Here's how many pieces of putrid canned ham have been spewed my way in the past few days:
23 February: 1095 spams, 7,821,318 bytes
How? Christ almighty, I probably get like 6 a day (that's *before* filtering). And my username is four letters long. And our mailserver at school got rooted (and someone stole the list). On the mailserver I run, I have *never* received a piece of spam (over a year).
Do you have your real email address up on a web page w/o obfuscation? What's going on here? Because spam seems to be a much greater problem for some people than others. I still don't like it, but it must suck to be you.
btw, how many false negatives/positives do you get?
It's actually not true. People can have rational preferences over wealth levels that imply they should play the lottery, even though the expected return is negative.
...wanna look at a statistical distribution of who plays the lottery? Wanna look at what types of TV shows they advertise during, and when they air? Your average lottery player is generally not all that bright, usually quite poor, and frequently un/under-employed. Particularly those people who play it with any regularity (ie, not for the occasional novelty). There's a reason they advertise during those inane judge shows that air during working hours.
...this is for people who like to customize their musical experience (or not get a bunch of album filler). If you want the entire album, buy it, burn it, done.
It's not like the album concept will disappear. This just gives more choice. I would gladly pay $20 for 20 great songs.
I agree, ignorance isn't always best, but here it worked. A few things about this "bug"
It was old - years old - and to knowledge, never used as an exploit.
It was found by a white hat - so this isn't a case of "the criminals having all the guns."
Therefore, what are the chances that, though no one found the bug in five years, that both a black hat and a white hat will find the same exploit within 2 months of each other? Pretty much nil.
As usual,the chances of an exploit coming out are higher if disclosed. So, in terms of a damage perspective, we have to compare two things: greater chance of attack if disclosed, or greater damage per attack if not disclosed from people not being prepared.
In this case, since the chance of double discovery of this bug was VERY low, the chance of total damage was greater if it was disclosed, giving black hats a head start. So I agree with what they did, and given the scope of the project (patching all flavors of sendmail), two months ain't all that bad.
Ultimately, the government doesn't really care about any RMS-style "info wants to be free" crap. They just want the fewest exploited boxes possible. In this case, their actions were pretty well correct. I don't think this will always be the correct action, so we'll have to watch them on other issues, including how they interact with OSS groups, should the need arise.
FYI, this flaw was actually found in December [msnbc.com] and just reported yesterday, roughly two months later.
Thanks for the link. You know, I don't think 2 months is exorbitant in this case. As your article states below,
"Because there are so many different flavors of Sendmail, twenty software vendors had to develop a variety of patches for the flaw..."
So, they had to patch a ton of different versions, and you don't necessarily want them issuing a shitty patch. So if you blame anyone, blame those sendmail monkeys for the delay.;) Given the nature of the coordination effort, I think they did quite well.
simply sending 10 emails on one server and moving on to another open server would be so low that statistical usage wouldn't show anything on the radar screen
Assuming such a solution were to be widely used, it would work. To send a million emails using an open server/10 emails would require one to fine 100,000 of them. Yes, there are that many out there, but this would dramatically increase a spammer's "cost."
Gee, and if you search for this exact post, I bet you won't find it on twelve other discussions, minimumm.
Characteristics of a troll:
Frequently long.
Usually *too* well written - ie, canned
Only makes passing reference to the subject at hand - slight changes to the canned text.
Takes an extreme position intended to piss off some subset of the/. crowd
Has just enough logical fallacies and red herrings to make it clear to anyone looking for trolls (and therfore funny).
There are other signs, of course, but this is what I usually look for. The g'parent hits them all. It is, definitely, a troll. I guarantee you the poster does not actually belive the position espoused.
While it is possible that you poor bastards can't completely escape windows, there's nothing wrong with a heterogeneous system, either. At work, we have a mixed client setup (windows, mac, linux), and we use linux file, print, and email servers. Seems to work OK, and much more stable - no IIS around here. Use linux for the gateways, and then let people use whatever they want for desktop.
Nothing says you have to completely migrate to linux - it doesn't really matter if the client/server run similar OS's. These days, samba does a better job at emulating windows than windows does anyway.
I love/.ing while in class, but honestly, people. Google gives a C&D letter, we all golf clap and say "way to defend your IP!" Someone else does it, and we all run to chillingeffects to boycott / whine / gripe / whatever.
First, that was the nicest C&D in the history of them, if you can even call it that. They politely *asked*, not demanded, webspy to change their definition to mention Google's trademark. Had that been M$, they would have sent over Vincent and Jules to go midieval on their asses. Ezekiel 25:17 would have rained its vengence upon them. Nah, Google did that nice. I agree, they might not have had to do it, but it was the kind of grey area that makes lawyers nervous. Overall, they did OK.
Second, Google patented more than an "improved method of helping users." This isn't like Amazon, where they basically patented efficiency (thanks, USPTO). Google didn't patent *all* ways of serving up better results. They patented their fairly specific method, which they were in fact the first to practice. There were a lot of search engine companies at the time - if it were obvious, someone would have been doing it. So I think it passes muster there.
I do agree that people tend to kneejerk on this site, but there were a lot of people during the C&D discussion who kneejerked against google too - so I don't think this blind acceptance of google is really a problem here. Blind hatred of M$ is more likely.
How about we put an end to 100 years of fucking around with countries that don't belong to us?
Ultimately, isolationism is the only thing that will work long term. You're probably right. So, what do we do? Make an announcement that, from now on, all you bastards can solve your own problems for a change? Leave us alone and we won't kick your asses?
Hmmm...that doesn't actually sound bad. Here's the thing though - quality of life in the Muslim world absolutely blows, and it could be argued that they hate us because otherwise they'd have to be jealous of us and the easy lives we have. So if we get out, they have three choices - still keep screwing with us just for old times sakes, find another enemy to blame their plight on, or actually consider their situation for what it is and realize that they really don't have that much going for them. And I don't see the last one happening. Religious zealots need an enemy to exist. We're it.
There are also those who have nothing against success, but do have a problem with being gouged by Convicted Monopolists (tm) selling insecure bloatware.
No kidding. People would be much more likely to accept/forgive MS if they ever showed any evidence of contrition. As it is, they settle lawsuits, claim they are just being persecuted, and blame people for being jealous of their success. And they wonder why we don't trust them?
It isn't classified, it's fabricated. If there were al Queda in Iraq, we would have already invaded Iraq. We have established that we don't need UN approval to destroy al Queda.
Great conspiracy theory. You chase UFO's too? There don't have to be al Queda *IN* Iraq for Iraq to *collaborate* with them toward a common end. Yes, bin Laden has condemned Iraq as a secular nation, but that doesn't mean they both don't consider us enemy #1 - and therefore willing to work together. Your assumption that "we would have already invaded" doesn't fly.
Blaming Clinton, the typical republican excuse, doesn't carry any water. Clinton inherited the situation from Bush Sr. His excuse wasn't "humanitarian," but "no UN mandate" for a regiem change. Just like we have now.
Carries a lot of water. Yeah, the UN was weak - but had Clinton done something about it in '92 when Saddaam sensed weakness and started blocking inspectors, we wouldn't have the problem we have today. At that point, the coalition was strong, he could have more easily pressured the UN, and there was more momentum toward disarming Iraq at the time. But what did he do? Jack shit. So he has to carry a lot of the weight for the problem, because he could have influenced the UN but he didn't even try. Put it this way - you can't blame Bush Jr. for not solving the problem without blaming Clinton at least as much. You could contend that neither is at fault at best an dblame the weak UN instead.
The problem [terrorism] isn't one of government, its one of culture. We do for the House of Saud what we did for Japan after WWII. We park several armored divisions in downtown Mecca and change the culture with blue jeans, VCRs and constitutional government. To that end, Hussein could be an asset, as he already oversees a secular government and a fairly westernized society.
You're being a bit generous with "fairly westernized" - they don't seem to have any of the characteristics unless you consider a military dictator as opposed to a religious dictator "western." I don't care how you define the problem, you have yet to advocate ANY solution. Unfortunately, Saddaam isn't as likely as the house of Saud to let our tanks in. And as for constitutional government in Saudi Arabia - did I miss something?
So he's used them in his own country's military actions. Big deal. To date, they havn't been used in *any* terrorist act.
And you don't have to be a damned genius to realize that if he'll use them on his own people, he'll use them on anyone else. As for whether they've been used in any terrorist act yet...do you want to wait? Want another 9/11?
Box cutters and ammonium nitrate seem to do the trick for most terrorists. We should be focusing our resources on that.
Yeah, and we are. For one, box cutters will never work again - didn't even work on the fourth plane. And there are only so many people you can kill with ammonium nitrate/diesel oil bombs, as they're pretty crude. And since Oklahoma City, ammonium nitrate (and other oxidizers) are HIGHLY controlled.
Bottom line - you criticize the planned war. OK, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but your arguments against it are...what? Claims of conspiracies and fabricated evidence? That's ridiculously lame. Go with the cost, ($100b) if anything. Go with the slippery slope argument - basically, that getting rid of *just* Iraq won't work without Syria, etc. Or fear of the scorched-earth policy that Saddaam will likely follow if deposed. Or power-vacuum theory. You have so many choices, don't go with the shitty argument.
Do realize, though, that an anti-war stance ultimately admits that we have effectively no hope of stopping terrorism, as its sources will go unchecked. You have no alternative solution, the UN has done *absolutely* nothing - so, again, other than *living* with terrorism, which I don't find particularly attractive, what do we do other than destroy all regimes that support it?
...aren't even those examples better than fission? It seems like the first-gen fusion plants will be only as bad as fission plants, and it will get better from there.
Also, there's the safety factor - with fusion, if containment is breached (as you know, I'm sure) the pressure and temperature drop to the point of no reaction very quickly. Also, couldn't less mass of material be used to shield the reactor (compared to fission)? That would very much reduce the environmental impact of low-level waste when the plants are decommissioned. And there isn't much high-level waste at all, is there?
If nVidia put out the FX ASAP, drop the price on it, take as much of a bath as they have to financially, they might be OK. The longer it takes to get it in the market, the less time until ATI's next one (at which point FX sells for $75). They need to reload for the next one (as you say). Problem is, they can't rush the next one (or delay the FX to slap a new capability on it). That's what 3dfx did, and it kept them behind the curve set by nVidia, and ensured their doom.
nVidia needs to learn that you can stay alive as a company with the #2 video card, as long as you can price it competitively - hell, that's what ATI did for years. But they do need to make sure they eventually get a winner. Since FX obviously ain't it, maybe they can win one next year. And making better decisions is part of it - don't skimp on pixel shaders like 1.4 when the competition will be able to kill you with it.
They definitely need to catch back up to ATI - competition on this front is good for all of us.
You havn't made up your mind, but your sick of people that have? You havn't made up your mind, but you know enough about it to critique people that have thought about it, and made up their mind?
No, that's the damned point. I'm criticizing people who have done the opposite - made up their mind without thinking just because NPR told them to. Yes, there are people on both sides that are guilty of this, and they piss me off equally. However, I'm surrounded by the pacifist camp, being as how I'm in grad school, and Universities are pretty leftist. If I still lived in the south (gun racks per capita: 3) I would probably be having this discussion with the other side. No, I do NOT favor "killing them all and letting God sort them out," which seems to be considered a reasonable argument there.
Personaly, I'm sick of people supporting the war in Iraq because it's the "good conservative" answer to terrorism. What has failed is Bush forign policy. He doesn't have an answer for terrorism, so he's got the sheep bleating "Iraq!" Apparently, it seems to be working.
That's true. To an extent, Bush's motivation, consciously or subconsciously, is that this is a proxy war for bin Laden, whom he can't find. So I agree, the motivation for it kind of sucks. However, that doesn't necessarily mean the war shouldn't occur. A lot of the evidence regarding an Iraq/Al Queda link is classified, but other non-Germany/France countries seem fairly compelled by it when they see it. That's enough reason for me to be a bit less skeptical about the war given, say, Spain's reaction.
Also, to defend Bush - he inherited this situation after 8 years of Clinton and the UN allowing Saddaam to blatantly violate terms of the treaty with no consequences. Bush Sr. bowed to pressure, largely of a humanitarian basis, to end the first war and save lives - something that in hindsight may not have been so smart. However, he had no way of knowing just how weak the UN would prove. So to say that this is Bush Jr's foreign policy failure is a bit disingenious. What should he have done - asked Saddaam a little nicer to let inspectors have unfettered access (which they've never had) ?
Also, when will diplomacy have effectively failed? Because it ain't working now, either from us or the UN. And what do we do then?
Here's a question - what's your answer for terrorism? Because taking out governments that blatantly sponsor it seems to be the only recourse, other than just living with it. Ultimately, it comes down to this: how much risk are we willing to assume for something worse than 9/11 to happen? Saddaam has illegal weapons, and assuming he won't use them is dangerously naive - he's used them in every war he's engaged in, including genocide on Iraqis (Kurdish).
...of people taking for a given that this war is bad because that's what "good liberals" think. I'm not necessarily saying it's a great idea, as I haven't really made up my mind - but mindlessly accepting pacifism is pretty stupid. Granted, peace is a better default position than war, but there are times where other avenues fail. And I'd say they've failed here. Saddaam is staying a step ahead of inspections thanks to delaying tactics (not to mention Germany and France).
Not to mention which this won't be a war as we are used to thinking of them. Casualties in the Gulf War were very low, and I can't imagine this being much different. As you say, the military considers minimization of collateral damage to be a top priority. The concept of there being 100,000 civilian deaths (I've heard someone say it) is FUD.
Not to mention which, programmers aren't experts on military matters. This is scarcely better than Susan Sarandon et al spouting off about the war. Yes, they have a right to free speech, but I'm not exactly going to let a moron actor change my views easily. Nor a programmer, just because he won't let the military use his crappy program.
So, in addition to downloading a list of all possible patches for all possible applications and all possible hardware configurations (pretty big list), it also has to download some sort of ruleset that goes around all of those to actually figure out locally what udpates are available and necessary. That's a lot of bandwidth.
First, the client would be a one-time install. No biggie there. Next, text is pretty small. I mean, you have to review the patches yourself anyway (please tell me you don't allow MS to decide what gets "updated"...). I can read pretty fast, but not as fast as my modem can d/l text. So I don't think the bandwidth is a problem.
And I would still rather have this client-side. They can deduce all they want, but they won't have things like reg codes, CD keys, etc, which I bet they collect. And I bet they also collect PCI serials. So, if they ever decided to bust you, they'll have all your hardware ID's and software codes. Yay!
Have they actually stated this? I would love to see something in print. Quite deceptive - not surprising to us, but people outside of/. tend to like examples.
It may be nice for a C&D, but they're still not obligated to change a thing. It could be argued that googling means either searching in general or searching google - as for usage, I don't think that's clear at all and the maintainer of the dictionary is entitled to his own opinion on the matter, certainly. Point is, I don't believe he is using the word in any way that violates trademark protection.
I do agree though - most companies would have flat-out insisted on a removal, and that's in Google's favor. Since 1) they didn't threaten and 2) allowed for a non-deletion solution, I'd be inclined to accomodate them.
Personally, I think the definition is fine now (like you say, dunno if this is pre- or post-C&D). If Google lets it go as-is, then they come out looking OK.
Slashdot Mirror
23 February: 1095 spams, 7,821,318 bytes
How? Christ almighty, I probably get like 6 a day (that's *before* filtering). And my username is four letters long. And our mailserver at school got rooted (and someone stole the list). On the mailserver I run, I have *never* received a piece of spam (over a year).
Do you have your real email address up on a web page w/o obfuscation? What's going on here? Because spam seems to be a much greater problem for some people than others. I still don't like it, but it must suck to be you.
btw, how many false negatives/positives do you get?
...wanna look at a statistical distribution of who plays the lottery? Wanna look at what types of TV shows they advertise during, and when they air? Your average lottery player is generally not all that bright, usually quite poor, and frequently un/under-employed. Particularly those people who play it with any regularity (ie, not for the occasional novelty). There's a reason they advertise during those inane judge shows that air during working hours.
Yeah, and I still want to give those little fuckers the "sack o' doorknobs" treatment. Anybody wanna make a road trip to Tufts?
It's not like the album concept will disappear. This just gives more choice. I would gladly pay $20 for 20 great songs.
It was old - years old - and to knowledge, never used as an exploit.
It was found by a white hat - so this isn't a case of "the criminals having all the guns."
Therefore, what are the chances that, though no one found the bug in five years, that both a black hat and a white hat will find the same exploit within 2 months of each other? Pretty much nil.
As usual,the chances of an exploit coming out are higher if disclosed. So, in terms of a damage perspective, we have to compare two things: greater chance of attack if disclosed, or greater damage per attack if not disclosed from people not being prepared.
In this case, since the chance of double discovery of this bug was VERY low, the chance of total damage was greater if it was disclosed, giving black hats a head start. So I agree with what they did, and given the scope of the project (patching all flavors of sendmail), two months ain't all that bad.
Ultimately, the government doesn't really care about any RMS-style "info wants to be free" crap. They just want the fewest exploited boxes possible. In this case, their actions were pretty well correct. I don't think this will always be the correct action, so we'll have to watch them on other issues, including how they interact with OSS groups, should the need arise.
...why the hell aren't you using it in the first place?
Thanks for the link. You know, I don't think 2 months is exorbitant in this case. As your article states below,
"Because there are so many different flavors of Sendmail, twenty software vendors had to develop a variety of patches for the flaw..."
So, they had to patch a ton of different versions, and you don't necessarily want them issuing a shitty patch. So if you blame anyone, blame those sendmail monkeys for the delay. ;) Given the nature of the coordination effort, I think they did quite well.
"God damn you, every one!" --Tiny Tim, if he were still alive.
Assuming such a solution were to be widely used, it would work. To send a million emails using an open server/10 emails would require one to fine 100,000 of them. Yes, there are that many out there, but this would dramatically increase a spammer's "cost."
Characteristics of a troll:
Frequently long.
Usually *too* well written - ie, canned
Only makes passing reference to the subject at hand - slight changes to the canned text.
Takes an extreme position intended to piss off some subset of the /. crowd
Has just enough logical fallacies and red herrings to make it clear to anyone looking for trolls (and therfore funny).
There are other signs, of course, but this is what I usually look for. The g'parent hits them all. It is, definitely, a troll. I guarantee you the poster does not actually belive the position espoused.
Oh, did they forget the part about how they cooled it to 100K with liquid nitrogen? That really helped.
Nothing says you have to completely migrate to linux - it doesn't really matter if the client/server run similar OS's. These days, samba does a better job at emulating windows than windows does anyway.
First, that was the nicest C&D in the history of them, if you can even call it that. They politely *asked*, not demanded, webspy to change their definition to mention Google's trademark. Had that been M$, they would have sent over Vincent and Jules to go midieval on their asses. Ezekiel 25:17 would have rained its vengence upon them. Nah, Google did that nice. I agree, they might not have had to do it, but it was the kind of grey area that makes lawyers nervous. Overall, they did OK.
Second, Google patented more than an "improved method of helping users." This isn't like Amazon, where they basically patented efficiency (thanks, USPTO). Google didn't patent *all* ways of serving up better results. They patented their fairly specific method, which they were in fact the first to practice. There were a lot of search engine companies at the time - if it were obvious, someone would have been doing it. So I think it passes muster there.
I do agree that people tend to kneejerk on this site, but there were a lot of people during the C&D discussion who kneejerked against google too - so I don't think this blind acceptance of google is really a problem here. Blind hatred of M$ is more likely.
Do you have some objective links on casualties during first gulf war, or projections for the coming one? (I'd actually like to see them).
Ultimately, isolationism is the only thing that will work long term. You're probably right. So, what do we do? Make an announcement that, from now on, all you bastards can solve your own problems for a change? Leave us alone and we won't kick your asses?
Hmmm...that doesn't actually sound bad. Here's the thing though - quality of life in the Muslim world absolutely blows, and it could be argued that they hate us because otherwise they'd have to be jealous of us and the easy lives we have. So if we get out, they have three choices - still keep screwing with us just for old times sakes, find another enemy to blame their plight on, or actually consider their situation for what it is and realize that they really don't have that much going for them. And I don't see the last one happening. Religious zealots need an enemy to exist. We're it.
So the question is, will isolationism even help?
No kidding. People would be much more likely to accept/forgive MS if they ever showed any evidence of contrition. As it is, they settle lawsuits, claim they are just being persecuted, and blame people for being jealous of their success. And they wonder why we don't trust them?
Great conspiracy theory. You chase UFO's too? There don't have to be al Queda *IN* Iraq for Iraq to *collaborate* with them toward a common end. Yes, bin Laden has condemned Iraq as a secular nation, but that doesn't mean they both don't consider us enemy #1 - and therefore willing to work together. Your assumption that "we would have already invaded" doesn't fly.
Blaming Clinton, the typical republican excuse, doesn't carry any water. Clinton inherited the situation from Bush Sr. His excuse wasn't "humanitarian," but "no UN mandate" for a regiem change. Just like we have now.
Carries a lot of water. Yeah, the UN was weak - but had Clinton done something about it in '92 when Saddaam sensed weakness and started blocking inspectors, we wouldn't have the problem we have today. At that point, the coalition was strong, he could have more easily pressured the UN, and there was more momentum toward disarming Iraq at the time. But what did he do? Jack shit. So he has to carry a lot of the weight for the problem, because he could have influenced the UN but he didn't even try. Put it this way - you can't blame Bush Jr. for not solving the problem without blaming Clinton at least as much. You could contend that neither is at fault at best an dblame the weak UN instead.
The problem [terrorism] isn't one of government, its one of culture. We do for the House of Saud what we did for Japan after WWII. We park several armored divisions in downtown Mecca and change the culture with blue jeans, VCRs and constitutional government. To that end, Hussein could be an asset, as he already oversees a secular government and a fairly westernized society.
You're being a bit generous with "fairly westernized" - they don't seem to have any of the characteristics unless you consider a military dictator as opposed to a religious dictator "western." I don't care how you define the problem, you have yet to advocate ANY solution. Unfortunately, Saddaam isn't as likely as the house of Saud to let our tanks in. And as for constitutional government in Saudi Arabia - did I miss something?
So he's used them in his own country's military actions. Big deal. To date, they havn't been used in *any* terrorist act.
And you don't have to be a damned genius to realize that if he'll use them on his own people, he'll use them on anyone else. As for whether they've been used in any terrorist act yet...do you want to wait? Want another 9/11?
Box cutters and ammonium nitrate seem to do the trick for most terrorists. We should be focusing our resources on that.
Yeah, and we are. For one, box cutters will never work again - didn't even work on the fourth plane. And there are only so many people you can kill with ammonium nitrate/diesel oil bombs, as they're pretty crude. And since Oklahoma City, ammonium nitrate (and other oxidizers) are HIGHLY controlled.
Bottom line - you criticize the planned war. OK, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but your arguments against it are...what? Claims of conspiracies and fabricated evidence? That's ridiculously lame. Go with the cost, ($100b) if anything. Go with the slippery slope argument - basically, that getting rid of *just* Iraq won't work without Syria, etc. Or fear of the scorched-earth policy that Saddaam will likely follow if deposed. Or power-vacuum theory. You have so many choices, don't go with the shitty argument. Do realize, though, that an anti-war stance ultimately admits that we have effectively no hope of stopping terrorism, as its sources will go unchecked. You have no alternative solution, the UN has done *absolutely* nothing - so, again, other than *living* with terrorism, which I don't find particularly attractive, what do we do other than destroy all regimes that support it?
Also, there's the safety factor - with fusion, if containment is breached (as you know, I'm sure) the pressure and temperature drop to the point of no reaction very quickly. Also, couldn't less mass of material be used to shield the reactor (compared to fission)? That would very much reduce the environmental impact of low-level waste when the plants are decommissioned. And there isn't much high-level waste at all, is there?
nVidia needs to learn that you can stay alive as a company with the #2 video card, as long as you can price it competitively - hell, that's what ATI did for years. But they do need to make sure they eventually get a winner. Since FX obviously ain't it, maybe they can win one next year. And making better decisions is part of it - don't skimp on pixel shaders like 1.4 when the competition will be able to kill you with it.
They definitely need to catch back up to ATI - competition on this front is good for all of us.
No, that's the damned point. I'm criticizing people who have done the opposite - made up their mind without thinking just because NPR told them to. Yes, there are people on both sides that are guilty of this, and they piss me off equally. However, I'm surrounded by the pacifist camp, being as how I'm in grad school, and Universities are pretty leftist. If I still lived in the south (gun racks per capita: 3) I would probably be having this discussion with the other side. No, I do NOT favor "killing them all and letting God sort them out," which seems to be considered a reasonable argument there.
Personaly, I'm sick of people supporting the war in Iraq because it's the "good conservative" answer to terrorism. What has failed is Bush forign policy. He doesn't have an answer for terrorism, so he's got the sheep bleating "Iraq!" Apparently, it seems to be working.
That's true. To an extent, Bush's motivation, consciously or subconsciously, is that this is a proxy war for bin Laden, whom he can't find. So I agree, the motivation for it kind of sucks. However, that doesn't necessarily mean the war shouldn't occur. A lot of the evidence regarding an Iraq/Al Queda link is classified, but other non-Germany/France countries seem fairly compelled by it when they see it. That's enough reason for me to be a bit less skeptical about the war given, say, Spain's reaction.
Also, to defend Bush - he inherited this situation after 8 years of Clinton and the UN allowing Saddaam to blatantly violate terms of the treaty with no consequences. Bush Sr. bowed to pressure, largely of a humanitarian basis, to end the first war and save lives - something that in hindsight may not have been so smart. However, he had no way of knowing just how weak the UN would prove. So to say that this is Bush Jr's foreign policy failure is a bit disingenious. What should he have done - asked Saddaam a little nicer to let inspectors have unfettered access (which they've never had) ?
Also, when will diplomacy have effectively failed? Because it ain't working now, either from us or the UN. And what do we do then?
Here's a question - what's your answer for terrorism? Because taking out governments that blatantly sponsor it seems to be the only recourse, other than just living with it. Ultimately, it comes down to this: how much risk are we willing to assume for something worse than 9/11 to happen? Saddaam has illegal weapons, and assuming he won't use them is dangerously naive - he's used them in every war he's engaged in, including genocide on Iraqis (Kurdish).
Not to mention which this won't be a war as we are used to thinking of them. Casualties in the Gulf War were very low, and I can't imagine this being much different. As you say, the military considers minimization of collateral damage to be a top priority. The concept of there being 100,000 civilian deaths (I've heard someone say it) is FUD.
Not to mention which, programmers aren't experts on military matters. This is scarcely better than Susan Sarandon et al spouting off about the war. Yes, they have a right to free speech, but I'm not exactly going to let a moron actor change my views easily. Nor a programmer, just because he won't let the military use his crappy program.
...so I hope you don't intend on using any GPL'd code in your project.
First, the client would be a one-time install. No biggie there. Next, text is pretty small. I mean, you have to review the patches yourself anyway (please tell me you don't allow MS to decide what gets "updated"...). I can read pretty fast, but not as fast as my modem can d/l text. So I don't think the bandwidth is a problem.
And I would still rather have this client-side. They can deduce all they want, but they won't have things like reg codes, CD keys, etc, which I bet they collect. And I bet they also collect PCI serials. So, if they ever decided to bust you, they'll have all your hardware ID's and software codes. Yay!
Have they actually stated this? I would love to see something in print. Quite deceptive - not surprising to us, but people outside of /. tend to like examples.
I do agree though - most companies would have flat-out insisted on a removal, and that's in Google's favor. Since 1) they didn't threaten and 2) allowed for a non-deletion solution, I'd be inclined to accomodate them.
Personally, I think the definition is fine now (like you say, dunno if this is pre- or post-C&D). If Google lets it go as-is, then they come out looking OK.