vegetable oil for human consumption...rapeseed was the third leading source of vegetable oil in the world in 2000
The term "gas" is usually used to refer to gasoline. While most trucks use diesel, some use gasoline. If you must nitpick, a few even use natural gas as fuel.
Farmers don't "stop growing food for humans", farmers always grow crops for profit. It isn't really about the purpose of the crop, it is about the use of the product. Corn is human consumable when harvested, regardless of whether it is put to that purpose after processing or not.
There ought to be a "wikify" button on here. You'll know AI is getting somewhere when you go to post on slashdot and you get a pre-post warning that your statement is verifiably false according to multiple sources.
A technical solution would work like this, you post your source and platform to the central code oversight system via https and it automatically compiles, then generates three output binaries, a single self decompressing archive, a compressed archive (gz, zip, rar, your choice from a drop down) and an uncompressed archive, tar for example. Along with those it provides md5 and sha checksums and a unique id for each. Any member of the public can use the unique id to look up the check sums and the current status of submitted source code. They can get the code in any manner you see fit to distribute it, run their own checks and compare those to the official central code repository. Of course there will be software to do this for you automatically, but you can always manually perform the same checks yourself.
You can submit false source code, but the checksums will make it apparent that you're distributing binaries from unregistered code. You can create malicious code and hope to distribute it before people catch on, but it comes with a big fat warning much like a self signed ssl cert does now. The system doesn't keep people from doing bad or stupid things, it just makes it easier to make good decisions.
TNSTAAFL, taxpayers pay for it, we always do. If you prefer, you can lobby for a submitters tax or a verification tax, but mirroring the data should be reasonable and mirrors should be able to provide either a reasonably priced service ($100/yr perhaps) or fund their mirror through advertising.
There is much good in the existing system, and this wouldn't change the software market landscape significantly. What it would do is give developers a reference and end users information from a trustworthy source. For the end user like myself, who would like to use some software that is closed source in a business environment, it would enable me to use and pay for software that right now I just can't trust.
I am only cruel to kittens belonging to people who fail to see the beauty of my logic. Don't make me make you kick my ass.
I do indeed see where I failed to communicate my idea clearly. To expound on my previous statements: "Releasing a binary to the public, without first registering (but not publicly disclosing) source code to a central authority would be a crime." Also: "Meanwhile, source code may be released to the public or withheld and only registered with the oversight board, as deemed desirable by the original author."
As to your users taking a little responsibility for their decisions, have you read a EULA on any significant commercial software? It's absolutely insane that you have to agree to not hold responsible the developers of a program which is advertised as being suitable for a purpose even if that software should not only fail but also actually cause serious problems.
I write a bit of software here and there and am very happy to live in a society where I might be able to receive compensation for my work. I would never require that you open source your profit making software to the public, but the current system where people are expected to run software on their computer with no way to tell what it does, no way to verify that it even comes close, no reliable authority even that they could ask, well, the current system sucks.
Maybe, maybe not. It sounds like somebody was thinking about removing duplicate data from file systems in a significant way. They appear to have gotten side tracked by this idea of avoiding responsibility for copyright infringement, but the original concept is interesting. At least what I hope was the original concept.
Lets pretend I know the original concept, as I suspect I do, due to convergent thought processes. Essentially it is this, you get a large number of people to store chunks of indexed data and as more and more people add to the list, you remove duplicate entries beyond what is required for resiliency. For a couple thousand files, there is no significant improvement over regular existing compression algorithms, but over hundreds of millions, perhaps a couple billion, you end up with needing very little additional storage for your entire library of files. You can do backups of your entire system requiring additional storage of perhaps a couple hundred megabytes. Data is compressed on the end blocks with traditional algorithms, decompressed on the fly.
There are two problems with the implementation as I read it. First, they are randomizing the data rather than the distribution alone. I should be able to fearlessly store a couple gigabytes for anonymous users since I am gaining from the service a distributed resilient and redundant file system. However, the savings in storage are negated since two copies of the same file with different origins would have different (essentially encrypted) segments requiring double the storage of unencrypted versions.
Second, the system described in the only page I read doesn't adequately deal with data collisions. I'd be happy to make backups onto such a system if it were dependable, but leaving aside the nature of a voluntary anonymous Internet system, the possibility of data corruption would cut my desire down to practically nil.
Yes nitpickers, I do know that it isn't really encryption, but it is like enough for the purposes of my point. As to technical merits, I've done it at file level backups and it was hugely significant and reliable, I did md5.sha1 which was good enough for my purposes, but add more as fits your personal paranoia level. I was explaining my closest theory on a method that does almost this to coworkers complete with mysql database and whiteboard two weeks ago, i.e. convergent thought processes.
Leaving aside the technical failings for the moment to get to the point of this response, let me say that there might be merit in fighting the copyright laws in this manner. I for one do not want to face the penalties of copyright infringement so I avoid p2p systems except for legal purposes. At the same time, I hope that enough people flouting the law will make it unenforcible and eventually lead to a change in the law that would benefit me. Totally selfish, I know.
If such a system were designed that would allow me to legally help those infringing on copyright at no cost to myself other than a couple gigabytes of unused space, then I would be glad to participate. I don't like the smell of this system because it sounds like I would be reasonably considered guilty of assisting in copyright infringement, but if it were somehow to become a generally useful system where only a small unidentifiable part were used for infringement, then it might become useful enough to participate without legal consequences to myself, but still help in the momentum of change that would lead to changes in law.
That seems kind of vague, so despite the problems with hypothetical simple situations, I'll offer one:
OFF becomes widely popular for use as a second grade backup system allowing huge amounts of data to be backed up at very little storage cost. A contribution of 3GB reliable space yields 3TB of dependable backup space. Millions of people use it as easily as they use the Internet and for the vast majority, completely legally. The fraction of the people using it illegally are still too large a base to effectively prosecute and the system so used for legal purposes it would be unreasonable to terminate it. Momentum builds and it is eventually as unreasonable to shut down the system as it would be now to shut down the Internet due to those abusing it. Much like the Internet itself, it would force changes in business models and laws that would be beneficial to myself and society in general due in part to illegal activity which everyone using the system contributes to, but are mostly not responsible for.
*Sigh* yeah, it is a nice dream but I fear the technical failings left aside previously will prevent such a shift. Still, I hope this gives others the ideas and pieces of code necessary to get started on a real solution.
I like to kick puppies and throw water balloons at cats. Not really, but voicing an opinion in this particular thread is likely to get me the same sort of reputation. Heck with it, I'll do it any way.
Rary and ShieldW0lf, you both have a point. Distribution of binaries without source code, particularly without ever providing source code to any oversight body, is dangerous. The tetris clone for example, might contain vulnerabilities or outright malicious code to zombify recipient machines. Without oversight, even a benign and well coded version might be replaced with a malicious one and (without oversight remember) be used as a vehicle to inflict even more of that greatest evil (which is spam) on the world at large. Yet the coder of the benign tetris binary doesn't have ill intent nor any reason to be held to the same standards as a pharmaceutical company.
The answer lies somewhere in the middle ground, or "common sense" as it is sometimes termed. It isn't the distribution of closed source binaries that is particularly dangerous but rather the same without reasonable oversight. The answer is to provide a central repository, somewhat like or even an extension of the Library of Congress. We tack on a new source code oversight branch to some other government bureaucracy (as legislators are fond of doing) which is responsible for reviewing and rating the safety and suitability of purpose for each closed source binary released. Releasing a binary without providing source to the central authority would be a crime, perhaps a misdemeanor for non-malicious intent, and code which has not received a review yet but has been submitted, must be clearly described as unreviewed and potentially dangerous. (As a smoker let me tell you, de government likey de label laws.) Fines increase in proportion to potential damage of an unregistered binary.
Meanwhile, source code may be released or not as deemed desirable by the original author, but open source code is given a tax break for all revenue generated by the distribution, since it is a charitable donation to society (no tax break for related services, that would set up potential reward for poor programming.)
Everybody wins! Well, except for the tax payers who are used to being hosed over anyway. We can perhaps justify it by saying there will be an economical compensation with more safe code and better reviewed publicly used software. "We" as used here, being the politicians who get lobbied to pass such legislation since they will need some rationalization regardless of whether or not it is actually rational.
Oh yeah, only individuals may own the right to closed source code and it is open sourced at their death. If your code is really good, your life insurance rates will skyrocket until you release it.
Held accountable? Perhaps they should be punished by a clearly defined legal code which establishes fines for poor decisions. This is not a fine.
The problem is that it wasn't the authority of the widow that caused the money to be spent on the search. It wasn't the authority of the person being searched for that caused the cost. They could not make the decisions determining how much money or time was spent on the search. It was the combined authority of dozens of different people making the decisions to conduct the search which incurred the cost. The decisions were made by public servants doing their job to the best of their ability with the full authority to decide exactly how much effort and money to expend. I'm not second guessing their decisions, but this legal action is not giving them the accountability we would expect of any private sector employer or employee. Rather than dealing with the decision makers, they are moving to punish a third party.
If there needs to be a fine, then make it a real fine backed up by legal code. This move to charge the widow is ethically wrong, regardless of her resources.
Well, for those of us using MS management tools, this may (potentially) provide a nice consolidation of the tools we use. If I could get a plug-in that would consolidate the updating processes and reporting, then yes, that would be handy.
Certainly I can do everything that I need to with the tools from each system, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if it could all be done through one interface with the reports bundled into one system that works well with MS Severs that I already have to support. No argument that it would make me just as happy if Red Hat, Novell or Ubuntu came out with the same product that would manage multiple systems, but MS has source code and the ability to develop directly for both, which as unfair as it may be, the Linux community cannot have.
The way I see it, if MS decides to develop tools for Linux systems management, the admin of mixed systems will have three choices:
Continue to use the tools that come natively with each system
Build custom tools to consolidate the common functionality of updating, monitoring and reporting for each
Use tools that manage homogeneous systems even if those tools come from MS.
MS will make me consider two questions. First, are the tools provided by MS good enough to replace some of the ones I already use for Linux systems? And as an ancillary second, do I prefer to take a stand for my ideals or do I prefer the convenience?
LTO WORM is a good, relatively inexpensive solution. Yes it is erasable but not rewritable, besides a good furnace will erase anything, and that is why the Navy uses a furnace to destroy media at end of life. WORM LTO3 cartridges handle 400GB raw and cost about $80 each and the drive will run around $1500.
You might be looking for something that isn't magnetic though, and for that I suggest DVD-R. It can't be rewritten, the media itself can't, not just due to the drivers. You did mention inexpensive, but if you're looking for larger storage then holographic is just about to be available and offers LTO comparable storage capacity in non-magnetic WORM starting around $20,000 (slightly less but when you purchase media it will probably be close.)
The key is the question "What prevents this from existing/ being popular?" The answer is that it is more expensive to create the media with comparable capacity to existing rewritable media (standard hard drives) both because of the limited market and the manufacturing cost. If you want it, you can buy it but most people would rather have a standard hard drive and for them WORM at 4GB DVD-R scale is enough.
I was discussing this with another administrator just the other day. The shell, actually mostly the Bourne Again SHell and sometimes the Korn SHell and occasionally the Bourne shell, is something I've used regularly for the last five years or so. (I'll be lumping them together for this reference as "the shell" and referring to PowerShell as "PSH." ) I like and know the shell, but don't know PowerShell well yet, and as a result can usually do what I set out to do with the shell fairly well and rapidly, but I'm slow and sometimes frustrated by PSH. When I was comparing what I can do with each, however, I realized that most of what I'm accomplishing through the use of the shell isn't really the shell itself, but the dozens of small programs I expect to always be able to rely on such as sed, awk, cut, paste, diff, wc, wget, dd and grep. If I were more familiar with PSH and had my usual tools, through something like Unix Utils or sysinternals, I suspect that my preferences would not be nearly so pronounced.
When I first started with the shell I had come from the MS Windows world where there were check boxes and buttons or honest to goodness programming languages and the distinction was clear. As I transitioned over the years, the shell seemed to offer much better control and flexibility at the cost of just a little learning, one small step at a time. I recognize the attitude I feel toward PSH as being similar and at an intellectual, if not a gut level, I think the two are similar. Yes, it will take a while for PSH to get the comfort of use and widespread adoption that the shell has earned, but I think it will come. With it I think will come the same blurring of programming and administration that occurs with the shell now.
It may not be exactly the Bourne shell, but it would be more fair to say it isn't Bash... yet.
Vultures are indeed a good bet as they're able to handle eating some very scary things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture:
Botulinum toxin, the toxin that causes botulism, does not affect them, and they can eat rotten flesh containing anthrax and cholera bacteria.
Not to say the other method isn't better, but it isn't quite that bad. I used to work in the debit processor industry, essentially our computers were the ones that the PIN was sent along to.
It actually works like this: PIN entry -> Unique encryption in keypad (light sensitive PRAM typically) -> Debit machine processing -> VPN or dial-up direct to processor -> decryption based on id of machine and uniquely assigned encryption keys -> somehow (varying) communicated to bank ->back up the line with approval/denial.
It is supposed to be using hardware that never stores the encryption keys (triple DES mandated) anywhere that is accessible from the machinery that processes the transaction and they're tamper resistant (not quite proof, but difficult) with the encryption key knowledge being split between (at least) two people. The keys are unknown to the people who handle them until the time of entry and only stored in the end machine and in the processing machine (identified by serial number or machine ID.)
It is possible for the systems to be compromised in several ways, but paranoid safeguards are in place to make it difficult. Getting card numbers is no terrific feat, as evidenced by all the news stories about exactly that, but mechanically getting PINs usable for debit transactions is tremendously more difficult. That isn't to say it can't be done, but it does raise the barrier much higher than just sending your PIN along.
On the other side though, the decision on whether to approve or deny a transaction is typically just a matter of an unencrypted 0 or 1 along with the mirror of the transaction. If a transaction is denied, but the machine gets a 1 where it should have received a 0, then the merchant has no immediate indication that the cash or goods weren't paid for. Machines using debug or emulation modes occasionally get into service and approve everyone without even validating the transaction, but as you can imagine that gets pretty prompt attention.
Essentially the tax payers are the ones who created and funded the company. It has served its purpose.
As with any government agency, once the services it provided are done by private industry, it is time to cut out the public funding. The government should sell back all the hardware to all the companies involved and use the funds generated to cut taxes.
Doubtless this seems unfair to Bell, but the government was unfair to everyone when it created an intentional monopoly. When they whine, and they will whine, they should be told to join the competition that they felt was healthy enough.
The cost of getting a computer is fixed. As a one time expense, it is something even a poor family can save up for. Sure, $200 for a crappy laptop and wifi card make take some saving up, but that is something that can be managed. A monthly cost of $35 (if they're very lucky) for broadband that only works at home is not an appealing proposition if you're barely scraping by. If you look at it as a two year investment, that is $8.50/month vs. $43.50/month.
The laptop also has the benefits of being able to help with self-education. This means that kids who need access the most, to help climb out of poverty through education and experience, get a better chance to do it. It won't help everyone and it will be abused, but it will help a lot of kids get out of the destructive cycle and that will pay off in less young adults needing public assistance and more paying taxes. It is a long term investment, but isn't that what we want city governments doing?
In the short term it might help more people prepare for a better job and encourage more business than the alternative ways of spending the same money. At the heart of every slum is a basic problem, there are lazy, greedy individuals out to get what the world "owes" them who at the same time harm those who might make a better life for themselves given the opportunity. I'm not sure if there is a way to change the behavior of those who are there because they are unwilling to make different choices, but it is possible to help those that are there because they are unable to find better opportunities.
Every young adult that gets a better job out of this is a double-payoff, first in the lack of cost to other tax payers, and second in the taxes that they will pay. I feels naive, but I believe that enough people will improve their lives that the long term cost to benefit ratio will come out positive for the tax payers.
It all depends on what you need to accomplish and what tools you have to accomplish it. We have MS 2005 Virtual server machines and a "Microsoft Shop" mandate so we're stuck with it. We're getting ready to migrate from Exchange 2003 to 2007 and the Exchange server is a virtual machine. (Take a deep breath, as abhorrent as the idea was to me, it made sense with the resources available at the time.)
I was asked how we should proceed and I took a look at available hardware, budgeting and requirements and we're going to be putting in Server 2008 with HyperV virtualized Exchange 2007. Hundreds of nagging doubts assail my nightmares about the project, but the fact is that I'm stuck with MS, need to move to Ex2007, need the mobility and resource redistribution of a virtual machine and I shudder at the thought of further crippling a resource hog like Ex2007 with the problems VS2005 will never overcome. HyperV is being better tested than most things MS releases and it won't be a downtime project.
In most companies the need is balanced against the options available and upgrades are done based on the value of the transition. Sometimes that means bleeding edge, sometimes (like where I worked last year) that means DOS and NT4 systems running on some machines and Vista on others.
Oh yeah, then there is AIX (despite the MS shop mandate) like a rock of stability, much as I loathe trying to do things with it, I've been impressed with how easy it is to keep up to date without worrying about stability.
Is it illegal where he is driving? I know that turning off the engine of a vehicle while driving (I'd assume excluding those that do it automatically by design) is illegal in some places, but have yet to see anybody cite an applicable law.
Obviously the machine thinks that since it is doing so much of the work, it deserves to get to vote too.
Several people have made suggestions for a better system, and you've indicated that a paper trail should be required, so here is a way that it could work:
Live CDs present touch screen voting options to voters in the booth (no CPU accessible) and a printer
When voting is completed, a card is printed that shows the votes and near the bottom has a sha1 hash of the results above a perforation, the same sha1 hash below the perforation plus a machine identifier (i.e. booth B3) and a barcode below that.
Meanwhile, the instructions on the screen visually show how the card should be separated
Voters must insert their card into a box, which will not accept a card with the detachable barcode and hash still attached then give the barcode/hash stub to an attendant as they leave
Attendants drop the barcode/hash stubs into a machine which scans them and drops them into a locked box and shows a running tally of all votes counted so far, and also all votes counted by this machine to voters and attendants alike. Only when the vote is counted by the machines under the attendants control is total updated and the vote electronically tabulated.
If a machine doesn't count totals correctly, it is always seen to fail by both the voter and attendant immediately
If there is any question, the physical printouts of votes can be compared to stubs and machine totals
A small percentage of election results are always audited by a random selection (doesn't matter how to me, they can roll 20 sided die for all I care)
Now you have your paper trail, auditing, preserve the secrecy of the ballot and built in checks against machine error.
Q: Is the perforated card tear away necessary? A. It offers forensic evidence that a card matches the one it was detached from if it is ever required, which would be much more difficult for separate printouts or machine cut tickets.
Q: Does the hash/barcode infringe on the secrecy of the ballot cast? A. Not really. A random number can be printed on each vote record and used in the hash result so that even the hashes couldn't be memorized by attendees. I'm not sure this would be reasonable since memorizing hashes or barcodes would be significantly difficult for most people and intimidation is easier with a paper system, but it could be easily implemented.
Read up on the topic of jury nullification. I did and was surprised. The choice of words the gp chose was unfortunate, the reason that jury nullification is an option is because it IS the law. When you have two contrary laws, find him innocent if he is innocent vs find him guilty because of other law despite of innocence, you are morally and legally bound to find him innocent. The jury system was set up in part to deal with the possibility that the law could be wrong or conflicting and was given the authority to decide which laws should and should not apply. Jury authority supersedes that of legislative and case law.
It comes down to this, as a juror you can swear to uphold the law and still legally and ethically make the decision to uphold it by ignoring less authoritative law than that of your moral obligation. Power to the people.
I live ten minutes from two video rental places and five minutes from a video rental machine. If I want to rent a movie tonight, I can in twenty minutes or less, and a download would take the night. On the other hand, I can be streaming video, watch cable, or rent a movie electronically from my cable company without dressing for public, and the time to exercise those options is measured in seconds.
To quote a friend, "Meanwhile Microsoft has been quietly building one of the largest digital distributions systems in the world."
Remember, the reason that MS is where it is today is because Mr. Gates saw the opportunity when it came time to sell software rather than including it with the computer. Now that time has come again, not to just sell software, but to leave behind the idea of selling the media it comes on and selling it as a download service.
Consider that they can undercut Sony like nobody else. Want to get the latest game? Sure, download it for $2.00. Profit: $1.98, cost to Sony: $50.00. Multiply by 2,000,000. Who laughs last?
Your suggestion that music should be "sold" by subscription is interesting. This is what satellite radio is doing for the most part, and somewhat successfully. It is interesting to consider how many companies would suffer bankruptcy if it were suddenly universally not illegal to share copies of digital information.
Lets consider a moment a world where people pay only to receive new content via subscription. That would mean that software would no longer be sold, except to those who paid to have improvements made. It would virtually eliminate most of the software companies, or at least their business models, as we know them today. What would it leave in it's wake?
I had a PGP encrypted system (whole disk encryption) and I talked over this scenario with our IT Security coordinator. I suggested that he set the password before my departure, and not tell it to me, and provide it to a trusted third party at the destination. Should I have been asked, I could have said that I did not have the ability to access the data due to its sensitive nature. They could have confiscated the laptop, but they could not have made me reveal sensitive customer information. This should be standard practice.
This type of precaution is absolutely reasonable because anyone could accost me and make demands that I divulge company sensitive information, not just the "good guys" and it puts the onus of providing cooperation with authorities back with the corporation that can afford the lawyers to fight it. It allows the traveler to comply fully to the best of their ability, but prevents sensitive data loss without the cooperation of IT Security, which can fall back on "I've requested authorization from our legal department."
As is probably noted elsewhere, TrueCrypt now offers whole disk encryption, a viable free alternative. Also note that having a live CD with the ability to establish VPN for remote access to corporate secured desktops provides the capability to do any work that might come up during travel.
To clarify slightly: the point I was making about warmth, is that it cannot usually be quantified, despite the fact that it can be appreciated. The lack of the ability to quantify what makes the sound better, and the logical following lack of an ability to reproduce it is what makes a rabid vinyl fanatic.
Yes, music sounds better if the listener has an emotional connection. It sounds better to the listener, not because the sound is better, but because the feelings they have are better.
If you can make the connection by supplying what the listener appreciates but cannot quantify, then you'll make a bundle. Heck, if you even think you might be able to manage it, I'd consider investing in your company, even if you package it as a wooden knob.
Warmth is the part of the sound that makes the music seem more real to the listener. To an audiophile with a preference for vinyl, it may be the random variations introduced by the media and equipment. If this is the case, it isn't about a better reproduction as in accuracy, but better as in feeling more realistic due to the slight variations from played instance to instance, even from second to second. Vinyl may also have a slightly different sound, again not from superior accuracy, but due to the actual sounds and vibrations produced by the equipment playing it. As was pointed out already, not all of what we call sound is simply what reaches our ears, but some is also what we physically feel as vibrations. Of course even this can be reproduced, but a spinning CD produces different vibrations from a spinning record. If the vinyl preference is tied to the nostalgic feelings that come from the subtle vibrations of the turntable, it will produce a sound they find more comforting, perhaps even term "warmer."
Accuracy isn't necessarily what makes something seem to be of higher quality. I'm not tone deaf, but I'm no audiophile either. Today I listened to a youtube video of a chick singing and really enjoyed it, not because of the performance itself, but because of the subtle things of which it reminded me. It took me trying to explain why I liked it to a co-worker (who did not share my appreciation) for me to understand it myself. The music and sound she produced vaguely reminded me of times in my life that were pleasant. For me it was a subliminal appeal to remember coffee-house college days and high school, new car independence. Warmth I felt from the music, for me, came not from the quality of the reproduction, but from the non-music portions of the performance.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you manage to squeeze so much ignorance into so few words?
Rapeseed aka canola, is human food.
vegetable oil for human consumption...rapeseed was the third leading source of vegetable oil in the world in 2000
The term "gas" is usually used to refer to gasoline. While most trucks use diesel, some use gasoline. If you must nitpick, a few even use natural gas as fuel.
Farmers don't "stop growing food for humans", farmers always grow crops for profit. It isn't really about the purpose of the crop, it is about the use of the product. Corn is human consumable when harvested, regardless of whether it is put to that purpose after processing or not.
There ought to be a "wikify" button on here. You'll know AI is getting somewhere when you go to post on slashdot and you get a pre-post warning that your statement is verifiably false according to multiple sources.
A technical solution would work like this, you post your source and platform to the central code oversight system via https and it automatically compiles, then generates three output binaries, a single self decompressing archive, a compressed archive (gz, zip, rar, your choice from a drop down) and an uncompressed archive, tar for example. Along with those it provides md5 and sha checksums and a unique id for each. Any member of the public can use the unique id to look up the check sums and the current status of submitted source code. They can get the code in any manner you see fit to distribute it, run their own checks and compare those to the official central code repository. Of course there will be software to do this for you automatically, but you can always manually perform the same checks yourself.
You can submit false source code, but the checksums will make it apparent that you're distributing binaries from unregistered code. You can create malicious code and hope to distribute it before people catch on, but it comes with a big fat warning much like a self signed ssl cert does now. The system doesn't keep people from doing bad or stupid things, it just makes it easier to make good decisions.
TNSTAAFL, taxpayers pay for it, we always do. If you prefer, you can lobby for a submitters tax or a verification tax, but mirroring the data should be reasonable and mirrors should be able to provide either a reasonably priced service ($100/yr perhaps) or fund their mirror through advertising.
There is much good in the existing system, and this wouldn't change the software market landscape significantly. What it would do is give developers a reference and end users information from a trustworthy source. For the end user like myself, who would like to use some software that is closed source in a business environment, it would enable me to use and pay for software that right now I just can't trust.
I am only cruel to kittens belonging to people who fail to see the beauty of my logic. Don't make me make you kick my ass.
I do indeed see where I failed to communicate my idea clearly. To expound on my previous statements: "Releasing a binary to the public, without first registering (but not publicly disclosing) source code to a central authority would be a crime." Also: "Meanwhile, source code may be released to the public or withheld and only registered with the oversight board, as deemed desirable by the original author."
As to your users taking a little responsibility for their decisions, have you read a EULA on any significant commercial software? It's absolutely insane that you have to agree to not hold responsible the developers of a program which is advertised as being suitable for a purpose even if that software should not only fail but also actually cause serious problems.
I write a bit of software here and there and am very happy to live in a society where I might be able to receive compensation for my work. I would never require that you open source your profit making software to the public, but the current system where people are expected to run software on their computer with no way to tell what it does, no way to verify that it even comes close, no reliable authority even that they could ask, well, the current system sucks.
Maybe, maybe not. It sounds like somebody was thinking about removing duplicate data from file systems in a significant way. They appear to have gotten side tracked by this idea of avoiding responsibility for copyright infringement, but the original concept is interesting. At least what I hope was the original concept.
Lets pretend I know the original concept, as I suspect I do, due to convergent thought processes. Essentially it is this, you get a large number of people to store chunks of indexed data and as more and more people add to the list, you remove duplicate entries beyond what is required for resiliency. For a couple thousand files, there is no significant improvement over regular existing compression algorithms, but over hundreds of millions, perhaps a couple billion, you end up with needing very little additional storage for your entire library of files. You can do backups of your entire system requiring additional storage of perhaps a couple hundred megabytes. Data is compressed on the end blocks with traditional algorithms, decompressed on the fly.
There are two problems with the implementation as I read it. First, they are randomizing the data rather than the distribution alone. I should be able to fearlessly store a couple gigabytes for anonymous users since I am gaining from the service a distributed resilient and redundant file system. However, the savings in storage are negated since two copies of the same file with different origins would have different (essentially encrypted) segments requiring double the storage of unencrypted versions.
Second, the system described in the only page I read doesn't adequately deal with data collisions. I'd be happy to make backups onto such a system if it were dependable, but leaving aside the nature of a voluntary anonymous Internet system, the possibility of data corruption would cut my desire down to practically nil.
Yes nitpickers, I do know that it isn't really encryption, but it is like enough for the purposes of my point. As to technical merits, I've done it at file level backups and it was hugely significant and reliable, I did md5.sha1 which was good enough for my purposes, but add more as fits your personal paranoia level. I was explaining my closest theory on a method that does almost this to coworkers complete with mysql database and whiteboard two weeks ago, i.e. convergent thought processes.
Leaving aside the technical failings for the moment to get to the point of this response, let me say that there might be merit in fighting the copyright laws in this manner. I for one do not want to face the penalties of copyright infringement so I avoid p2p systems except for legal purposes. At the same time, I hope that enough people flouting the law will make it unenforcible and eventually lead to a change in the law that would benefit me. Totally selfish, I know.
If such a system were designed that would allow me to legally help those infringing on copyright at no cost to myself other than a couple gigabytes of unused space, then I would be glad to participate. I don't like the smell of this system because it sounds like I would be reasonably considered guilty of assisting in copyright infringement, but if it were somehow to become a generally useful system where only a small unidentifiable part were used for infringement, then it might become useful enough to participate without legal consequences to myself, but still help in the momentum of change that would lead to changes in law.
That seems kind of vague, so despite the problems with hypothetical simple situations, I'll offer one:
OFF becomes widely popular for use as a second grade backup system allowing huge amounts of data to be backed up at very little storage cost. A contribution of 3GB reliable space yields 3TB of dependable backup space. Millions of people use it as easily as they use the Internet and for the vast majority, completely legally. The fraction of the people using it illegally are still too large a base to effectively prosecute and the system so used for legal purposes it would be unreasonable to terminate it. Momentum builds and it is eventually as unreasonable to shut down the system as it would be now to shut down the Internet due to those abusing it. Much like the Internet itself, it would force changes in business models and laws that would be beneficial to myself and society in general due in part to illegal activity which everyone using the system contributes to, but are mostly not responsible for.
*Sigh* yeah, it is a nice dream but I fear the technical failings left aside previously will prevent such a shift. Still, I hope this gives others the ideas and pieces of code necessary to get started on a real solution.
I like to kick puppies and throw water balloons at cats. Not really, but voicing an opinion in this particular thread is likely to get me the same sort of reputation. Heck with it, I'll do it any way.
Rary and ShieldW0lf, you both have a point. Distribution of binaries without source code, particularly without ever providing source code to any oversight body, is dangerous. The tetris clone for example, might contain vulnerabilities or outright malicious code to zombify recipient machines. Without oversight, even a benign and well coded version might be replaced with a malicious one and (without oversight remember) be used as a vehicle to inflict even more of that greatest evil (which is spam) on the world at large. Yet the coder of the benign tetris binary doesn't have ill intent nor any reason to be held to the same standards as a pharmaceutical company.
The answer lies somewhere in the middle ground, or "common sense" as it is sometimes termed. It isn't the distribution of closed source binaries that is particularly dangerous but rather the same without reasonable oversight. The answer is to provide a central repository, somewhat like or even an extension of the Library of Congress. We tack on a new source code oversight branch to some other government bureaucracy (as legislators are fond of doing) which is responsible for reviewing and rating the safety and suitability of purpose for each closed source binary released. Releasing a binary without providing source to the central authority would be a crime, perhaps a misdemeanor for non-malicious intent, and code which has not received a review yet but has been submitted, must be clearly described as unreviewed and potentially dangerous. (As a smoker let me tell you, de government likey de label laws.) Fines increase in proportion to potential damage of an unregistered binary.
Meanwhile, source code may be released or not as deemed desirable by the original author, but open source code is given a tax break for all revenue generated by the distribution, since it is a charitable donation to society (no tax break for related services, that would set up potential reward for poor programming.)
Everybody wins! Well, except for the tax payers who are used to being hosed over anyway. We can perhaps justify it by saying there will be an economical compensation with more safe code and better reviewed publicly used software. "We" as used here, being the politicians who get lobbied to pass such legislation since they will need some rationalization regardless of whether or not it is actually rational.
Oh yeah, only individuals may own the right to closed source code and it is open sourced at their death. If your code is really good, your life insurance rates will skyrocket until you release it.
Held accountable? Perhaps they should be punished by a clearly defined legal code which establishes fines for poor decisions. This is not a fine.
The problem is that it wasn't the authority of the widow that caused the money to be spent on the search. It wasn't the authority of the person being searched for that caused the cost. They could not make the decisions determining how much money or time was spent on the search. It was the combined authority of dozens of different people making the decisions to conduct the search which incurred the cost. The decisions were made by public servants doing their job to the best of their ability with the full authority to decide exactly how much effort and money to expend. I'm not second guessing their decisions, but this legal action is not giving them the accountability we would expect of any private sector employer or employee. Rather than dealing with the decision makers, they are moving to punish a third party.
If there needs to be a fine, then make it a real fine backed up by legal code. This move to charge the widow is ethically wrong, regardless of her resources.
Well, for those of us using MS management tools, this may (potentially) provide a nice consolidation of the tools we use. If I could get a plug-in that would consolidate the updating processes and reporting, then yes, that would be handy.
Certainly I can do everything that I need to with the tools from each system, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if it could all be done through one interface with the reports bundled into one system that works well with MS Severs that I already have to support. No argument that it would make me just as happy if Red Hat, Novell or Ubuntu came out with the same product that would manage multiple systems, but MS has source code and the ability to develop directly for both, which as unfair as it may be, the Linux community cannot have.
The way I see it, if MS decides to develop tools for Linux systems management, the admin of mixed systems will have three choices:
MS will make me consider two questions. First, are the tools provided by MS good enough to replace some of the ones I already use for Linux systems? And as an ancillary second, do I prefer to take a stand for my ideals or do I prefer the convenience?
LTO WORM is a good, relatively inexpensive solution. Yes it is erasable but not rewritable, besides a good furnace will erase anything, and that is why the Navy uses a furnace to destroy media at end of life. WORM LTO3 cartridges handle 400GB raw and cost about $80 each and the drive will run around $1500.
You might be looking for something that isn't magnetic though, and for that I suggest DVD-R. It can't be rewritten, the media itself can't, not just due to the drivers. You did mention inexpensive, but if you're looking for larger storage then holographic is just about to be available and offers LTO comparable storage capacity in non-magnetic WORM starting around $20,000 (slightly less but when you purchase media it will probably be close.)
The key is the question "What prevents this from existing/ being popular?" The answer is that it is more expensive to create the media with comparable capacity to existing rewritable media (standard hard drives) both because of the limited market and the manufacturing cost. If you want it, you can buy it but most people would rather have a standard hard drive and for them WORM at 4GB DVD-R scale is enough.
I was discussing this with another administrator just the other day. The shell, actually mostly the Bourne Again SHell and sometimes the Korn SHell and occasionally the Bourne shell, is something I've used regularly for the last five years or so. (I'll be lumping them together for this reference as "the shell" and referring to PowerShell as "PSH." ) I like and know the shell, but don't know PowerShell well yet, and as a result can usually do what I set out to do with the shell fairly well and rapidly, but I'm slow and sometimes frustrated by PSH. When I was comparing what I can do with each, however, I realized that most of what I'm accomplishing through the use of the shell isn't really the shell itself, but the dozens of small programs I expect to always be able to rely on such as sed, awk, cut, paste, diff, wc, wget, dd and grep. If I were more familiar with PSH and had my usual tools, through something like Unix Utils or sysinternals, I suspect that my preferences would not be nearly so pronounced.
When I first started with the shell I had come from the MS Windows world where there were check boxes and buttons or honest to goodness programming languages and the distinction was clear. As I transitioned over the years, the shell seemed to offer much better control and flexibility at the cost of just a little learning, one small step at a time. I recognize the attitude I feel toward PSH as being similar and at an intellectual, if not a gut level, I think the two are similar. Yes, it will take a while for PSH to get the comfort of use and widespread adoption that the shell has earned, but I think it will come. With it I think will come the same blurring of programming and administration that occurs with the shell now.
It may not be exactly the Bourne shell, but it would be more fair to say it isn't Bash... yet.
Vultures are indeed a good bet as they're able to handle eating some very scary things.
Not to say the other method isn't better, but it isn't quite that bad. I used to work in the debit processor industry, essentially our computers were the ones that the PIN was sent along to.
It actually works like this: PIN entry -> Unique encryption in keypad (light sensitive PRAM typically) -> Debit machine processing -> VPN or dial-up direct to processor -> decryption based on id of machine and uniquely assigned encryption keys -> somehow (varying) communicated to bank ->back up the line with approval/denial.
It is supposed to be using hardware that never stores the encryption keys (triple DES mandated) anywhere that is accessible from the machinery that processes the transaction and they're tamper resistant (not quite proof, but difficult) with the encryption key knowledge being split between (at least) two people. The keys are unknown to the people who handle them until the time of entry and only stored in the end machine and in the processing machine (identified by serial number or machine ID.)
It is possible for the systems to be compromised in several ways, but paranoid safeguards are in place to make it difficult. Getting card numbers is no terrific feat, as evidenced by all the news stories about exactly that, but mechanically getting PINs usable for debit transactions is tremendously more difficult. That isn't to say it can't be done, but it does raise the barrier much higher than just sending your PIN along.
On the other side though, the decision on whether to approve or deny a transaction is typically just a matter of an unencrypted 0 or 1 along with the mirror of the transaction. If a transaction is denied, but the machine gets a 1 where it should have received a 0, then the merchant has no immediate indication that the cash or goods weren't paid for. Machines using debug or emulation modes occasionally get into service and approve everyone without even validating the transaction, but as you can imagine that gets pretty prompt attention.
Essentially the tax payers are the ones who created and funded the company. It has served its purpose.
As with any government agency, once the services it provided are done by private industry, it is time to cut out the public funding. The government should sell back all the hardware to all the companies involved and use the funds generated to cut taxes.
Doubtless this seems unfair to Bell, but the government was unfair to everyone when it created an intentional monopoly. When they whine, and they will whine, they should be told to join the competition that they felt was healthy enough.
The cost of getting a computer is fixed. As a one time expense, it is something even a poor family can save up for. Sure, $200 for a crappy laptop and wifi card make take some saving up, but that is something that can be managed. A monthly cost of $35 (if they're very lucky) for broadband that only works at home is not an appealing proposition if you're barely scraping by. If you look at it as a two year investment, that is $8.50/month vs. $43.50/month.
The laptop also has the benefits of being able to help with self-education. This means that kids who need access the most, to help climb out of poverty through education and experience, get a better chance to do it. It won't help everyone and it will be abused, but it will help a lot of kids get out of the destructive cycle and that will pay off in less young adults needing public assistance and more paying taxes. It is a long term investment, but isn't that what we want city governments doing?
In the short term it might help more people prepare for a better job and encourage more business than the alternative ways of spending the same money. At the heart of every slum is a basic problem, there are lazy, greedy individuals out to get what the world "owes" them who at the same time harm those who might make a better life for themselves given the opportunity. I'm not sure if there is a way to change the behavior of those who are there because they are unwilling to make different choices, but it is possible to help those that are there because they are unable to find better opportunities.
Every young adult that gets a better job out of this is a double-payoff, first in the lack of cost to other tax payers, and second in the taxes that they will pay. I feels naive, but I believe that enough people will improve their lives that the long term cost to benefit ratio will come out positive for the tax payers.
It all depends on what you need to accomplish and what tools you have to accomplish it. We have MS 2005 Virtual server machines and a "Microsoft Shop" mandate so we're stuck with it. We're getting ready to migrate from Exchange 2003 to 2007 and the Exchange server is a virtual machine. (Take a deep breath, as abhorrent as the idea was to me, it made sense with the resources available at the time.)
I was asked how we should proceed and I took a look at available hardware, budgeting and requirements and we're going to be putting in Server 2008 with HyperV virtualized Exchange 2007. Hundreds of nagging doubts assail my nightmares about the project, but the fact is that I'm stuck with MS, need to move to Ex2007, need the mobility and resource redistribution of a virtual machine and I shudder at the thought of further crippling a resource hog like Ex2007 with the problems VS2005 will never overcome. HyperV is being better tested than most things MS releases and it won't be a downtime project.
In most companies the need is balanced against the options available and upgrades are done based on the value of the transition. Sometimes that means bleeding edge, sometimes (like where I worked last year) that means DOS and NT4 systems running on some machines and Vista on others.
Oh yeah, then there is AIX (despite the MS shop mandate) like a rock of stability, much as I loathe trying to do things with it, I've been impressed with how easy it is to keep up to date without worrying about stability.
Is it illegal where he is driving? I know that turning off the engine of a vehicle while driving (I'd assume excluding those that do it automatically by design) is illegal in some places, but have yet to see anybody cite an applicable law.
Obviously the machine thinks that since it is doing so much of the work, it deserves to get to vote too.
Several people have made suggestions for a better system, and you've indicated that a paper trail should be required, so here is a way that it could work:
- Live CDs present touch screen voting options to voters in the booth (no CPU accessible) and a printer
- When voting is completed, a card is printed that shows the votes and near the bottom has a sha1 hash of the results above a perforation, the same sha1 hash below the perforation plus a machine identifier (i.e. booth B3) and a barcode below that.
- Meanwhile, the instructions on the screen visually show how the card should be separated
- Voters must insert their card into a box, which will not accept a card with the detachable barcode and hash still attached then give the barcode/hash stub to an attendant as they leave
- Attendants drop the barcode/hash stubs into a machine which scans them and drops them into a locked box and shows a running tally of all votes counted so far, and also all votes counted by this machine to voters and attendants alike. Only when the vote is counted by the machines under the attendants control is total updated and the vote electronically tabulated.
- If a machine doesn't count totals correctly, it is always seen to fail by both the voter and attendant immediately
- If there is any question, the physical printouts of votes can be compared to stubs and machine totals
- A small percentage of election results are always audited by a random selection (doesn't matter how to me, they can roll 20 sided die for all I care)
Now you have your paper trail, auditing, preserve the secrecy of the ballot and built in checks against machine error.Q: Is the perforated card tear away necessary?
A. It offers forensic evidence that a card matches the one it was detached from if it is ever required, which would be much more difficult for separate printouts or machine cut tickets.
Q: Does the hash/barcode infringe on the secrecy of the ballot cast?
A. Not really. A random number can be printed on each vote record and used in the hash result so that even the hashes couldn't be memorized by attendees. I'm not sure this would be reasonable since memorizing hashes or barcodes would be significantly difficult for most people and intimidation is easier with a paper system, but it could be easily implemented.
Read up on the topic of jury nullification. I did and was surprised. The choice of words the gp chose was unfortunate, the reason that jury nullification is an option is because it IS the law. When you have two contrary laws, find him innocent if he is innocent vs find him guilty because of other law despite of innocence, you are morally and legally bound to find him innocent. The jury system was set up in part to deal with the possibility that the law could be wrong or conflicting and was given the authority to decide which laws should and should not apply. Jury authority supersedes that of legislative and case law.
It comes down to this, as a juror you can swear to uphold the law and still legally and ethically make the decision to uphold it by ignoring less authoritative law than that of your moral obligation. Power to the people.
Who knew my managers knew how to post on /.? Now where is that AC button?
I live ten minutes from two video rental places and five minutes from a video rental machine. If I want to rent a movie tonight, I can in twenty minutes or less, and a download would take the night. On the other hand, I can be streaming video, watch cable, or rent a movie electronically from my cable company without dressing for public, and the time to exercise those options is measured in seconds.
To quote a friend, "Meanwhile Microsoft has been quietly building one of the largest digital distributions systems in the world."
Remember, the reason that MS is where it is today is because Mr. Gates saw the opportunity when it came time to sell software rather than including it with the computer. Now that time has come again, not to just sell software, but to leave behind the idea of selling the media it comes on and selling it as a download service.
Consider that they can undercut Sony like nobody else. Want to get the latest game? Sure, download it for $2.00. Profit: $1.98, cost to Sony: $50.00. Multiply by 2,000,000. Who laughs last?
And rehashed in an article on lockergnome.
Your suggestion that music should be "sold" by subscription is interesting. This is what satellite radio is doing for the most part, and somewhat successfully. It is interesting to consider how many companies would suffer bankruptcy if it were suddenly universally not illegal to share copies of digital information.
Lets consider a moment a world where people pay only to receive new content via subscription. That would mean that software would no longer be sold, except to those who paid to have improvements made. It would virtually eliminate most of the software companies, or at least their business models, as we know them today. What would it leave in it's wake?
I had a PGP encrypted system (whole disk encryption) and I talked over this scenario with our IT Security coordinator. I suggested that he set the password before my departure, and not tell it to me, and provide it to a trusted third party at the destination. Should I have been asked, I could have said that I did not have the ability to access the data due to its sensitive nature. They could have confiscated the laptop, but they could not have made me reveal sensitive customer information. This should be standard practice.
This type of precaution is absolutely reasonable because anyone could accost me and make demands that I divulge company sensitive information, not just the "good guys" and it puts the onus of providing cooperation with authorities back with the corporation that can afford the lawyers to fight it. It allows the traveler to comply fully to the best of their ability, but prevents sensitive data loss without the cooperation of IT Security, which can fall back on "I've requested authorization from our legal department."
As is probably noted elsewhere, TrueCrypt now offers whole disk encryption, a viable free alternative. Also note that having a live CD with the ability to establish VPN for remote access to corporate secured desktops provides the capability to do any work that might come up during travel.
To clarify slightly: the point I was making about warmth, is that it cannot usually be quantified, despite the fact that it can be appreciated. The lack of the ability to quantify what makes the sound better, and the logical following lack of an ability to reproduce it is what makes a rabid vinyl fanatic.
Yes, music sounds better if the listener has an emotional connection. It sounds better to the listener, not because the sound is better, but because the feelings they have are better.
If you can make the connection by supplying what the listener appreciates but cannot quantify, then you'll make a bundle. Heck, if you even think you might be able to manage it, I'd consider investing in your company, even if you package it as a wooden knob.
Warmth is the part of the sound that makes the music seem more real to the listener. To an audiophile with a preference for vinyl, it may be the random variations introduced by the media and equipment. If this is the case, it isn't about a better reproduction as in accuracy, but better as in feeling more realistic due to the slight variations from played instance to instance, even from second to second. Vinyl may also have a slightly different sound, again not from superior accuracy, but due to the actual sounds and vibrations produced by the equipment playing it. As was pointed out already, not all of what we call sound is simply what reaches our ears, but some is also what we physically feel as vibrations. Of course even this can be reproduced, but a spinning CD produces different vibrations from a spinning record. If the vinyl preference is tied to the nostalgic feelings that come from the subtle vibrations of the turntable, it will produce a sound they find more comforting, perhaps even term "warmer."
Accuracy isn't necessarily what makes something seem to be of higher quality. I'm not tone deaf, but I'm no audiophile either. Today I listened to a youtube video of a chick singing and really enjoyed it, not because of the performance itself, but because of the subtle things of which it reminded me. It took me trying to explain why I liked it to a co-worker (who did not share my appreciation) for me to understand it myself. The music and sound she produced vaguely reminded me of times in my life that were pleasant. For me it was a subliminal appeal to remember coffee-house college days and high school, new car independence. Warmth I felt from the music, for me, came not from the quality of the reproduction, but from the non-music portions of the performance.