If Apache and, say, IIS are roughly equivalent in terms of code defects, you have to ask yourself "well, why does IIS have so many more general problems and security flaws then Apache, when they both carry the same general amount of coding defects?". Is IIS just inherinetly insucure because it is used on a Windows platform? Is it because hackers generally target IIS and not Apache (most people will rush to this conclusion)?
First, are all of IIS's issues "software errors" per se? I'm wondering if all security problems would have been caught, or if that was really the goal of the analysis. Perhaps it was, but I'm not sure. One could contest that IIS has a lot of things unprotected, but that this doesn't constitute a software error.
And as you say, severity would be another issue. It's always been typical open-source style to get the mission-critical parts hardened against nuclear attack, but leaving the other bits a tad soft. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that was the case with apache.
One thing I want to know - did MS (or whoever) give these guys source or were they analyzing the binaries?
...assuming cyberangels provided their *new* domain and email addresses. And I swear, none of us will sign them up for a bunch of granny porn. I swear. Okay, so I lied.;)
In other words, they received 12 spams and 413 legitimate emails (not counting the bounces). That can't be right; everyone knows that most inboxes have a ratio of spam/non spam that is more like 413:12 rather than 12:413. Liars!;-)
What I can't believe is that they didn't get more *dictionary* attacks than that, I mean, ba@cyberangels.com should have gotten spammed like crazy with such a short username.
Could it be that since they have so little non-spam-related activity that spambots didn't up the domain? I'm completely guessing here, but the ratio does seem incredibly wrong.
1) You're clearly not the first one to point that out,
2) His "physics" was so far off the mark I stopped reading,
3) So disregard the radiometer argument and the rest of what I say still stands.
Not to say that his arguments are correct (I don't know)
They're not, as even basic college level physics would dictate, as I pointed out.
Well, I read it because I was bored and my boss is not at work. However, it is AMAZING how many people in the post refer to a Crooke Vane as an example of a Solar Sail when it is explicitly mentioned in the article that it is a counterexample.
That may be, but you can also prove the guy is an idiot by treating the system (front and back of the sail) as a pair of black-body radiatiors with a thermal gradient between them, realizing that any absorbed (ie, nonreflected) incident energy will be re-emitted as radiant heat, and finally by noticing that the degree of the thermal gradient will determine how much of the heat is re-emitted at the light face compared to the dark face. Any heat radiated at the dark face is wastage, and lowers the efficiency of the system.
So, A) the solar sail should work, B) it doesn't violate thermo, and C) one need not rely on the incorrect (as you point out) kids' toy argument.
Again, reading the article will show that a Crooke Vane is NOT the same as a solar sail, it works in the OPPOSITE direction. Read the article.
And reading prior posts will show you you're redundant, so I guess we're even. Though I will admit I stopped reading the articles when I got to that Carnot tripe. So I'll apologize for that.
Those little spinner things do not work on radiation pressure - they are a sham. The real explanation is more complicated.
Good link. My only solace is that it fooled Maxwell too.;)
I will stick with the math if not the example, though - that New Scientist article was atrocious, as I would probably give a C to any college sophomore in a physics class that presented that argument. It's sad that someone with such a demonstrated lack of knowledge of a subject is actually published.
It's been done, proven, and reduced to a children's toy. Honestly, I had a "solar sail" toy that had a spinner rotating inside an evacuated glass. It was in my window.
I can honestly say that the new scientist, in which this was published, is a joke. It is not a journal. It has garbage like this from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Please, people of slashdot, STOP believing the junk you read in there.
you see, they don't have to be a 'form of heat', but they do have a temperature. and this either changes or it doesn't, if it doesn't then you can do no work, if it does, then you need to drain the excess heat away (laws of thermodynamics)continually to keep the engine running.
Here's why the article is wrong. Carnot equations are used to describe a machine that derives heat energy from a temperature gradient. This thing doesn't (strictly) work that way - it works by having a gradient of photon flux on either side. More photons strike one side than the other, imparting momentum when they bounce off. If more photons bounce off one side than the other, then we have a net force.
I mean, you can easily explain this through Newtonian mechanics and the De Broglie relationship. This is what suggests to me that the original author lacked a decent college physics class.
Masses are always quoted as rest masses, otherwise it's not a constant but a variable which depends on your point of view. Nevertheless, the photon's mass is ALWAYS zero for the same reason that's velocity is always c. k*0 = 0 in most mathematical frameworks.
Fortunately it is also irrelevant. When dealing with photons, the kinetic energy equation is E=cp as parent stated. And no, you don't substitute mass into p - De Broglie's relationship makes this E=hc/(lambda), where h is Planck's constant and lambda is the wavelength of the light.
You're exactly right - having actually taken a few physics classes and being a chemist, I can't figure out how 1) the guy who wrote the "article" has no concept of either, or 2) how it got published.
I think this is all/. needs to know to not listen to the damned new scientist.
The sad thing is that Carnot equations aren't even designed for this sort of thing. Has the guy who wrote this never HEARD of black-body radiators?
The efficiency will be:
Efficiency = (Incident - BBdark)/Incident,
where BBdark is black-body radiation radiated by the non-illuminated side. How is this hard?
So to look at this the way the guy wants, photons strike the mirror, most bounds off, some are absorbed. Those bouncing impart momentum to the mirror, clearly. Those that are absorbed can be treated by heat flux equations, as the thing will eventually reache equilibrium.
At that point, the incident surface of the mirror will be hotter than the other side, at which point both can be treated as black-body radiators, with a defined temperature and surface area for each surface. Then, both will emit radiation proportional to T^4. Radiation that is emitted toward the sun will decrease the efficiency of the mirror. As such, any flaws in the mirror directly translate into less than 100% efficiency.
I don't usually flame, but that article was absolutely worthless and looks like it was written by a guy who got out of thermo. And has he never seen one of those little devices that has a little spinner on a needle in an evacuated piece of glass? The spinner has a bunch of vanes on it, each painted black on one side and white on the other. Surprisingly, when exposed to sunlight, it spins. So the proof-of-concept is there for the solar wind mirror.
I clicked on the "specs" link, hit configure, and it took me to a page where all I could "configure" was the monitor, warranty, and speakers - not the OS, which seemed locked to windows. Or am I being dense? I suspect I'm being dense.;)
Bottom line is, what is the internet - a public place or a content provider? Because if it's a content provider, I see no basis for Southwest to get overturned. Newspapers don't have to include a CD-audio version in their distributions, do they?
Not that hard to do really, especially if you have no previous business with the spammer. Who is going to believe him when he says that he "inadvertently" sent an email with the subject, "$500,000 in 6 months!!!" to 30,000 email addresses?
I would love to agree with you, and maybe I'm just too damned cynical, but I see some kind of crappy defense where they say that they actually had an opt-in list they meant to send that to, or that they didn't know their list wasn't opt-in, or some tripe like that.
And see Your Honor? Not a single spam has ever been sent from my account before. Nevermind that the account is two days old.
My thought is that between spammers using a different account for each spam sending and claiming they clicked the wrong button in their spam software, they should have a built-in, strong defense. Combine that with the technical inadequacy of judges, and you have a situation in which spamming won't be curtailed that much.
Maybe you're right, and I'm not giving the legal system enough credit, but when I bet on its stupidity, it hasn't let me down yet.
I don't think I'd get very far selling "Microsoft Fertilizer", particularly if I duplicated that other company's color scheme.
I bet you would if there was a reason, like say that the fertilizer was small (micro) particles designed to make your lawn nice and soft. Otherwise, your example is more appropriate to a situation where a company jacks some other company's name for name recognition only.
Here, it's different - there really is a phenomenon called spam, and they're trying to stop it. Sounds fair to me. Also, I looked at their site (www.spamarrest.com) and their color scheme isn't even remotely like SPAM's. So I see no attempt even to co-opt Hormel's image or anything (unlike with Mozilla with Godzilla, by the way, at least earlier versions).
Hormel is suing to protect my right to call my product "Spam Arrest". (Well if I actually had such a product;)
Indirectly, although something tells me that's not their motive. Ultimately, which is the greater danger in total: that someone's SpamArrest *software* would be compared to Hormel's SPAM meat product, or that the software I could to release tomorrow will confilct with SpamArrest's if they aren't granted trademark? I would certainly say the latter, and it's not SpamArrest's fault that SPAM has effectively entered the public domain in the internet arena. They deserve protection for their product. If Hormel didn't want SPAM synonymous with UCE, they should have acted long ago. As it is, there's no real danger of confusion to them, and this precedent doesn't throw SPAM completely into the public domain in the food industry. So SpamArrest should get their trademark, Hormel isn't hurt, and everyone's happy.
Actually, if they're smart, both sides would agree to a low-cost trademark "license" to SpamArrest that wouldn't set a legal precedent but that would be cheaper to both sides than a court fight.
Furthermore, I don't know that I'd go so far as to call it "pro-spammer"; it still calls for fines to be levied. It just appears more "pro-spammer" than the consumer-backed bill.
It was definitely pro-spammer, and ultimately pro-spam, in the sense that this is the best-case scenario for them. There is no way that the legislature could have completely nuked the bill, they would have been burned at the stake. So what did they do?
Reduce the penalties significantly
Provide loopholes for "inadvertent" sending.
So how do I prove that something wasn't inadvertent? Legally, I believe the burden is on the prosecution, and the bill allows for cases to potentially be tossed if the sending was inadvertent, or the penalties at least greatly reduced.
So bottom line is, if this thing gets passed, I want to see if it has any real effect upon spam or spammers. We shall see.
Ooops, it looks like I accidentally sent this email to 20,000 people on my spam list instead of my 5 established customers! How can that have happened? I'll make sure that doesn't happen until tomorrow at least!
The only good thing is it basically gives each spammer one "freebie" - surely a court won't believe they KEEP "inadvertently" sending spam. Will they?
Read that link in my comment. They said it is ok to use "spam" as long as you do not use it as "SPAM" when referring to junk email.
I did. By that logic, however, assuming the anti-UCE company trademarks SpamArrest and not SPAMarrest, they should be in the clear. So by that count alone, Hormel wouldn't have much ground. I would therefore assume they have another argument, or else their own comments from the link you provide would get them laughed out of court.
If you regularly defend your trademark, as Hormel has been doing, then it cannot be used in "unrelated" fields. If you choose not to defend your trademark because you don't feel it's an issue, it becomes much harder to defend the next time.
I don't know that attempting to defend the trademark is enough - I think you have to be somewhat successful. Heck, while the case hasn't happened yet, Apple is going after the Open Group to de-trademark Unix (TM) - and they've rigorously defended that. Doesn't mean Apple will win, but they must have at least some case or I doubt they'd bother. I imagine that Hormel has a much worse case than the Open Group, too, as when someone says "spam" people tend not to hear "potted meat" anymore.
They aren't suing because they use the word "Spam" in their company name, it is the fact they are trying to get a trademark of their company name (Spam Arrest), which Hormel is trying to stop. The use of the word "spam" to refer to junk email has already been addressed by them. This time, it is in regards to somebody using their trademark in a manner they have not approved of.
...aren't trademarks very field-specific? I mean, if what I'm selling is software, there's really no confusion argument is there? What, are people expecting their CD drive to turn that disk into some kind of potted meat?
Given the erosion of their trademark and the ubiquity of SPAM = UCE, it would be hard to argue that this causes them any damage that hasn't already been done. Equally, I believe it will be hard for them to argue that their trademark carries to software. But, courts are courts and we shall see.
If it's not already illegal, this should be, especially if there is no notice of any particular size informing the user that the change is present. If a shopping cart is linked from the primary site, such that the users of the primary site must use the shopping cart, the terms of service should propagate with it too. This could set some interesting legal precedents if it's explored.
I think you're right, having done one of those click-thru privacy contracts, it doesn't seem legal for them to claim you're using someone else's software and hence their contract. Can my carpenter say that I am bound by Black and Decker's contract instead of his if he uses their drill? I think not! It's amazing how ridiculous some of this stuff appears if you look at it in other situations.
It seems as if a plaintiff is necessary here to get anything done. EFF seems to be all busy with filesharing right now as it happens though.;(
Nope they'd be using OS/390 or z/OS, which are both very much alive (and probably producing your electricity bill as we speak).
Alive in the sense that Latin is, ie, used for legacy applications. But no one grows up speaking Latin natively - similarly, I've never seen a startup company say "Hey, let's use IBM 370's" or "OS/2 sounds like a good solution!"
Do you remember the "Team OS/2" astroturfing? The Linux community doesn't even need to do stuff like that. It's truly grassroots, even as it's attracted the help of the big names, including OS/2's father, IBM.
Whaddya call/. if not one big linux astroturfing society? And I say that as a linux user.
Let me assure you, lots of banks STILL use OS/2 and they will do so for the foreseable future. The fact that you don't use os/2 does not mean it is dead. It is as dead as Fortran and Cobol.
Yeah, but I can still find you examples of places still using an IBM 370 if I wanted. Hell, I bet someone still uses a PDP somewhere. The real measure of life of a system is new sales, and when is the last time someone bought OS/2 that didn't already have an OS/2 commitment? 1996 sounds about right.
As for COBOL and FORTRAN, new compilers are still made for them, so I'd say they're very much more alive than OS/2.
Slashdot Mirror
First, are all of IIS's issues "software errors" per se? I'm wondering if all security problems would have been caught, or if that was really the goal of the analysis. Perhaps it was, but I'm not sure. One could contest that IIS has a lot of things unprotected, but that this doesn't constitute a software error.
And as you say, severity would be another issue. It's always been typical open-source style to get the mission-critical parts hardened against nuclear attack, but leaving the other bits a tad soft. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that was the case with apache.
One thing I want to know - did MS (or whoever) give these guys source or were they analyzing the binaries?
...assuming cyberangels provided their *new* domain and email addresses. And I swear, none of us will sign them up for a bunch of granny porn. I swear. Okay, so I lied. ;)
What I can't believe is that they didn't get more *dictionary* attacks than that, I mean, ba@cyberangels.com should have gotten spammed like crazy with such a short username.
Could it be that since they have so little non-spam-related activity that spambots didn't up the domain? I'm completely guessing here, but the ratio does seem incredibly wrong.
Not to say that his arguments are correct (I don't know)
They're not, as even basic college level physics would dictate, as I pointed out.
That may be, but you can also prove the guy is an idiot by treating the system (front and back of the sail) as a pair of black-body radiatiors with a thermal gradient between them, realizing that any absorbed (ie, nonreflected) incident energy will be re-emitted as radiant heat, and finally by noticing that the degree of the thermal gradient will determine how much of the heat is re-emitted at the light face compared to the dark face. Any heat radiated at the dark face is wastage, and lowers the efficiency of the system.
So, A) the solar sail should work, B) it doesn't violate thermo, and C) one need not rely on the incorrect (as you point out) kids' toy argument.
And reading prior posts will show you you're redundant, so I guess we're even. Though I will admit I stopped reading the articles when I got to that Carnot tripe. So I'll apologize for that.
Those little spinner things do not work on radiation pressure - they are a sham. The real explanation is more complicated.
Good link. My only solace is that it fooled Maxwell too. ;)
I will stick with the math if not the example, though - that New Scientist article was atrocious, as I would probably give a C to any college sophomore in a physics class that presented that argument. It's sad that someone with such a demonstrated lack of knowledge of a subject is actually published.
I can honestly say that the new scientist, in which this was published, is a joke. It is not a journal. It has garbage like this from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Please, people of slashdot, STOP believing the junk you read in there.
Here's why the article is wrong. Carnot equations are used to describe a machine that derives heat energy from a temperature gradient. This thing doesn't (strictly) work that way - it works by having a gradient of photon flux on either side. More photons strike one side than the other, imparting momentum when they bounce off. If more photons bounce off one side than the other, then we have a net force.
I mean, you can easily explain this through Newtonian mechanics and the De Broglie relationship. This is what suggests to me that the original author lacked a decent college physics class.
Fortunately it is also irrelevant. When dealing with photons, the kinetic energy equation is E=cp as parent stated. And no, you don't substitute mass into p - De Broglie's relationship makes this E=hc/(lambda), where h is Planck's constant and lambda is the wavelength of the light.
I think this is all /. needs to know to not listen to the damned new scientist.
The sad thing is that Carnot equations aren't even designed for this sort of thing. Has the guy who wrote this never HEARD of black-body radiators?
The efficiency will be:
Efficiency = (Incident - BBdark)/Incident,
where BBdark is black-body radiation radiated by the non-illuminated side. How is this hard?
At that point, the incident surface of the mirror will be hotter than the other side, at which point both can be treated as black-body radiators, with a defined temperature and surface area for each surface. Then, both will emit radiation proportional to T^4. Radiation that is emitted toward the sun will decrease the efficiency of the mirror. As such, any flaws in the mirror directly translate into less than 100% efficiency.
I don't usually flame, but that article was absolutely worthless and looks like it was written by a guy who got out of thermo. And has he never seen one of those little devices that has a little spinner on a needle in an evacuated piece of glass? The spinner has a bunch of vanes on it, each painted black on one side and white on the other. Surprisingly, when exposed to sunlight, it spins. So the proof-of-concept is there for the solar wind mirror.
I clicked on the "specs" link, hit configure, and it took me to a page where all I could "configure" was the monitor, warranty, and speakers - not the OS, which seemed locked to windows. Or am I being dense? I suspect I'm being dense. ;)
Bottom line is, what is the internet - a public place or a content provider? Because if it's a content provider, I see no basis for Southwest to get overturned. Newspapers don't have to include a CD-audio version in their distributions, do they?
I would love to agree with you, and maybe I'm just too damned cynical, but I see some kind of crappy defense where they say that they actually had an opt-in list they meant to send that to, or that they didn't know their list wasn't opt-in, or some tripe like that.
And see Your Honor? Not a single spam has ever been sent from my account before. Nevermind that the account is two days old.
My thought is that between spammers using a different account for each spam sending and claiming they clicked the wrong button in their spam software, they should have a built-in, strong defense. Combine that with the technical inadequacy of judges, and you have a situation in which spamming won't be curtailed that much.
Maybe you're right, and I'm not giving the legal system enough credit, but when I bet on its stupidity, it hasn't let me down yet.
I bet you would if there was a reason, like say that the fertilizer was small (micro) particles designed to make your lawn nice and soft. Otherwise, your example is more appropriate to a situation where a company jacks some other company's name for name recognition only.
Here, it's different - there really is a phenomenon called spam, and they're trying to stop it. Sounds fair to me. Also, I looked at their site (www.spamarrest.com) and their color scheme isn't even remotely like SPAM's. So I see no attempt even to co-opt Hormel's image or anything (unlike with Mozilla with Godzilla, by the way, at least earlier versions). Hormel is suing to protect my right to call my product "Spam Arrest". (Well if I actually had such a product;)
Indirectly, although something tells me that's not their motive. Ultimately, which is the greater danger in total: that someone's SpamArrest *software* would be compared to Hormel's SPAM meat product, or that the software I could to release tomorrow will confilct with SpamArrest's if they aren't granted trademark? I would certainly say the latter, and it's not SpamArrest's fault that SPAM has effectively entered the public domain in the internet arena. They deserve protection for their product. If Hormel didn't want SPAM synonymous with UCE, they should have acted long ago. As it is, there's no real danger of confusion to them, and this precedent doesn't throw SPAM completely into the public domain in the food industry. So SpamArrest should get their trademark, Hormel isn't hurt, and everyone's happy.
Actually, if they're smart, both sides would agree to a low-cost trademark "license" to SpamArrest that wouldn't set a legal precedent but that would be cheaper to both sides than a court fight.
It was definitely pro-spammer, and ultimately pro-spam, in the sense that this is the best-case scenario for them. There is no way that the legislature could have completely nuked the bill, they would have been burned at the stake. So what did they do?
Reduce the penalties significantly
Provide loopholes for "inadvertent" sending.
So how do I prove that something wasn't inadvertent? Legally, I believe the burden is on the prosecution, and the bill allows for cases to potentially be tossed if the sending was inadvertent, or the penalties at least greatly reduced.
So bottom line is, if this thing gets passed, I want to see if it has any real effect upon spam or spammers. We shall see.
The only good thing is it basically gives each spammer one "freebie" - surely a court won't believe they KEEP "inadvertently" sending spam. Will they?
I did. By that logic, however, assuming the anti-UCE company trademarks SpamArrest and not SPAMarrest, they should be in the clear. So by that count alone, Hormel wouldn't have much ground. I would therefore assume they have another argument, or else their own comments from the link you provide would get them laughed out of court.
I don't know that attempting to defend the trademark is enough - I think you have to be somewhat successful. Heck, while the case hasn't happened yet, Apple is going after the Open Group to de-trademark Unix (TM) - and they've rigorously defended that. Doesn't mean Apple will win, but they must have at least some case or I doubt they'd bother. I imagine that Hormel has a much worse case than the Open Group, too, as when someone says "spam" people tend not to hear "potted meat" anymore.
...aren't trademarks very field-specific? I mean, if what I'm selling is software, there's really no confusion argument is there? What, are people expecting their CD drive to turn that disk into some kind of potted meat?
Given the erosion of their trademark and the ubiquity of SPAM = UCE, it would be hard to argue that this causes them any damage that hasn't already been done. Equally, I believe it will be hard for them to argue that their trademark carries to software. But, courts are courts and we shall see.
I think you're right, having done one of those click-thru privacy contracts, it doesn't seem legal for them to claim you're using someone else's software and hence their contract. Can my carpenter say that I am bound by Black and Decker's contract instead of his if he uses their drill? I think not! It's amazing how ridiculous some of this stuff appears if you look at it in other situations.
It seems as if a plaintiff is necessary here to get anything done. EFF seems to be all busy with filesharing right now as it happens though. ;(
Alive in the sense that Latin is, ie, used for legacy applications. But no one grows up speaking Latin natively - similarly, I've never seen a startup company say "Hey, let's use IBM 370's" or "OS/2 sounds like a good solution!"
Whaddya call /. if not one big linux astroturfing society? And I say that as a linux user.
Yeah, but I can still find you examples of places still using an IBM 370 if I wanted. Hell, I bet someone still uses a PDP somewhere. The real measure of life of a system is new sales, and when is the last time someone bought OS/2 that didn't already have an OS/2 commitment? 1996 sounds about right.
As for COBOL and FORTRAN, new compilers are still made for them, so I'd say they're very much more alive than OS/2.