And yes, again someone turns this into an Android vs. Apple war. 'Some idiots talked about Apple in an irrational, sensationalist way a while back, so now we can do the same thing with Android!' is basically your argument here. Please, leave Apple out of this.
And as referenced by posts below, merely posting a story where someone says, quite meekly, that it might be "desirable", or a "good idea" to up the security on Android is grounds for mocking.
Well, the OP did say something about MD5 which was a little bit silly. Should he/she be mocked for this? No, I don't like mockery, not everyone can be an expert in everything of course, and I rather prefer a rational discussion in any case. On the other hand, I do find it strange that the/. editors managed to let this pass without a little bit of critical thought (apparently).
Now, whether or not obfuscation is a good or bad idea is up for a lot of discussion. In any case, it is in no way stupid to think about and discuss the risks of plain-text password storage -- I'm pretty sure that a lot of users won't be aware of them. I also think that adding a thin layer of obfuscation does not really improve the situation, and it certainly doesn't solve the problem... but that is just MHO.
Yes. I conjecture that the only reason my current counter-measures (and that of GP) work reasonably well is because so many people use worse counter-measures -- which makes it less necessary for spammers to outsmart them (yet). It's not a solution, and by definition only works for a relatively small part of the population of email users.
Right... They should think of some system where the BIOS will only load code that was digitally signed somehow, so these atrocities are no longer possible. Personally, I will only feel safe when I know that Microsoft completely controls what goed on on my PC!
It might even be true that OOXML as an ISO standard would be beneficial to ODF. However, there are the following problems: * There are some serious technical issues with the current proposal that have to be resolved * There are some very serious problems with the way the process has evolved * There is no guarantee that Microsoft will follow their own standards -- since, if there are big changes to the standard, it would require them to change their current file format. The first two problems indicate that, perhaps, the fast-track-to-ISO was not a good idea for this standard, and that some more time and work is required before the standard is approved, no matter how beneficial an eventual approval would be for anyone.
I think the same thing can happen with color. Some people (tetrachromats, I think) have a very sensitive ability to discern and remember colors, such that they could see paint swab at the store and know if it matches the paint on the wall at home.
This is completely off-topic, but tetrachromacy is something else: it is when the eye has not three but four different types of color-discerning cells. That means the number of 'dimensions' in the visible color-space goes up by one -- the result is that tetrachromats can see some color-pairs as being completely different, while we normal people see them as completely the same.
There are still a lot of problems with this 'comparison'. For instance:
- The 'reduced feature set' used for the comparison still contains a lot of software not include with windows - All information is based on what the company behind the software discloses. I believe that not all holes in Vista that MS knows about are disclosed. It is also not unlikely that what Microsoft calls 'critical' is not the same as what Canonical calls 'critical'. In any case, different measures are used for the different OS's, and you can't compare things that are measured in different ways. - The usual 'less known holes != safer' discussion...
I personally don't know which OS is safer, but based on these numbers, I am not going to draw any conclusions.
In essence, the argument is that since the encryption functionality in windows Vista is much too difficult to use properly, hardly any crooks will be able to. Wow, that makes me feel very safe:-)
The purpose of patents, as is oft repeated, is to advance the useful arts (whether it does a good job or not is not really the point here, though!). A patent, for better or worse, at least makes public the invention, so others can see it, benefit from it, and build upon it -- maybe not immediately, but eventually. If you don't bother to tell anyone about your inventions, or don't bother to publish papers or put up a webpage or whatever, then the public is not benefiting from your invention, so you are not entitled to a patent (under current law). Someone else who comes up with the idea, dilligently works to develop it, and then gives the knowledge up to the public IS entitled to a patent.
The criterium, therefore should be simple. An idea should be patentable only if it is more beneficial to society if it is published, but locked away for othes to use, for the entire period the patent is valid, than it would be if the idea was not published at all, so other had to think of it for themselves.
That means that it should be so non-obvious that the combined resources of the scientific and other open communities would not be able to think of the same idea, when presented with the same problem, for 20 years (or some other number, depending in which country you live).
It makes PERFECT sense to have them sitting in a warehouse. Remember the PS2? This is going to be worse. They need stock to sell. If they had any brains and had the ability, they would be cranking them out so they could sell them. Remember that when they got for $2000 on eBay, Sony only gets the origonal $500 or $600. They want more to sell, and making them now would allow that.
On the other hand, they probably have the ability to assemble the machines pretty fast. The problem is that the manufacturing of some components (such as the Cell processor) wouldn't be able to keep pace with the assemblage process, and so it makes sence to wait with assembling until there is a good stockpile of components to be assembled.
Actually, since the fines are only backdated to 15 December 2005, that figure should be a lot lower. Something like 507.02 Million dollars:-) I don't know how much that is measured in small countries, though.
I'm pretty sure that 'backdated to December 15th 2004' should have read 'backdated to December 15th 2005'. Microsoft Watch thinks so, too:
The EC has been threatening to begin collecting an additional $2.5 million a day from Microsoft (retroactive to December 15, 2005) for what the Commission has said it considers Microsoft's failure to provide networking documentation that would allow third-party companies to connect to Microsoft's Windows operating system.
The phrase 'even when implementing a frivolous project (a toy Perl 6 interpreter) in an uncommon language (Haskell).' shows some very big misunderstandings about this project, and software-development and developers in general.
Calling Pugs 'frivolous' and a 'toy' project is like calling linux frivolous, and a toy OS. The fact that Pugs seems to be fun to write, and seemed like something that they writers would like building, has little to do with it being usefull, but does illustrate one of the reasons that a lot of free software is good -- it was fun to write.
Using Haskell is also something that only improves the fun, instead of what the 'even when' implies. Partly, perhaps, because it is a bit uncommon -- because it is fun to learn something new -- but mostly simply because it's Haskell. I did some numerical maths-practical assignments in Haskell, while others used C or Pascal (the choice of language was free). My programs where invariably about 10 to 25% of the length of most others, while being a lot more readable and easier to write. Haskell is actually a lot of fun to use.
I realize Neverwinter is kinda the sequel to the BG stuff, but we'd buy expansion packs or even new games that used the good ol' BG II engine. You young whippersnappers can keep your 3D. Give me adventure in glorious, well-made 2D any day!
Yes! When I first read the quote in the article about the stars being in the right place, all I thought was: Why on earth could we not be in that position again, now? All they had then, we still have today; all we need is some people to decide that gameplay is a lot more important that using all the features of graphics cards we can't even buy, yet.
Besides, those waving grass effects in NWN looked pretty good, but overall, I thought BGII looked a lot better. With a fixed perspective, it is simply easier to produce big worlds that don't look the same all over -- you can have artists draw any kind of environment, and it's there. You don't have to make sure it looks good from whatever angle or zoom-factor you look at things. A single, good drawing, is all you need, instead of having to make a big mosaic of textures you have to re-use.
But I suppose that the screenshots in magazines, and demo's on gameshows, are more important to sell a game than long-term playability, so if it looks good at first glance, that's OK. Even if the rest of the game looks exactly the same.
Obviously, Macromedia does not want to give their software away to play on palmtops and other 'embedded' devices. They want people (directly, or indirectly through the vendor of their machine -- like sony, in the case of my clie) to pay for the ability to play flash 'on the road'. They have to make money from this someway, and this is something they have traditionally done -- the flash-player for Palm-OS was not free, IIRC.
Now, lots of 'embedded' devices are strong enough to run 'desktop' OS's (Intel has said their latest embedded processor will be able to run Vista), and Linux is simply everywhere. If they want to do / keep doing this, they need a clause like this in their EULA.
Yet one interesting point he throws out has me pondering, is a Creative Commons License permanently irrevocable once it's put out there?"
Wow, are you planning to pull an SCO? Revoking a licence which the licence says is 'irrevokable', then suing someone for copyright-infringement? At least, that's what the SCO-IBM case was about for some time, I really don't remember what it's about now, It has changed too often.
But still, it illustrates that the fact this licence is irrevokable is a very good thing. You don't want something like that happen to you.
Keep in mind that Apple probably won't sell MacOS on general pc's -- the sell a package, not just harware or software. That means they only have to support the machines they themselves sell, just like they do now. There won't be much of a change there.
The number is arrived at by excluding security bugs, because they should not hold up the release (because there will always be new security bugs, and they can still be fixed after the release).
The June 6 date still depends on how fast the level will drop -- at the time of writing, it is at 17 RC bugs, it will have to be at 0 on June 3, so they have some work to do.
Security support is already in place, though, so there is not really a reason to hold off upgrading:)
Strange the link to PJ's
response was not linked to in the original artikle.
Summary: the Register saw a flaw in some groklaw articles (about the 'stopgap' claims), wrongly interpreted some other comments (proof that SCO knew about Monterey on Power) in that context, and wrote a very long article about it. PJ's response, unfortunately, only goes into those last claims, not the critique on the stopgap claims, which are justified, IMHO.
My guess is wireless LCD shutter based glasses if all this is true.
Whould shutter glasses even be possible with the low refresh rates on a tv? Each eye would only see half the frequency of the television's, which is not so good to begin with.
> I've yet to actually need Flash for anything useful anyway.
Annoyingly enough, more and more sites are using flash for simple buttons and menus without offering an alternative means to navigate the site. Now you could say that those sites are probably not worth looking at, but, unfortunately, there are lots of really well-meaning but technically unschooled people making sites that I really want to see -- for instance, to look for a new trumpet .
CVS is open so no probs there (other than he must make that derived portion available as source).
No no no. A derived work in terms of copyright law is something else than implementing the same idea. That is why people want software patents, to monopolize the idea. And that is why software patents are wrong: something like BK would never have existed if the idea of RCS's was patented.
McVoy did not patent any of the ideas in BitKeeper. That, to me, indicates that het has no problems with people impementing a competing product -- he just wants them to solve the problems (of which there are a lot) on their own, not by reverse engineering BitKeeper.
Slashdot Mirror
A few months ago: APPLE ......
And yes, again someone turns this into an Android vs. Apple war. 'Some idiots talked about Apple in an irrational, sensationalist way a while back, so now we can do the same thing with Android!' is basically your argument here. Please, leave Apple out of this.
And as referenced by posts below, merely posting a story where someone says, quite meekly, that it might be "desirable", or a "good idea" to up the security on Android is grounds for mocking.
Well, the OP did say something about MD5 which was a little bit silly. Should he/she be mocked for this? No, I don't like mockery, not everyone can be an expert in everything of course, and I rather prefer a rational discussion in any case. On the other hand, I do find it strange that the /. editors managed to let this pass without a little bit of critical thought (apparently).
Now, whether or not obfuscation is a good or bad idea is up for a lot of discussion. In any case, it is in no way stupid to think about and discuss the risks of plain-text password storage -- I'm pretty sure that a lot of users won't be aware of them. I also think that adding a thin layer of obfuscation does not really improve the situation, and it certainly doesn't solve the problem... but that is just MHO.
Yes. I conjecture that the only reason my current counter-measures (and that of GP) work reasonably well is because so many people use worse counter-measures -- which makes it less necessary for spammers to outsmart them (yet). It's not a solution, and by definition only works for a relatively small part of the population of email users.
Also:
(x) It would make DDOS attacks abusing the system extremely easy.
(basically, the system reduces to a simple blacklist, which is automatically updated based on spam-reports)
Right... They should think of some system where the BIOS will only load code that was digitally signed somehow, so these atrocities are no longer possible. Personally, I will only feel safe when I know that Microsoft completely controls what goed on on my PC!
It might even be true that OOXML as an ISO standard would be beneficial to ODF. However, there are the following problems:
* There are some serious technical issues with the current proposal that have to be resolved
* There are some very serious problems with the way the process has evolved
* There is no guarantee that Microsoft will follow their own standards -- since, if there are big changes to the standard, it would require them to change their current file format.
The first two problems indicate that, perhaps, the fast-track-to-ISO was not a good idea for this standard, and that some more time and work is required before the standard is approved, no matter how beneficial an eventual approval would be for anyone.
This is completely off-topic, but tetrachromacy is something else: it is when the eye has not three but four different types of color-discerning cells. That means the number of 'dimensions' in the visible color-space goes up by one -- the result is that tetrachromats can see some color-pairs as being completely different, while we normal people see them as completely the same.
See wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy
Jan
There are still a lot of problems with this 'comparison'. For instance:
- The 'reduced feature set' used for the comparison still contains a lot of software not include with windows
- All information is based on what the company behind the software discloses. I believe that not all holes in Vista that MS knows about are disclosed. It is also not unlikely that what Microsoft calls 'critical' is not the same as what Canonical calls 'critical'. In any case, different measures are used for the different OS's, and you can't compare things that are measured in different ways.
- The usual 'less known holes != safer' discussion...
I personally don't know which OS is safer, but based on these numbers, I am not going to draw any conclusions.
Jan
In essence, the argument is that since the encryption functionality in windows Vista is much too difficult to use properly, hardly any crooks will be able to. Wow, that makes me feel very safe :-)
Jan
That means that it should be so non-obvious that the combined resources of the scientific and other open communities would not be able to think of the same idea, when presented with the same problem, for 20 years (or some other number, depending in which country you live).
I don't think many patents pass this criterium.
Jan
On the other hand, they probably have the ability to assemble the machines pretty fast. The problem is that the manufacturing of some components (such as the Cell processor) wouldn't be able to keep pace with the assemblage process, and so it makes sence to wait with assembling until there is a good stockpile of components to be assembled.
Jan
> hmm, ~1.4 billion...
:-) I don't know how much that is measured in small countries, though.
Actually, since the fines are only backdated to 15 December 2005, that figure should be a lot lower. Something like 507.02 Million dollars
Jan
Jan
Calling Pugs 'frivolous' and a 'toy' project is like calling linux frivolous, and a toy OS. The fact that Pugs seems to be fun to write, and seemed like something that they writers would like building, has little to do with it being usefull, but does illustrate one of the reasons that a lot of free software is good -- it was fun to write.
Using Haskell is also something that only improves the fun, instead of what the 'even when' implies. Partly, perhaps, because it is a bit uncommon -- because it is fun to learn something new -- but mostly simply because it's Haskell. I did some numerical maths-practical assignments in Haskell, while others used C or Pascal (the choice of language was free). My programs where invariably about 10 to 25% of the length of most others, while being a lot more readable and easier to write. Haskell is actually a lot of fun to use.
Jan
Yes! When I first read the quote in the article about the stars being in the right place, all I thought was: Why on earth could we not be in that position again, now? All they had then, we still have today; all we need is some people to decide that gameplay is a lot more important that using all the features of graphics cards we can't even buy, yet.
Besides, those waving grass effects in NWN looked pretty good, but overall, I thought BGII looked a lot better. With a fixed perspective, it is simply easier to produce big worlds that don't look the same all over -- you can have artists draw any kind of environment, and it's there. You don't have to make sure it looks good from whatever angle or zoom-factor you look at things. A single, good drawing, is all you need, instead of having to make a big mosaic of textures you have to re-use.
But I suppose that the screenshots in magazines, and demo's on gameshows, are more important to sell a game than long-term playability, so if it looks good at first glance, that's OK. Even if the rest of the game looks exactly the same.
Jan
Obviously, Macromedia does not want to give their software away to play on palmtops and other 'embedded' devices. They want people (directly, or indirectly through the vendor of their machine -- like sony, in the case of my clie) to pay for the ability to play flash 'on the road'. They have to make money from this someway, and this is something they have traditionally done -- the flash-player for Palm-OS was not free, IIRC.
Now, lots of 'embedded' devices are strong enough to run 'desktop' OS's (Intel has said their latest embedded processor will be able to run Vista), and Linux is simply everywhere. If they want to do / keep doing this, they need a clause like this in their EULA.
Jan
But still, it illustrates that the fact this licence is irrevokable is a very good thing. You don't want something like that happen to you.
Jan
Keep in mind that Apple probably won't sell MacOS on general pc's -- the sell a package, not just harware or software. That means they only have to support the machines they themselves sell, just like they do now. There won't be much of a change there.
Jan
See this post by the RM:5 /05/msg00011.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/200
The number is arrived at by excluding security bugs, because they should not hold up the release (because there will always be new security bugs, and they can still be fixed after the release).
Jan
More supported arch's? Security support for the entire distribution, not just a subset?
Jan
here: http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php
:)
The June 6 date still depends on how fast the level will drop -- at the time of writing, it is at 17 RC bugs, it will have to be at 0 on June 3, so they have some work to do.
Security support is already in place, though, so there is not really a reason to hold off upgrading
Jan
Summary: the Register saw a flaw in some groklaw articles (about the 'stopgap' claims), wrongly interpreted some other comments (proof that SCO knew about Monterey on Power) in that context, and wrote a very long article about it. PJ's response, unfortunately, only goes into those last claims, not the critique on the stopgap claims, which are justified, IMHO.
Anyway, storm is a glass of water.
Jan
Jan
Adblock already has that functionality on its own.
Jan
Annoyingly enough, more and more sites are using flash for simple buttons and menus without offering an alternative means to navigate the site. Now you could say that those sites are probably not worth looking at, but, unfortunately, there are lots of really well-meaning but technically unschooled people making sites that I really want to see -- for instance, to look for a new trumpet .
Jan
McVoy did not patent any of the ideas in BitKeeper. That, to me, indicates that het has no problems with people impementing a competing product -- he just wants them to solve the problems (of which there are a lot) on their own, not by reverse engineering BitKeeper.
Jan