Basic tasks (software/hardware installation) are still a pain in linux. Windows 2000 Just Works for me...
Transpose Linux and Windows in your statement, and you have my experience. Linux Just Works, Windows is painful, especially for hardware/software installation.
I wonder if it has something to do with our personal preferences?
How would you cooperate with law enforcement?
on
Computer Forensics
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· Score: 4, Funny
How would you cooperate with law enforcement when a crime has been committed on a computer?
Wouldn't that depend on your role in the crime, and your lawyer's advice?
Writing code isn't a trivial process.... I feel is a skill that should be well compensated for.
True. I can think of two replies.
First:
Given that you've written a useful program for which you should be compensated, why would you assume that open source licensing would prevent that? Most programmers (everyone says) work for companies which use their work internally. Only a small minority work for companies which sell shrinkwrapped software, and some of those companies are selling (among other things) shrinkwrapped GPLed software, e.g., Novel, Suse, Mandrake, IBM and RedHat.
So, even if the GPL were the only legal way to distribute software, most programmers would keep on getting compensated about the same way they are now. The others would probably wind up getting compensated in a different way for the same work.
Second:
I just dug a hole in your yard. I worked very hard. Pay me.
The point? Hard work isn't enough to justify compensation: it has to be useful. Of course, you knew that already. I just wanted to make that point because that other guy who's reading this post hadn't thought that part through.
Gentoo's strength is its package management, and that's one thing that really doesn't matter on an embeded device.
I suppose that the reasoning here is that Gentoo's unique features will help in putting together a system and cross-compiling for the embedded device. If you like working with Gentoo, and you are building a Linux-based embedded device, this is probably very good news indeed.
I wonder if there is anyone out there who fits that description and isn't already working on the project?
In Genesis 9:3, right after Noah et al get off the ark, God says "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." Up till then all they'd eaten was plants, and some believe that applied to the animals until then too.
Genesis 1:29-30 would imply that last part. I don't understand why God made an earth that is so clearly billions of years old, and made it around 6,000 years ago. Fortunately, our salvation doesn't depend on getting that straight.
I happen to believe the Bible...
We don't have to worry quite so much about how long we're going to live as the folks who don't.
... will you have to be one of the wealthy elite of a first-world-nation in order to be immortal?
If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. If the ``developing'' nations clean up their corruption, they'll be first-world-nations soon enough, even with our present lifespans.
If the treatment is universally shared, what will be done about overpopulation of the planet? With birthrates where they are now...
If only the rich can afford it, there won't be any overpopulation problems. Right now, the birthrates in the first world nations are below the replacement rate, including the U.S., where we have enough first generation immigrants from the third world to keep us at a TFR of 2.0 (2003 data, slightly below replacement rate of 2.1).
The sure way to defuse the population bomb is to eradicate disease and poverty. The sure way to do that is to replace corruption with the rule of law. Free-er countries have less poverty.
Lets say in the bible a man lived for 900 years (which there are at least one I just cant spell his name[methuselah]). Say durring that time they recorded time based off the moon (which is around 1 month for us) so 900/12 is 75 years old which is an old age in our standards and really old but possible for 10,000 years ago.
The problem with that sort of explanation is that it has some of these characters fathering/bearing children at 36 moons=3 years old, or 20 seasons=5 years old.
Also, if that were the case, we'd see similar ``confusions'' in contemporanious written records. We'd see references to the ``year of planting'' and ``the year of harvest'', too, if ``year'' meant ``new moon to new moon''.
Asimov (and others) proposed that they didn't use ``junior'', so the first Methuselah named his son Methuselah, who named his son Methuselah, and so on for 900+ years. I haven't cared enough to look into it, but I'm told there are similar inconsistencies with this explanation.
I don't have a good answer which doesn't involve the supernatural.
... Humans were *not* allowed to eat animals until after the flood...
Reference, please? I haven't found that.
But, it seems that the more that time passes in the Old Testament, life spans on average seem to get less and less - which could be caused by the continuing sin decay of creation.
That's right, and the conclusion certainly fits. None of that is going to mean much to unbelievers, of course.
Re:Yeah, because the old way just wasn't effective
on
Live to be 1000 Years Old?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
That last century you spend in a nursing home probably would Suck with a capital "S".
Seriously, given the likelyhood of an accident getting you, imagine the sort of life people would have to live to average living to 1000. Even if you could offer people a constant youthful physique and extreme longevity, how many of us are really going to make it to even 200?
Looks as if those two problems cancel. To get to that last, Sucky century in the nursing home, you'd have to have way too little fun along the way. If you have a full, active life, as you said: ``... something's going to get you.''
I think that the whole point of these life extension projects is to give us a good life until an accident does us in, so that instead of becoming a miserable burden to ourselves and others after 70 or 80 years, we can go on being useful.
For me, the draw isn't ``live as long as possible'', it's ``be physically able to live 'til I die.'' Longer total life span is ok, too, I guess.
... they have 20,000 applicants to fill about 50 positions available."
I'm glad she's happy. I guess she thinks she's lucky to be there, and I might agree with her. To me, though, being a lucky idiot doesn't make up for being an idiot. I'd be a real idiot to put up with a 90 hour week.
If you want less hours and less stress, there's a lot of options for you out there.
Some of them pay more per hour actually worked, too.
In several states, if you are hourly, and are paid more than some arbitrarily selcected rate, say $25 per hour, you do not get 'overtime'...
True, but think about this: if you normally work a 40 hour week, and get $50k per year, you are getting $25 per hour and are exempt by that rule. If you normally work 60 hours per week for that same $50k, you are getting $16.67 per hour, and shouldn't be exempt.
In Alaska, the Department of Labor is always headed by a union boss. I suspect that our Alaskan DOL would be very receptive to that argument.
This is the kind of stuff that patents were intended for...novel inventions. Moreover, by the context of that quote, they are focusing (no pun intended) on a specific way of building such a lense...again in the true spirit of what patents are for.
Since Mickey Mouse is copyrighted rather than patented, this patent will expire in about 20 years, so we'll be able to buy these in kiddy toys for our grandkids. If Mickey were patented, then it would be patents which run forever, and we would never be able to benefit from patented technology.
If a municipal wireless ISP were so inefficient compared to the private sector why would Verizon have lobbied so hard to ban it?
Maybe because inefficiency doesn't matter when you can use armed robbery (i.e., taxes) to collect your fees, rather than having to provide a valuable service that people are willing pay for?
Maybe it's because with the municipal wireless ISP doing a crappy-but-nearly-adequate job, there just won't be enough demand to induce Verizon to enter the market? Especially since Verizon is known for crappy-but-really-inadequate service, so couldn't win many customers from the local service?
Maybe it's because Verizon figures that even if they did change their company policy and give good service, they couldn't win many customers from the ``free'' service that the taxpayers would be stuck paying through the nose for?
would you be so good as to post your last seven tax returns,
That's not generally public information, though political candidates are smeared if they don't make them public. Really, I'd much rather that you had that information about me than that the IRS had it, if I had my choice.
your drivers liscense,
You'll find that information in the state DMV. It's already made public there.
and the titles to any cars and property you own
You'll find these in the state DMV and the county courthouse, respectively. Already public information.
I'm not trying to pick on anyone, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of what we call ``privacy'' really depends on nobody caring enough to look.
The only difference that your school really makes is in that first job. After that, it's all up to the reputation you make.
You might get a good first job out of Joe's Kollege of Knowlege and Tire Repair, but your odds of getting a really great first job are a lot higher if you're at a school that draws recruiters from great companies who are offering great jobs. Things look especially bright if those recruiters think that your school turns out graduates who are a good fit for their company.
That's why I said: Recruiters, Recruiters, Recruiters! It all comes down to recruiters. Even if you don't ultimately get a job through the job fair, the presence of recruiters is strongly correlated to the ability of your college to help you get placed.
If your customer agrees to be shot in the foot, and you shoot him in the foot, then the quality of that release is right on the money.
Can't argue with that. For bespoke products, that sort of standard makes sense. ``Does the company have a process which delivers what they promise?'' and ``Do they follow that process?''
For companies which deliver a commodity product, or for a monopoly, it's a different matter. In those cases, the customer takes what he gets, and may not be able to find out what he is getting. The ISO 9001 rating may mean that the company follows a process which always delivers the best product: ``At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always the best.'' It may also mean that the company follows a process which delivers the cheapest product: ``If we can't profit without cheating you, we'll cheat you.''
It's all about following a procedure. An excellent cost-cutting, corner-cutting procedure, which the company is strongly motivated to follow, may be very bad for the customers. A procedure which delivers the worst product possible is still a procedure. My point is that the ISO 9001 certification tells you a lot about the company, but by itself, it tells very little that's useful to the uninformed customer.
If you know the company has a reputation for producing excellent wigits, the ISO 9001 tells you that their wigits will be consistantly excellent. If all you know is that they produce wigits, the ISO 9001 tells you that their wigits are consistantly _______. Filling in that blank is what the ISO certification doesn't do. Things like the UL certification are attempts to fill in that blank.
How many recruiters come to the job fairs on your campus? How many of them are looking for CS graduates? How many of them would you be willing to work for?
Your college placement office should be able to answer the first question, your department should be able to answer the second, and you'll have to do some serious, personal research to figure out the answer to the second.
If your college doesn't draw recruiters who want you, you're probably better off going to a college that does.
Copyright is a codification of a natural right, that right being the right of property in the case of an intellectual pursuit.
Sorry, that's stupidly wrong. Property rights are already protected in other parts of the constitution. If ``intellectual property'' were a natural right, it would already be covered, and the authorisation for copyrights would have been pointless.
Intellectual products are fundamentally different from physical products. We can both know the same thing, but we can't both eat the same hamburger. You can steal a hamburger, but you can't steal an idea (though we often speak of plagarism as ``stealing credit'').
We have a natural right to physical property, exactly because it is rivalrous in consumption. There is no such thing as ``intellectual property'', except as artifically defined in law, exactly because it is not rivalrous in consumption.
I'm sure Cisco is just terrified That a bunch of general purpose commodity hardware is going to replace their highly engineered, specialized hardware.
If they're smart, they are. Microsoft or Sun could use some really top-notch router software, some hardware and their sales force to really hurt Cisco. Xorp has a BSD-style license, so Sun and MS will have no problem taking it proprietary when it's good enough.
Routers from Joe's garage are never going to be a threat, but routers from Microsoft or Sun would be an instant threat, when Xorp becomes as useful and reliable as IOS.
I read court decisions like this as saying: "Yes, maybe the law doesn't have its intended effect, but we don't deal with that. We only deal with (whether Congress has the right to put that law in place). We (the court) decide that Congress has that right".
I think you're right. The ``... we don't deal with that.'' part is where the court goes wrong. In a case like this where the intended effect is explicitly given, failure to achieve that effect is relevant. Congress has the right to pass the law for the purpose. They don't have the right to pass the law if it doesn't further the purpose. In general, not having the intended effect wouldn't matter, but, as I say, this is a special case, because the constitutionality hinges on the intended effect. The courts can't legislate, but I think they could have told Congress: ``This doesn't pass the test.'' without stepping over that line.
It just means that Congress/lawmaking is the place to fix this, not the courts.
Yes, but I think it's because the courts are broken, not because that's the way it should be. What a pity that Congress is broken, too.
Just because something is no longer for sale to the public DOES NOT mean the copyright should no longer apply, thus taking control away from the owner/creator.
Sorry, wrong. That may be the way the law is currently interpreted, but that is clearly not the way the law should be interpreted.
What follows is U.S. specific: that's appropriate, since the decision is also.
Our constitution gives Congress the right to extend monopolies to artists, authors and inventors, for limited periods, to serve the public interest. The ultimate aim is to enhance the public domain. I'd say that allowing a copyright owner the ability to exercise dog-in-the-manger style control, by intent or by apathy, is clearly unconstitutional. If the courts disagree, they're following in the grand old tradition of Dred Scott. The courts have been wrong before.
The copyright is not dependent upon the owners ability/desire to distribute it.
That is probably true, but if so, it is an accident of law, not The Way God Commanded It.
Copyright is not a natural right like your right to not be murdered. Copyright is a deal we make with authors, because we think we're better off for it. If we aren't better off, if the authors aren't holding up their end of the deal, we have right to change things around. Copyright should be called copyprivilage.
The Linux desktop also was impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks.
Since it only takes one successfull attack to compromise the system, I'd say that impenetrable is impenetrable.
Does Linux get fewer attacks because it is impenetrable? Does it get fewer attacks because 100% of the Linux boxes is less than 10% of the Windows boxes? Why should I care? Fewer attacks is a good thing, and the data gives no reason to think that more attacks would change the situation, anyway.
Fewer attacks on Linux. None of them work. Keeping fully patched is trivial, even via modem. With Linux, the computer portion of life is good. I was never able to say that when I had a Windows box, years ago.
But the janitors don't get to put "Taught college courses on the following subject areas:" on their resumes.
When people ask me: ``But can you explain it to the Commissioner|Legislature?'', I tell them that I won a teaching award for an introductory macro economics class. Then, they gently point out that the Commissioner or the legislators would never have been admitted to college, so I'd probably be talking over their heads.
Seriously, it's good to be able to say you've taught something, but it's more for the people skills than for the skill skills.
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Transpose Linux and Windows in your statement, and you have my experience. Linux Just Works, Windows is painful, especially for hardware/software installation.
I wonder if it has something to do with our personal preferences?
Wouldn't that depend on your role in the crime, and your lawyer's advice?
Cardboard and wing nuts. Somehow that reminds me of fish and barrels.
Only a bunch of wing nuts would build a house of cardboard, get it?
True. I can think of two replies.
First:
Given that you've written a useful program for which you should be compensated, why would you assume that open source licensing would prevent that? Most programmers (everyone says) work for companies which use their work internally. Only a small minority work for companies which sell shrinkwrapped software, and some of those companies are selling (among other things) shrinkwrapped GPLed software, e.g., Novel, Suse, Mandrake, IBM and RedHat.
So, even if the GPL were the only legal way to distribute software, most programmers would keep on getting compensated about the same way they are now. The others would probably wind up getting compensated in a different way for the same work.
Second:
The point? Hard work isn't enough to justify compensation: it has to be useful. Of course, you knew that already. I just wanted to make that point because that other guy who's reading this post hadn't thought that part through.I suppose that the reasoning here is that Gentoo's unique features will help in putting together a system and cross-compiling for the embedded device. If you like working with Gentoo, and you are building a Linux-based embedded device, this is probably very good news indeed.
I wonder if there is anyone out there who fits that description and isn't already working on the project?
Genesis 1:29-30 would imply that last part. I don't understand why God made an earth that is so clearly billions of years old, and made it around 6,000 years ago. Fortunately, our salvation doesn't depend on getting that straight.
I happen to believe the Bible ...
We don't have to worry quite so much about how long we're going to live as the folks who don't.
If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. If the ``developing'' nations clean up their corruption, they'll be first-world-nations soon enough, even with our present lifespans.
If the treatment is universally shared, what will be done about overpopulation of the planet? With birthrates where they are now ...
If only the rich can afford it, there won't be any overpopulation problems. Right now, the birthrates in the first world nations are below the replacement rate, including the U.S., where we have enough first generation immigrants from the third world to keep us at a TFR of 2.0 (2003 data, slightly below replacement rate of 2.1).
The sure way to defuse the population bomb is to eradicate disease and poverty. The sure way to do that is to replace corruption with the rule of law. Free-er countries have less poverty.
The problem with that sort of explanation is that it has some of these characters fathering/bearing children at 36 moons=3 years old, or 20 seasons=5 years old.
Also, if that were the case, we'd see similar ``confusions'' in contemporanious written records. We'd see references to the ``year of planting'' and ``the year of harvest'', too, if ``year'' meant ``new moon to new moon''.
Asimov (and others) proposed that they didn't use ``junior'', so the first Methuselah named his son Methuselah, who named his son Methuselah, and so on for 900+ years. I haven't cared enough to look into it, but I'm told there are similar inconsistencies with this explanation.
I don't have a good answer which doesn't involve the supernatural.
Reference, please? I haven't found that.
But, it seems that the more that time passes in the Old Testament, life spans on average seem to get less and less - which could be caused by the continuing sin decay of creation.
That's right, and the conclusion certainly fits. None of that is going to mean much to unbelievers, of course.
Seriously, given the likelyhood of an accident getting you, imagine the sort of life people would have to live to average living to 1000. Even if you could offer people a constant youthful physique and extreme longevity, how many of us are really going to make it to even 200?
Looks as if those two problems cancel. To get to that last, Sucky century in the nursing home, you'd have to have way too little fun along the way. If you have a full, active life, as you said: ``... something's going to get you.''
I think that the whole point of these life extension projects is to give us a good life until an accident does us in, so that instead of becoming a miserable burden to ourselves and others after 70 or 80 years, we can go on being useful.
For me, the draw isn't ``live as long as possible'', it's ``be physically able to live 'til I die.'' Longer total life span is ok, too, I guess.
I'm glad she's happy. I guess she thinks she's lucky to be there, and I might agree with her. To me, though, being a lucky idiot doesn't make up for being an idiot. I'd be a real idiot to put up with a 90 hour week.
If you want less hours and less stress, there's a lot of options for you out there.
Some of them pay more per hour actually worked, too.
True, but think about this: if you normally work a 40 hour week, and get $50k per year, you are getting $25 per hour and are exempt by that rule. If you normally work 60 hours per week for that same $50k, you are getting $16.67 per hour, and shouldn't be exempt.
In Alaska, the Department of Labor is always headed by a union boss. I suspect that our Alaskan DOL would be very receptive to that argument.
While I'm there, why don't you go click on a few adds on my site.
Since Mickey Mouse is copyrighted rather than patented, this patent will expire in about 20 years, so we'll be able to buy these in kiddy toys for our grandkids. If Mickey were patented, then it would be patents which run forever, and we would never be able to benefit from patented technology.
Maybe because inefficiency doesn't matter when you can use armed robbery (i.e., taxes) to collect your fees, rather than having to provide a valuable service that people are willing pay for?
Maybe it's because with the municipal wireless ISP doing a crappy-but-nearly-adequate job, there just won't be enough demand to induce Verizon to enter the market? Especially since Verizon is known for crappy-but-really-inadequate service, so couldn't win many customers from the local service?
Maybe it's because Verizon figures that even if they did change their company policy and give good service, they couldn't win many customers from the ``free'' service that the taxpayers would be stuck paying through the nose for?
That's not generally public information, though political candidates are smeared if they don't make them public. Really, I'd much rather that you had that information about me than that the IRS had it, if I had my choice.
your drivers liscense,
You'll find that information in the state DMV. It's already made public there.
and the titles to any cars and property you own
You'll find these in the state DMV and the county courthouse, respectively. Already public information.
I'm not trying to pick on anyone, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of what we call ``privacy'' really depends on nobody caring enough to look.
You might get a good first job out of Joe's Kollege of Knowlege and Tire Repair, but your odds of getting a really great first job are a lot higher if you're at a school that draws recruiters from great companies who are offering great jobs. Things look especially bright if those recruiters think that your school turns out graduates who are a good fit for their company.
That's why I said: Recruiters, Recruiters, Recruiters! It all comes down to recruiters. Even if you don't ultimately get a job through the job fair, the presence of recruiters is strongly correlated to the ability of your college to help you get placed.
Can't argue with that. For bespoke products, that sort of standard makes sense. ``Does the company have a process which delivers what they promise?'' and ``Do they follow that process?''
For companies which deliver a commodity product, or for a monopoly, it's a different matter. In those cases, the customer takes what he gets, and may not be able to find out what he is getting. The ISO 9001 rating may mean that the company follows a process which always delivers the best product: ``At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always the best.'' It may also mean that the company follows a process which delivers the cheapest product: ``If we can't profit without cheating you, we'll cheat you.''
It's all about following a procedure. An excellent cost-cutting, corner-cutting procedure, which the company is strongly motivated to follow, may be very bad for the customers. A procedure which delivers the worst product possible is still a procedure. My point is that the ISO 9001 certification tells you a lot about the company, but by itself, it tells very little that's useful to the uninformed customer.
If you know the company has a reputation for producing excellent wigits, the ISO 9001 tells you that their wigits will be consistantly excellent. If all you know is that they produce wigits, the ISO 9001 tells you that their wigits are consistantly _______. Filling in that blank is what the ISO certification doesn't do. Things like the UL certification are attempts to fill in that blank.
Your college placement office should be able to answer the first question, your department should be able to answer the second, and you'll have to do some serious, personal research to figure out the answer to the second.
If your college doesn't draw recruiters who want you, you're probably better off going to a college that does.
Sorry, that's stupidly wrong. Property rights are already protected in other parts of the constitution. If ``intellectual property'' were a natural right, it would already be covered, and the authorisation for copyrights would have been pointless.
Intellectual products are fundamentally different from physical products. We can both know the same thing, but we can't both eat the same hamburger. You can steal a hamburger, but you can't steal an idea (though we often speak of plagarism as ``stealing credit'').
We have a natural right to physical property, exactly because it is rivalrous in consumption. There is no such thing as ``intellectual property'', except as artifically defined in law, exactly because it is not rivalrous in consumption.
If they're smart, they are. Microsoft or Sun could use some really top-notch router software, some hardware and their sales force to really hurt Cisco. Xorp has a BSD-style license, so Sun and MS will have no problem taking it proprietary when it's good enough.
Routers from Joe's garage are never going to be a threat, but routers from Microsoft or Sun would be an instant threat, when Xorp becomes as useful and reliable as IOS.
I think you're right. The ``... we don't deal with that.'' part is where the court goes wrong. In a case like this where the intended effect is explicitly given, failure to achieve that effect is relevant. Congress has the right to pass the law for the purpose. They don't have the right to pass the law if it doesn't further the purpose. In general, not having the intended effect wouldn't matter, but, as I say, this is a special case, because the constitutionality hinges on the intended effect. The courts can't legislate, but I think they could have told Congress: ``This doesn't pass the test.'' without stepping over that line.
It just means that Congress/lawmaking is the place to fix this, not the courts.
Yes, but I think it's because the courts are broken, not because that's the way it should be. What a pity that Congress is broken, too.
Sorry, wrong. That may be the way the law is currently interpreted, but that is clearly not the way the law should be interpreted.
What follows is U.S. specific: that's appropriate, since the decision is also.
Our constitution gives Congress the right to extend monopolies to artists, authors and inventors, for limited periods, to serve the public interest. The ultimate aim is to enhance the public domain. I'd say that allowing a copyright owner the ability to exercise dog-in-the-manger style control, by intent or by apathy, is clearly unconstitutional. If the courts disagree, they're following in the grand old tradition of Dred Scott. The courts have been wrong before.
The copyright is not dependent upon the owners ability/desire to distribute it.
That is probably true, but if so, it is an accident of law, not The Way God Commanded It.
Copyright is not a natural right like your right to not be murdered. Copyright is a deal we make with authors, because we think we're better off for it. If we aren't better off, if the authors aren't holding up their end of the deal, we have right to change things around. Copyright should be called copyprivilage.
Since it only takes one successfull attack to compromise the system, I'd say that impenetrable is impenetrable.
Does Linux get fewer attacks because it is impenetrable? Does it get fewer attacks because 100% of the Linux boxes is less than 10% of the Windows boxes? Why should I care? Fewer attacks is a good thing, and the data gives no reason to think that more attacks would change the situation, anyway.
Fewer attacks on Linux. None of them work. Keeping fully patched is trivial, even via modem. With Linux, the computer portion of life is good. I was never able to say that when I had a Windows box, years ago.
When people ask me: ``But can you explain it to the Commissioner|Legislature?'', I tell them that I won a teaching award for an introductory macro economics class. Then, they gently point out that the Commissioner or the legislators would never have been admitted to college, so I'd probably be talking over their heads.
Seriously, it's good to be able to say you've taught something, but it's more for the people skills than for the skill skills.