.
The latter is something that an agent or a marketing company or a PR firm can do. Really, this is what a record company will eventually evolve to.
I agree, your post is spot-on.
The first thing that has to happen though is to get the record companies to not be so damn dangerous. Pull their fangs.
They killed internet radio because of ideas like this, you know. They still have enough power to get insane laws like this one passed (you actually have to pay the RIAA to broadcast your own unlicensed non-RIAA member music if you can imagine that!) And they'll do anything they can to remain relevant.
Free money and piles of it - who wouldn't fight for that?
So good job Amazon (never thought I'd say that) and keep chipping away at these jerks. Eventually they'll go the way of the dodo.
Oil companies don't sell oil - they sell energy. Oil is just how they get the energy to you. It's a transport medium and nothing more.
If you give them something that does the job better (which is to say, with a higher profit margin) they'll be all over it.
That's why discoveries like this are great, even if financially unfeasible right now. It sets a ceiling. If gas jumps to 3 or 4 or 5 dollars a gallon, eventually other technologies will be competitive.
It's like telling the oil bearing countries, "We've drawn a line - right here. See it? Cross it and we'll switch technologies."
It's always nice to have alternatives. And it's even better to let the people you buy from know that you have alternatives, so they better watch it.
You are assuming that the Virus writers won't figure out a way around this. I don't put anything past virus writers today.
Yup, that's the joke. Of course virus writers won't honor this. Why would they?
What I was doing out was pointing out that this is pure hubris. No matter what they do their security model is still broken. The only difference between this idea and their current notion is that now the pimply-necked kid in Uzbekistan has more rights on your box than you do after he script-kiddies you.
So not only is their claim bogus, but it isn't in the customer's best interest. Virus authors will still hack the living daylights out of your brand-new Windows 7 install. Your machine will get pwnt, and with this new whiz bang access restriction it will most likely be used by the virus authors themselves to keep you from installing other software - like virus scanners, for example.
This is a hideous idea security wise and a huge disservice to the user. A crippled or broken OS would only serve to get in the user's way. Never in an attacker's way.
An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.'
Well sure, let's fix that then. I have an experiment I'd like to try if this is the case.
Let's order up some Windows 7 and not pay. MS will remove my ability to install new programs on it, right?
...by 'making selected portions and functionality of the operating system unavailable to the user or by limiting the user's ability to add software applications or device drivers to the computer' until an 'agreed upon sum of money' is paid to 'unlock or otherwise make available the restricted functionality.'
Ta da! I'm now immune to viruses and worms. And all it took was not paying MS. So glad that one is finally solved completely. No new software can ever be run on my machine. I'm safe now.
I'd say the odds of MS Word replacing LaTeX are about the same as Microsoft releasing the source to Word so we can fix problems and add features as we need them.
A lot of these open source projects grew out of a direct need. There was a vacuum to be filled. The need shaped what the product wound up being. Trying to pound the square peg of MS Word into the round hole LaTeX fills is most likely impossible.
Vulcans are very bad at calculating the velocities caused by supernovae.
Oh so very true. The black hole Spock was going to make wouldn't have done very much for the wave of radiation and near light speed particles escaping that would have baked the Romulans home world like a potato in a microwave. If the microwave was the size of a 12 story building.
How 'bout these?
The planet Vulcan would not compress into a black hole the same size as Vulcan. It'd probably be about the size of a marble. See Schwarzschild radius.
You can't drill a hole to the core of a planet. They're molten inside. That would be like trying to drill a hole into the center of a gallon of milk. Thin crispy shell, big fluid inside.
If you have something that sparks off a black hole, you could probably just drop it on the surface and it would do it's magic. The drill is unnecessary anyways.
Things do not go back in time when they fall into a black hole. They pass the event horizon and remain locked there until they dissolve as Hawking radiation. Besides, if things did go back in time 25 years, the ruined remains of Vulcan would have also showed up 25 years ago giving them plenty of time to prepare.
Caller ID spoof doesn't have a single chance of throwing the authorities off your trail. It doesn't enhance your freedom one single bit - the phone co still knows everything about the call. It'll show up on your bill. The only thing it does is show up on the target's caller ID, making it impossible for the screwed-over end user to call them back. That's it.
Now if I'm wrong, and there is some far-reaching freedom destroying result from fixing caller ID, I'd like to hear it.
The phone company should care, but does not. They get paid per usage and they simply do not care what the usage is.
All the circuits are theirs - they know who every single line belongs to. They sure don't miss a beat when it's time to send out the bills, do they? This number made these calls, and here's your bill. They have this information in their database - it's necessary for billing. They're great at that part, aren't they?
But they'll turn a blind eye when someone dials out from 111-222-3333 claiming to be 333-222-1111. No problems there sir, just so long as you pay your bill. Fucking jerks.
The only reason someone would spoof their caller id is if they are up to no good. These fucking robodialers do exactly that because they know they're annoying people. They know it, or they'd be more up front about what they're doing. Listening to that smarmy asshole at Auto One trying to justify his business practices is disgusting. If you're so on the up-and-up, Mr. Tabb, then quit spoofing your outbound number, you jackass.
And the phone company is their direct accomplice.
Not difficult at all to have their system screen out spoofed calls:
Drivers not working in a consistent manner with your OS is a show stopper? Well, it certainly hasn't shot down Windows yet. Go read the nVidia forums sometime, then come back here and tell me how drivers are more consistent and bug-free on Windows.
Third party drivers, patches, bugfixes and glitches are pretty standard when it comes to your driver set. That's normal, and you're going to see it pretty much on any current OS.
Since putting a GPS unit violates nobody's rights, is not a privacy violation or requires a judge's consent - I'm going to dash out and slap a GPS transmitter on every cop car I see.
I didn't say it was the MOST important, although a lot of people seem to be reading that.
"What a sad, sad outlook on life."
You know what else is sad? Not being able to afford healthcare. I guarantee that you won't be happy if you don't have enough money. Is money the solution to all the world's problems? Hell no. But it sure solves a lot of the ones that get in the way of happiness, that's for sure.
I'm a gamer geek. Have been all my life, and I'm in my 40's. I went to college, got a degree, got a job. Most of my crew I grew up with didn't. I am relatively wealthy compared to those guys. I have a new car, my house is paid off.
Most of my friends though aren't nearly where I'm at. They're in their 40's too, but they bag groceries and work gas stations. And can't afford simple things I take for granted, like healthcare.
I watched one friend float a check for some food at a grocery story for $1.26.
Now, I'm no expert on happiness - but being able to buy food when I need it, cover my family's healthcare, and enjoy a new car makes me far happier than those guys.
In short, money doesn't buy happiness, but not having enough can definitely keep you from being happy.
So I stand by my original statement. I'm not rich, but being rich definitely would not suck. 99% of the trouble you'll get into in this world stems from a lack of money, IMO. Speeding tickets, bills, debt, food, healthcare...
Being rich eliminates an entire class of problems from your life. And most of the people I know are so preoccupied with this class of problems that most of the joy you can get from living is unavailable to them. They're too busy trying to make rent. I'm doing well, and I am much happier than most of those guys. I have hobbies, my family is healthy and well fed, I don't have to worry about eviction or what the hell I'm going to do when the next rent comes due.
I'm sure there's a point of diminishing returns, too. It is probably possible to be so wealthy you're perpetually bored. But I wouldn't be, that's for sure. I have a dozen projects I'd spend my time on if I didn't have to have a job. So again, my happiness would be increased with more money. If you play it right, money == freedom, and you can never have enough of that.
Would have helped their case if they'd checked before starting that they actually *owned* the copyrights they were trying to leverage.
They probably did that and came to your very conclusion. Then decided that if you couldn't dazzle them with brilliance, they could baffle them with bullshit.
Look at how evasive they've been from the beginning. They've always known they weren't holding the cards. The entire thing was a gigantic orchestrated bluff.
Every time they'd make a press release they'd say "millions of lines of infringing code!" But if they were asked if anyone could actually SEE them, they'd stall. Because they've known from the beginning that any actual discovery would have shot their case to crap in a matter of days.
But as long as they could maintain the public image of a company wronged, they could bank on that. And this whole thing was about investor fraud. The kept pushing the "there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow" stuff, and managed to rake in over fifty million from Baystar alone based on the strength of their convictions. As well as all the other poor suckers in the stock market. They took in millions, the execs and the lawyers paid themselves millions, and they abandoned the husk of a company to the wolves once it was time to put the cards on the table.
I wonder...where would SCO be today if it hadn't started filing lawsuits?
Same place, chapter 7.
They knew they were tanking and that's why they did this hail mary "let's sue IBM" nonsense. Their UN*X product was not spectacular. They didn't really offer anything unique or give any compelling reasons to do any business with them.
People do this sort of thing all the time. There is something nearly universal in the human psyche that says that it makes sense to spend your last five bucks to buy a lottery ticket.
But by and large, the article is right -- there's a vast majority of places where these just don't matter anymore.
IMHO, they are still relevant for a number of reasons:
1) Not everything is coded in Java. I do a lot of embedded programming, bootloader code, and the like. You have to be able to knock out a ring buffer manually or you simply can't do this kind of work. It's great when I get to do Java/C# and all this stuff is already there, but more often than not I'm fiddling around in the bootloader or in driver source and it's all C to the wire. I know that colors my experiences though. But without the drivers and the bootloader, Java has nowhere to live in the first place.
2) Even when you do have them premade, somebody had to put those functions in the libraries for you to use. From a certain point of view, the tiny minority of asm guys you mention are the vast majority - their code is copied over and over and over, every time you link to their work.
3) Knowing what's under the hood makes you a better driver. There's your obligatory car analogy since we're doing it old school in this thread.
You know, when your main actors are getting so old they have to be digitally reproduced - that might just maybe possibly be a sign that you should let it drop already.
Slashdot Mirror
If my understanding of this problem is correct, it occurs only if the system crashes shortly after the KDE apps have updated their configuration files. If so many people think this is a big problem, I'm more worried about the great number of constantly crashing linux machines.
It's not that a ton of Linux boxes are crashing. It's just that it's a computer, and sometimes they crash. ANY computer. Any machine, any OS. They're made by people, and nothing we make is ever perfect.
In the light of that though - what we're striving for is to provide the best performance and the best results under any circumstances, even the rare ones. Worrying about these <1% corner cases is what makes a superior product. A problem handled gracefully is a problem the user hopefully never sees. And that goes a long way towards creating a satisfactory experience. People say things like, "I don't know - I just plugged the scanner in and it died." They never say "I've plugged this scanner in over 1000 times and it's never died!" People remember the negatives, so it always pays to minimize those, however rare they may already be.
This entire fiasco is full of horrible legal arguments. John Doe bulk filesuits, extortion, racketeering, the notion that you are your IP, settlement letters before suit is filed...you name it.
Having it close on a horrible argument would be poetic at this point.
Do you turn your back on NYCL so quickly
Who says we have to have just one hero? All we've done here is to go from Superman to The Justice League.
So, more heroes please! Keep 'em coming!
That's exactly it - thank you.
This is the kind of thing that could very likely happen to the oil industry. A couple of guys in a lab somewhere suddenly came up with a cheap and easy way to turn plant matter into gasoline and plastic. The process runs at 120C and is about 50% efficient. Those are damn good numbers, especially for a first pass. That's not a lot of input energy, and 60% and 70% efficiency aren't too far away I'd guess. Maybe more.
Maybe here in 100 years or so your grandkids will be saying the same thing, only instead of talking about the railroad barons they'll be talking about the oil barons.
The latter is something that an agent or a marketing company or a PR firm can do. Really, this is what a record company will eventually evolve to.
I agree, your post is spot-on.
The first thing that has to happen though is to get the record companies to not be so damn dangerous. Pull their fangs.
They killed internet radio because of ideas like this, you know. They still have enough power to get insane laws like this one passed (you actually have to pay the RIAA to broadcast your own unlicensed non-RIAA member music if you can imagine that!) And they'll do anything they can to remain relevant.
Free money and piles of it - who wouldn't fight for that?
So good job Amazon (never thought I'd say that) and keep chipping away at these jerks. Eventually they'll go the way of the dodo.
Oil companies don't sell oil - they sell energy. Oil is just how they get the energy to you. It's a transport medium and nothing more.
If you give them something that does the job better (which is to say, with a higher profit margin) they'll be all over it.
That's why discoveries like this are great, even if financially unfeasible right now. It sets a ceiling. If gas jumps to 3 or 4 or 5 dollars a gallon, eventually other technologies will be competitive.
It's like telling the oil bearing countries, "We've drawn a line - right here. See it? Cross it and we'll switch technologies."
It's always nice to have alternatives. And it's even better to let the people you buy from know that you have alternatives, so they better watch it.
Don't sweat it - emotional content and subtleties don't carry over very well through text sometimes. We've all done it.
Besides, I'm not going to give an Archangel crap about anything! No blood, no foul, carry on and all that. =)
...but I'm going to do it anyways.
You are assuming that the Virus writers won't figure out a way around this. I don't put anything past virus writers today.
Yup, that's the joke. Of course virus writers won't honor this. Why would they?
What I was doing out was pointing out that this is pure hubris. No matter what they do their security model is still broken. The only difference between this idea and their current notion is that now the pimply-necked kid in Uzbekistan has more rights on your box than you do after he script-kiddies you.
So not only is their claim bogus, but it isn't in the customer's best interest. Virus authors will still hack the living daylights out of your brand-new Windows 7 install. Your machine will get pwnt, and with this new whiz bang access restriction it will most likely be used by the virus authors themselves to keep you from installing other software - like virus scanners, for example.
This is a hideous idea security wise and a huge disservice to the user. A crippled or broken OS would only serve to get in the user's way. Never in an attacker's way.
Epic dumb move if they go through with it.
An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.'
Well sure, let's fix that then. I have an experiment I'd like to try if this is the case.
Let's order up some Windows 7 and not pay. MS will remove my ability to install new programs on it, right?
Ta da! I'm now immune to viruses and worms. And all it took was not paying MS. So glad that one is finally solved completely. No new software can ever be run on my machine. I'm safe now.
Thanks guys.
I'd say the odds of MS Word replacing LaTeX are about the same as Microsoft releasing the source to Word so we can fix problems and add features as we need them.
A lot of these open source projects grew out of a direct need. There was a vacuum to be filled. The need shaped what the product wound up being. Trying to pound the square peg of MS Word into the round hole LaTeX fills is most likely impossible.
Support or not, they're just too different.
Vulcans are very bad at calculating the velocities caused by supernovae.
Oh so very true. The black hole Spock was going to make wouldn't have done very much for the wave of radiation and near light speed particles escaping that would have baked the Romulans home world like a potato in a microwave. If the microwave was the size of a 12 story building.
How 'bout these?
The planet Vulcan would not compress into a black hole the same size as Vulcan. It'd probably be about the size of a marble. See Schwarzschild radius.
You can't drill a hole to the core of a planet. They're molten inside. That would be like trying to drill a hole into the center of a gallon of milk. Thin crispy shell, big fluid inside.
If you have something that sparks off a black hole, you could probably just drop it on the surface and it would do it's magic. The drill is unnecessary anyways.
Things do not go back in time when they fall into a black hole. They pass the event horizon and remain locked there until they dissolve as Hawking radiation. Besides, if things did go back in time 25 years, the ruined remains of Vulcan would have also showed up 25 years ago giving them plenty of time to prepare.
You're comparing apples to Buicks, that's why.
Caller ID spoof doesn't have a single chance of throwing the authorities off your trail. It doesn't enhance your freedom one single bit - the phone co still knows everything about the call. It'll show up on your bill. The only thing it does is show up on the target's caller ID, making it impossible for the screwed-over end user to call them back. That's it.
Now if I'm wrong, and there is some far-reaching freedom destroying result from fixing caller ID, I'd like to hear it.
Any takers?
The phone company should care, but does not. They get paid per usage and they simply do not care what the usage is.
All the circuits are theirs - they know who every single line belongs to. They sure don't miss a beat when it's time to send out the bills, do they? This number made these calls, and here's your bill. They have this information in their database - it's necessary for billing. They're great at that part, aren't they?
But they'll turn a blind eye when someone dials out from 111-222-3333 claiming to be 333-222-1111. No problems there sir, just so long as you pay your bill. Fucking jerks.
The only reason someone would spoof their caller id is if they are up to no good. These fucking robodialers do exactly that because they know they're annoying people. They know it, or they'd be more up front about what they're doing. Listening to that smarmy asshole at Auto One trying to justify his business practices is disgusting. If you're so on the up-and-up, Mr. Tabb, then quit spoofing your outbound number, you jackass.
And the phone company is their direct accomplice.
Not difficult at all to have their system screen out spoofed calls:
if(outbound_number!=customer_number)
{
disconnect_line();
play(busy_tone);
}
There you go, I won't even charge a consulting fee.
Now go do it, phone companies.
Drivers not working in a consistent manner with your OS is a show stopper? Well, it certainly hasn't shot down Windows yet. Go read the nVidia forums sometime, then come back here and tell me how drivers are more consistent and bug-free on Windows.
Third party drivers, patches, bugfixes and glitches are pretty standard when it comes to your driver set. That's normal, and you're going to see it pretty much on any current OS.
Since putting a GPS unit violates nobody's rights, is not a privacy violation or requires a judge's consent - I'm going to dash out and slap a GPS transmitter on every cop car I see.
Should be no problem, right?
I didn't say it was the MOST important, although a lot of people seem to be reading that.
"What a sad, sad outlook on life."
You know what else is sad? Not being able to afford healthcare. I guarantee that you won't be happy if you don't have enough money. Is money the solution to all the world's problems? Hell no. But it sure solves a lot of the ones that get in the way of happiness, that's for sure.
I'm a gamer geek. Have been all my life, and I'm in my 40's. I went to college, got a degree, got a job. Most of my crew I grew up with didn't. I am relatively wealthy compared to those guys. I have a new car, my house is paid off.
Most of my friends though aren't nearly where I'm at. They're in their 40's too, but they bag groceries and work gas stations. And can't afford simple things I take for granted, like healthcare.
I watched one friend float a check for some food at a grocery story for $1.26.
Now, I'm no expert on happiness - but being able to buy food when I need it, cover my family's healthcare, and enjoy a new car makes me far happier than those guys.
In short, money doesn't buy happiness, but not having enough can definitely keep you from being happy.
So I stand by my original statement. I'm not rich, but being rich definitely would not suck. 99% of the trouble you'll get into in this world stems from a lack of money, IMO. Speeding tickets, bills, debt, food, healthcare...
Being rich eliminates an entire class of problems from your life. And most of the people I know are so preoccupied with this class of problems that most of the joy you can get from living is unavailable to them. They're too busy trying to make rent. I'm doing well, and I am much happier than most of those guys. I have hobbies, my family is healthy and well fed, I don't have to worry about eviction or what the hell I'm going to do when the next rent comes due.
I'm sure there's a point of diminishing returns, too. It is probably possible to be so wealthy you're perpetually bored. But I wouldn't be, that's for sure. I have a dozen projects I'd spend my time on if I didn't have to have a job. So again, my happiness would be increased with more money. If you play it right, money == freedom, and you can never have enough of that.
There aren't many things better than being rich.
...it exists as a possibility and an impossibility at the same time.
It's like watching Office Space. It's so close to the truth it almost moves from comedy to documentary.
Would have helped their case if they'd checked before starting that they actually *owned* the copyrights they were trying to leverage.
They probably did that and came to your very conclusion. Then decided that if you couldn't dazzle them with brilliance, they could baffle them with bullshit.
Look at how evasive they've been from the beginning. They've always known they weren't holding the cards. The entire thing was a gigantic orchestrated bluff.
Every time they'd make a press release they'd say "millions of lines of infringing code!" But if they were asked if anyone could actually SEE them, they'd stall. Because they've known from the beginning that any actual discovery would have shot their case to crap in a matter of days.
But as long as they could maintain the public image of a company wronged, they could bank on that. And this whole thing was about investor fraud. The kept pushing the "there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow" stuff, and managed to rake in over fifty million from Baystar alone based on the strength of their convictions. As well as all the other poor suckers in the stock market. They took in millions, the execs and the lawyers paid themselves millions, and they abandoned the husk of a company to the wolves once it was time to put the cards on the table.
It's all pretty criminal really.
I wonder...where would SCO be today if it hadn't started filing lawsuits?
Same place, chapter 7.
They knew they were tanking and that's why they did this hail mary "let's sue IBM" nonsense. Their UN*X product was not spectacular. They didn't really offer anything unique or give any compelling reasons to do any business with them.
People do this sort of thing all the time. There is something nearly universal in the human psyche that says that it makes sense to spend your last five bucks to buy a lottery ticket.
But by and large, the article is right -- there's a vast majority of places where these just don't matter anymore.
IMHO, they are still relevant for a number of reasons:
1) Not everything is coded in Java. I do a lot of embedded programming, bootloader code, and the like. You have to be able to knock out a ring buffer manually or you simply can't do this kind of work. It's great when I get to do Java/C# and all this stuff is already there, but more often than not I'm fiddling around in the bootloader or in driver source and it's all C to the wire. I know that colors my experiences though. But without the drivers and the bootloader, Java has nowhere to live in the first place.
2) Even when you do have them premade, somebody had to put those functions in the libraries for you to use. From a certain point of view, the tiny minority of asm guys you mention are the vast majority - their code is copied over and over and over, every time you link to their work.
3) Knowing what's under the hood makes you a better driver. There's your obligatory car analogy since we're doing it old school in this thread.
Are we allowed to record those proceedings?
...but I think the world would probably be a better place without that particular movie. Don't you?
See "Nuking the Fridge" for details.
Link
Link
You know, when your main actors are getting so old they have to be digitally reproduced - that might just maybe possibly be a sign that you should let it drop already.