If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet ...
yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me"
Ah, but if you're conservative, you'll love it cuz its conserving all that nice juicy information.
But if you're conservative, you're against "unfunded mandates", so you'll hate it.
But if you're republican (which is not now (and rarely was) synonymous with conservatism), you'll love it because it will be a good way to keep your party in power and since you just invested in disk drive manufacturers, its a double win.
Perhaps the RFID makers are also investing in RFID shielded wallets :
1) Sell the RFID chip for a nickel
2) Sell the shielding for $25
3) ???? (engineer a very public RFID scam)
4) Profit!
(Sigh. I never wanted to do that, but it seemed appropriate.)
At my university we have a "computer literacy" requirement. Its all about MS Office and how to do nice things like change fonts. Students even get to pass in assignments on paper. They have to pass a test. The test requires (more or less) rote memorization of which keystrokes/menu selections to use - you can be a very good user of Office and not pass the test because you don't know the "approved" way to do things (it has actually happened that advanced CS students have failed the test).
So it is not really "literacy", more "penmanship". After all, you can make letters without being able to read or write effectively.
<theatrical-shock> They don't even teach that spreadsheets may need to be debugged! </theatrical-shock>
And there is absolutely no mention of Unix and almost none of MacOS. And little enough of things like phishing, viruses, firewalls, security,...
Think of all the laws that the legislators pass that are used for less than honest
(though legal just because the laws were passed) purposes. Lets then outlaw
legislators!
But then : "If legislators are outlawed, only criminals will own legislators."
and how would we know the difference?
An increasing amount of spam in my inbox comes from people advertising "the next great company" to invest in.
No website is given.
This is a cute tactic as it allows them to speculatively invest in the company (or perhaps own it), then pump
up stock prices but without putting a web presence out there that people can visit, opt out of or whatever.
Even a few cents increase (and I suspect its working (I'll use "its" anyway I please, thank you)) can result
in nice profits. And of course the company's owners can always (and effectively) deny that they had anything
to do with it.
I don't work on graphics cards drivers (haven't done so since the early 90's, if I remember correctly).
I believe that there is a big chunk of preprocessing that goes on before
the data is shipped to the card itself, but I was under the impression that most of the hard work goes on in
the graphics pipeline. Should that be incorrect, please give a few more details. And yes, a logic analyzer
might not get it all - but rival hardware manufacturers who are motivated enough could dissassemble and
decompile the binaries.
I still believe (lacking any more information than "you have no idea...") that the graphics card makers make most of their money on the hardware. I further believe that
if that information were published people would work damn hard to build the right drivers and would produce
excellent drivers for the hardware as open source. As good as, perhaps even better than the ones distributed
by the manufacturers.
Prove me wrong. I'd actually (no snark) love to see some details of what the preprocessing actually does.
"Companies like ATI and Nvidia basically survive on their trade-secrets"
Odd. I thought they made their money by selling the hardware.
I can understand this sentiment when it comes to the innards of their hardware, but I find it a bit
odd that there is that much value in the secrets in the drivers. After all, a competitor can just
buy one of their chipsets and run it for a while watching the signals it gets and the signals it
emits to get a pretty good idea of what they are doing and I'd be unsurprised to discover that
their competitors are doing exactly
that - and probably more.
If they released their technical specs, we'd probably have excellent open source drivers and they could
(if they wished) use those and redistribute them (with source, of course). Given the interest of many
developers in graphics, I'd bet the open source community would have excellent, well debugged, and efficient
drivers available almost as quickly as they could do it in house.
Microsoft will include a program that determines if another (arbitrary) program will halt if run with no input.
Or maybe I'm way off base and this kind of automatic malware detection seems reasonably computable to people. I
can think of so many ways (lots of which have been used in malware) to hide the malware in otherwise innocent
programs. But what if I encoded my malware as a turing machine, how would they find out if it is malware without
actually running it (or have I missed something?)?
They're just taking their cue from the RIAA. It's not working great for them, but their executives probably took lunch with the T-Mobile execs and they're working on it.
So, what does a soul go for in Redmond these days? (I'm so resisting the temptation to say something about souls being at a premium there as so many have already been sold.)
Reading the account in TFA reveals that Blue Security was not undergoing a DDOS attack and that the DDOS attack on Typepad starts well after the address is redirected. Then the spammer seems to have widened the attack to bring down as many people as possible to make it look like Blue Security is at fault (which, at least according to their story - be nice to hear PharmaMaster's account, if he/they are not too cowardly to say anything) they were not.
I'm not a Blue Security user, but if they've managed to make a spammer this cranky, I'm going to seriously consider it.
I suspect that virtualization may well signal the rise of the microkernel (exokernel?) again.
It seems reasonable to think that a tiny microkernel built for virtualization and able to support multiple virtual os's with minimal overhead is really going to be a very attractive platform. If we then get minimal, very application specific kernels to run on top of it for specific needs, we could get an environment in which various applications (http servers, databases, network servers of other sorts, browsers) could run in secure environments which could leverage multi-processor architectures, provide for increased user security, make inter-os communications work nicely and generally be a Good Thing. Certainly that would not prohibit running complete unix/MS/??? systems from running as well. (Granting, of course, that OS vendors go along with the idea, which some of the big players may find economically threatening.)
Could be very fun stuff and make viable setups that are currently difficult or impossible to manage well.
War^H^H^HPolice action against North Korea - tie.
War against Grenada - win
War against Panama - win
War against Somalia - we got "tired of the filthy country"
War against Taliban in Afghanistan - win (well, for at least the 25 percent or so of the country we control)
War against Germany/Italy/Japan - win, with the assistance of the french...
and so on
I think the parent was rated insightful because of the notion of having the government mandate buying CD's. (The insurance analogy was not necessarily the best one.) Governments already do roughly that with taxes on CD's that go to support the music industry so maybe it is not as much of a stretch as you might think.
One of the great things about FOSS is that it is driven by lots of individuals all of whom want something
a bit different. This may be a weakness in the eyes of the marketing types, but it is a strength in many
other ways. So, "Linux" doesn't want anything (how can it, its a nebulous kind of entity at best), but all
those who use and work on Linux have individual wants and ideas and it is the differences in all of these
that keeps Linux (and FOSS) strong and interesting.
But since it seems pretty clear that Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to destroy Google,
I can't feel a lot of sympathy for Microsoft either. Do all the Microsoft supporters really
want to use MSN search? (Shudder)
Cool idea. It wouldn't even need to be permanent - run slashdot with the winners name/address for a few months, and also give the winner a permanent link somewhere on slashdot.
I also think that the gallery of designs is a good idea and will stimulate people to submit. Maybe an occasional front-page (or slashback) reminder that the contest is going on and a link to the gallery page.
Finally, allowing users to submit things under a creative commons license might be nice.
I found the Miro logo in TFA (doh!) and looked up the paintings mentioned in the grandparent comment.
I think the star in the logo was probably what the idiots thought was copied from "Nocturne" (so it seems that the lines intersecting in a point and
arranged roughly in the form of a star is now copyrightable), The squishy round simple closed curve intersecting with another curve and colored in black
on one side and red on the other (wow! so unique!) comes from several of Miro's works - including "Nocturne" and "Le Bel Oiseau...". The eye looks most to me like one in "Le Bel Oiseau" - but not all that much. I can't figure out what is alleged to be stolen from "L'echelle de L'evasion".
I think the imagination gene in the Miro family is being admirably conserved, though not admirably used.
That got me curious so I looked up the logos on the logo page to see if I could find these purported stolen elements.
Nope, the Miro logo is not available on the logos page.
Even so, the logos available there make it pretty clear that even if portions of specific works were lifted, they had to be either very stylized or/and very small. While size is probably not a legal argument that would hold water (though it does seem a stretch - is using '"Call me', Ishmael." as the first line of a novel (as Peter De Vries did) copyright infringment on "Moby Dick"?), certainly the combination of stylized and small seems to me to make it qualify as non-infringing.
So, anyway, the Miro family (probably replete with lawyers and talentless descendents) says this is infringement. Do they equally chase after everyone who posts a personal painting that may look like a Miro? (And does it make a difference if they say "homage to miro" as a description?) Do they chase everyone who posts a copy of a Miro on the web? (Hardly, look at a google image search.)
Seems to me like its a bunch of greedy fools, trying to eke out every penny they can from an organization with deep pockets, and willing to effectively slander the real Miro's name and reputation as they go.
As to the greedy fools in government who extended copyright to what seems an unreasonable term to satisify Disney and who sparked this kind of stupidity, my opinion is best left unsaid.
Slashdot Mirror
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
...
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet
yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me"
But if you're conservative, you're against "unfunded mandates", so you'll hate it.
But if you're republican (which is not now (and rarely was) synonymous with conservatism), you'll love it because it will be a good way to keep your party in power and since you just invested in disk drive manufacturers, its a double win.
1) Sell the RFID chip for a nickel
2) Sell the shielding for $25
3) ???? (engineer a very public RFID scam)
4) Profit!
(Sigh. I never wanted to do that, but it seemed appropriate.)
So it is not really "literacy", more "penmanship". After all, you can make letters without being able to read or write effectively.
<theatrical-shock> They don't even teach that spreadsheets may need to be debugged! </theatrical-shock>
And there is absolutely no mention of Unix and almost none of MacOS. And little enough of things like phishing, viruses, firewalls, security,...
The strong man pushes the rock aside (where it starts a landslide and kills all the whos in whoville).
The wise man looks at the rock and realizes it may be there to teach him. So he learns and then goes his way.
But then :
"If legislators are outlawed, only criminals will own legislators."
and how would we know the difference?
Or a skull?
Or a numbskull (otherwise known as a politician).
Accorging to this the blue frog model will be open sourced as a peer-to-peer model available through sourceforge.net.
An increasing amount of spam in my inbox comes from people advertising "the next great company" to invest in. No website is given. This is a cute tactic as it allows them to speculatively invest in the company (or perhaps own it), then pump up stock prices but without putting a web presence out there that people can visit, opt out of or whatever. Even a few cents increase (and I suspect its working (I'll use "its" anyway I please, thank you)) can result in nice profits. And of course the company's owners can always (and effectively) deny that they had anything to do with it.
I don't work on graphics cards drivers (haven't done so since the early 90's, if I remember correctly). I believe that there is a big chunk of preprocessing that goes on before the data is shipped to the card itself, but I was under the impression that most of the hard work goes on in the graphics pipeline. Should that be incorrect, please give a few more details. And yes, a logic analyzer might not get it all - but rival hardware manufacturers who are motivated enough could dissassemble and decompile the binaries.
I still believe (lacking any more information than "you have no idea...") that the graphics card makers make most of their money on the hardware. I further believe that if that information were published people would work damn hard to build the right drivers and would produce excellent drivers for the hardware as open source. As good as, perhaps even better than the ones distributed by the manufacturers.
Prove me wrong. I'd actually (no snark) love to see some details of what the preprocessing actually does.
Odd. I thought they made their money by selling the hardware.
I can understand this sentiment when it comes to the innards of their hardware, but I find it a bit odd that there is that much value in the secrets in the drivers. After all, a competitor can just buy one of their chipsets and run it for a while watching the signals it gets and the signals it emits to get a pretty good idea of what they are doing and I'd be unsurprised to discover that their competitors are doing exactly that - and probably more.
If they released their technical specs, we'd probably have excellent open source drivers and they could (if they wished) use those and redistribute them (with source, of course). Given the interest of many developers in graphics, I'd bet the open source community would have excellent, well debugged, and efficient drivers available almost as quickly as they could do it in house.
"it's a real sagme"
Now that I agree with.
Or maybe I'm way off base and this kind of automatic malware detection seems reasonably computable to people. I can think of so many ways (lots of which have been used in malware) to hide the malware in otherwise innocent programs. But what if I encoded my malware as a turing machine, how would they find out if it is malware without actually running it (or have I missed something?)?
How about installing a pirated, spyware ridden, bug infested, registry hacked, keystroke logging version of Windows?
They're just taking their cue from the RIAA. It's not working great for them, but their executives probably took lunch with the T-Mobile execs and they're working on it.
So, what does a soul go for in Redmond these days? (I'm so resisting the temptation to say something about souls being at a premium there as so many have already been sold.)
Enquiring minds (and all that) want to know.
But!
Reading the account in TFA reveals that Blue Security was not undergoing a DDOS attack and that the DDOS attack on Typepad starts well after the address is redirected. Then the spammer seems to have widened the attack to bring down as many people as possible to make it look like Blue Security is at fault (which, at least according to their story - be nice to hear PharmaMaster's account, if he/they are not too cowardly to say anything) they were not.
I'm not a Blue Security user, but if they've managed to make a spammer this cranky, I'm going to seriously consider it.
It seems reasonable to think that a tiny microkernel built for virtualization and able to support multiple virtual os's with minimal overhead is really going to be a very attractive platform. If we then get minimal, very application specific kernels to run on top of it for specific needs, we could get an environment in which various applications (http servers, databases, network servers of other sorts, browsers) could run in secure environments which could leverage multi-processor architectures, provide for increased user security, make inter-os communications work nicely and generally be a Good Thing. Certainly that would not prohibit running complete unix/MS/??? systems from running as well. (Granting, of course, that OS vendors go along with the idea, which some of the big players may find economically threatening.)
Could be very fun stuff and make viable setups that are currently difficult or impossible to manage well.
War^H^H^HPolice action against North Korea - tie.
War against Grenada - win
War against Panama - win
War against Somalia - we got "tired of the filthy country"
War against Taliban in Afghanistan - win (well, for at least the 25 percent or so of the country we control)
War against Germany/Italy/Japan - win, with the assistance of the french...
and so on
I think the parent was rated insightful because of the notion of having the government mandate buying CD's. (The insurance analogy was not necessarily the best one.) Governments already do roughly that with taxes on CD's that go to support the music industry so maybe it is not as much of a stretch as you might think.
One of the great things about FOSS is that it is driven by lots of individuals all of whom want something a bit different. This may be a weakness in the eyes of the marketing types, but it is a strength in many other ways. So, "Linux" doesn't want anything (how can it, its a nebulous kind of entity at best), but all those who use and work on Linux have individual wants and ideas and it is the differences in all of these that keeps Linux (and FOSS) strong and interesting.
But since it seems pretty clear that Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to destroy Google, I can't feel a lot of sympathy for Microsoft either. Do all the Microsoft supporters really want to use MSN search? (Shudder)
I also think that the gallery of designs is a good idea and will stimulate people to submit. Maybe an occasional front-page (or slashback) reminder that the contest is going on and a link to the gallery page.
Finally, allowing users to submit things under a creative commons license might be nice.
I think the star in the logo was probably what the idiots thought was copied from "Nocturne" (so it seems that the lines intersecting in a point and arranged roughly in the form of a star is now copyrightable), The squishy round simple closed curve intersecting with another curve and colored in black on one side and red on the other (wow! so unique!) comes from several of Miro's works - including "Nocturne" and "Le Bel Oiseau...". The eye looks most to me like one in "Le Bel Oiseau" - but not all that much. I can't figure out what is alleged to be stolen from "L'echelle de L'evasion".
I think the imagination gene in the Miro family is being admirably conserved, though not admirably used.
Nope, the Miro logo is not available on the logos page.
Even so, the logos available there make it pretty clear that even if portions of specific works were lifted, they had to be either very stylized or/and very small. While size is probably not a legal argument that would hold water (though it does seem a stretch - is using '"Call me', Ishmael." as the first line of a novel (as Peter De Vries did) copyright infringment on "Moby Dick"?), certainly the combination of stylized and small seems to me to make it qualify as non-infringing.
So, anyway, the Miro family (probably replete with lawyers and talentless descendents) says this is infringement. Do they equally chase after everyone who posts a personal painting that may look like a Miro? (And does it make a difference if they say "homage to miro" as a description?) Do they chase everyone who posts a copy of a Miro on the web? (Hardly, look at a google image search.)
Seems to me like its a bunch of greedy fools, trying to eke out every penny they can from an organization with deep pockets, and willing to effectively slander the real Miro's name and reputation as they go.
As to the greedy fools in government who extended copyright to what seems an unreasonable term to satisify Disney and who sparked this kind of stupidity, my opinion is best left unsaid.