Greenpeace has an agenda, and admitting the the Internet has resulted in a net savings of energy, or at least is not as environmentally damaging as they are claiming, would not fit that. Some people won't be happy until we're living in caves and waiting for lightning to strike a nearby tree so we can have fire.
not because it is technically risky, but organizationally risky. The same applies to all the other examples mentioned.
The French seem to be handling it fairly well, but then again they made the effort to standardize. Our reactors, on the other hand, are unique works of art... a fundamentally stupid approach when you get right down to it.
Remember that anything that is patented cannot be a trade secret
Yes, hence the disclosure requirement. However, in practice it's quite common to leave out critical details of your implementation when applying for a patent, so that the competition can't just take your patent and start cloning your product. Not exactly in the spirit of the law, but nevertheless there it is. That means that that engineer who split ATI for NVidia could easily bring critical information with him, regardless of any active patents.
I have personally been terrorized by a Middle-Eastern radical (threatened to be killed at work). I am still more afraid of the TSA... (Posted anonymously so I don't end up on the list...
Just tell him, "it works both ways, Bucko. And I hit what I shoot at."
That is exactly the point I was trying to make. I knew when I finished the post that I had failed to say it as clearly as I would have liked (but I didn't feel like taking the time to fix it).
Actually, a bigger problem with this sort of government centralized identity database is when the data about who you are becomes corrupted. When one database becomes the central arbiter of who you are, how do you get it corrected when it is wrong?
Yes. That sounds an awful lot like what is happening with the TSA's "no fly" list, actually.
However talent is singular, and cannot be bought or taught
I've yet to meet a really good musician who wasn't taught their skills by other musicians. Perhaps one or two self-taught types are out there and are a success story. The rest all got taught. Often those lessons were paid for.
MIcrosoft opens a stripped-down OS without the crap as well (Server Core). Any OS can be digitally signed. There are good arguments for open source here, but those aren't among them.
That's fine, but it is also not really relevant. The idea here is that we are talking about voting. That process should be as transparent as possible, and in my opinion closed-source has literally no place there. Let everyone and anyone who wants to go through the code. Let everyone and anyone who wants to publish any flaws or vulnerabilities they uncover. You may trust Microsoft's "stripped-down OS without the crap" but the truth is this: Microsoft is no more trustworthy than Diebold, and neither operation should be allowed within at least one planetary diameter of our political process.
Of course, we will never know how many of the people convicted are the actual criminals, rather than just a victim of a hacker who chose their identity at random.
The real danger is that this is just another form of automated justice. If a log generated by a server somewhere in somebody's cloud says your guilty... then you're guilty. Period. End of statement. Face it, courts only rarely disregard computer-generated "evidence", although that's likely only because they don't have the mental tools to make a judgement as to the probability of a computer error, so they simply ignore the possibility. I suspect that most people here on Slashdot are like me, in that they certainly would not want their future, their livelihood or their freedom beholden to the reliability and accuracy of somebody's little black box.
What we have here is Man fading in the shadow of the machine. And I don't like it.
Of course, we will never know how many of the people convicted are the actual criminals, rather than just a victim of a hacker who chose their identity at random.
If it's possible to hack an identity, and it's possible to show that it's possible to hack an identity, then the system is mooted and the conviction based on the system is invalid.
Possibly. Of course, if you take the situation with regards to DUIs, it's illegal in some states (California, I believe) for a defense attorney to even bring up the subject that a breathalyzer is anything but one hundred percent accurate. Said attorney can be up on contempt of court charges if he does. So yeah, it's pretty easy to imagine that the government will prevent any demonstration in court of the fallibility of their system.
I like how you added "On windows" as if it actually mattered what OS you used for a voting machine.
You're a dumb troll. Go die.
Uh, what? It absolutely does matter, given that the likes of Diebold have been caught repeatedly changing the firmware in their voting machines after they were inspected and sealed. I also like the idea of using an operating system that is simple, robust, and doesn't have the layer upon layer of crap that is Windows, where nobody, not even Microsoft, can tell you exactly what is there. Something based around a stripped-down open-source OS, perhaps. One where the code that is running on the machine can be verified to be the exact code that is supposed to be running, down to the last bit, and furthermore is simple enough that one would have a damned hard time hiding anything.
Because developers are just racing to implement a raft of features from a bullet point list in a powerpoint presentation somewhere. Who the hell cares if it actually works for users out in the wild?
Dick Jones: "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED 209. Renovation program. Spare parts for 25 years. Who cares if it worked or not?"
"These days you can get that many viewers if you have a good band, a friend with a HD cam or a DSLR and another friend who's kind of good with FCP or Premiere (just film a few shows, get a little more material to match the mood of the song, edit and upload to youtube)."
If only producing things at the production quality people expect in music they pay money for were just as "you + computer, viola" as Slashdot believes...
It's not. But neither is the expense of hiring a couple of pros to do some of the work so high that it justifies the existence of the record labels. The big labels are criminal organizations that should have been disbanded decades ago.
You're conflating a lot things here. Talent is the first and last key to art, and can overcome inferior tools and distribution. However talent is singular, and cannot be bought or taught. At a certain point the quality of tools reaches a sort of "Monster Cables" level of diminishing returns. Truly good music will sound amazing whether it is recorded and produced in a high budget studio with a stupidly huge team or if it is recorded with a few hundred bucks worth of mid-grade hobbyist equipment and the artists themselves. Really expensive tools and teams can make talentless douchebags sound good, that's the whole pop music industry in a nutshell, but people with talent remain so even with inferior equipment.
That is very true. Let's assume for the sake of argument that that high budget studio is an absolute requirement for the production of good music (it's not.) Let's further assume that artists still need expensive advertising campaigns (they don't) or radio airplay (not anymore) to promote and sell their music. That still would not justify the incredible overhead of the big music studios, their profiteering, and the societal and legal damage they and their corrupt "trade organizations" are causing the world over.
Actually it belongs to the copyright holders, whether that be some giant music conglomerate, or an individual artist or group.
That's a fairly meaningless distinction. The record companies are the licensed representatives for the artists they've signed, and the RIAA is a trust composed of representatives from the record companies.
The RIAA is a bunch of lawyers and lobbyists. They don't hold copyright, they're just paid to a particularly sleazy job, to do what their lords and masters tell them. And because they've been so spectacularly unsuccessful at deterring mass copyright infringement via P2P, those masters aren't exactly thrilled, given the cost. BMG, for example, announced some time ago that it was going to cut substantially its share of the operating funds given to the RIAA every year. Why? Because BMG's management felt that the RIAA lawsuit mill wasn't serving its intended purpose. So, it is a meaningful distinction: if the big copyright holders eventually perceive that the RIAA is what we all know it to be, a liability, it (and similar organizations worldwide) my find themselves cut off at the balls.
("Your" music in this specific case meaning only that you're licensed to listen to it. It obviously doesn't actually belong to you; it belongs to the RIAA.)
Actually it belongs to the copyright holders, whether that be some giant music conglomerate, or an individual artist or group. The RIAA started out being a standards body, but is now nothing but a bunch of lawyers who lobby Congress to pass treasonous and un-Constitutional laws, and front for foreign-owned media companies. Oh, and sue music-lovers as well.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with.
That's rich. A government that is big enough to give companies like Apple all the IP rights they want is big enough to take them away from the rest of us.
As an Apple stockholder, I'd prefer people don't hack their products
OK, I'm with you there 100%. I promise not to sneak into any Apple stores at midnight and 'hack' any of their products.
The thing is, though, once I buy the product, it isn't Apple's anymore, and I can and will do with it as I please.
And the likes of Apple and Sony (along with hordes of willing Congressmen) have and will do whatever they can to prevent you from learning how to do anything with that device but what the manufacturer wants you to do. Well... they'll try.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps Greenpeace ought to consider that too.
Greenpeace has an agenda, and admitting the the Internet has resulted in a net savings of energy, or at least is not as environmentally damaging as they are claiming, would not fit that. Some people won't be happy until we're living in caves and waiting for lightning to strike a nearby tree so we can have fire.
I think this is something that only Power Users will notice. It's not something important for the common user.
I think a lot of people would notice if their laptop suddenly got a third less battery life.
not because it is technically risky, but organizationally risky. The same applies to all the other examples mentioned.
The French seem to be handling it fairly well, but then again they made the effort to standardize. Our reactors, on the other hand, are unique works of art ... a fundamentally stupid approach when you get right down to it.
while you're quite correct in theory, one must remember that if you're grammar and diction are average you're still an illiterate terd, sir.
You still got it wrong.
Remember that anything that is patented cannot be a trade secret
Yes, hence the disclosure requirement. However, in practice it's quite common to leave out critical details of your implementation when applying for a patent, so that the competition can't just take your patent and start cloning your product. Not exactly in the spirit of the law, but nevertheless there it is. That means that that engineer who split ATI for NVidia could easily bring critical information with him, regardless of any active patents.
Suppose hypothetically you and I were playing chess. Would it be moral for me to use my queen if you voluntarily decided not to?
Yes. But it wouldn't be sporting.
cannot have right to complain about their complainers.
in no world country, they grope 9 year olds at the airports. period. only in usa.
You're absolutely right. In certain other countries, they don't grope those nine-year-olds ... they beat them, rape them, and sell them into slavery.
What's your point again?.
I have personally been terrorized by a Middle-Eastern radical (threatened to be killed at work). I am still more afraid of the TSA... (Posted anonymously so I don't end up on the list...
Just tell him, "it works both ways, Bucko. And I hit what I shoot at."
They are an authority in whether you're going on your trip or not.
Yes, but being in authority is not the same as being an authority.
That is exactly the point I was trying to make. I knew when I finished the post that I had failed to say it as clearly as I would have liked (but I didn't feel like taking the time to fix it). Actually, a bigger problem with this sort of government centralized identity database is when the data about who you are becomes corrupted. When one database becomes the central arbiter of who you are, how do you get it corrected when it is wrong?
Yes. That sounds an awful lot like what is happening with the TSA's "no fly" list, actually.
However talent is singular, and cannot be bought or taught
I've yet to meet a really good musician who wasn't taught their skills by other musicians. Perhaps one or two self-taught types are out there and are a success story. The rest all got taught. Often those lessons were paid for.
I think you were replying to ElectricTurtle.
MIcrosoft opens a stripped-down OS without the crap as well (Server Core). Any OS can be digitally signed. There are good arguments for open source here, but those aren't among them.
That's fine, but it is also not really relevant. The idea here is that we are talking about voting. That process should be as transparent as possible, and in my opinion closed-source has literally no place there. Let everyone and anyone who wants to go through the code. Let everyone and anyone who wants to publish any flaws or vulnerabilities they uncover. You may trust Microsoft's "stripped-down OS without the crap" but the truth is this: Microsoft is no more trustworthy than Diebold, and neither operation should be allowed within at least one planetary diameter of our political process.
Of course, we will never know how many of the people convicted are the actual criminals, rather than just a victim of a hacker who chose their identity at random.
The real danger is that this is just another form of automated justice. If a log generated by a server somewhere in somebody's cloud says your guilty ... then you're guilty. Period. End of statement. Face it, courts only rarely disregard computer-generated "evidence", although that's likely only because they don't have the mental tools to make a judgement as to the probability of a computer error, so they simply ignore the possibility. I suspect that most people here on Slashdot are like me, in that they certainly would not want their future, their livelihood or their freedom beholden to the reliability and accuracy of somebody's little black box.
What we have here is Man fading in the shadow of the machine. And I don't like it.
Of course, we will never know how many of the people convicted are the actual criminals, rather than just a victim of a hacker who chose their identity at random.
If it's possible to hack an identity, and it's possible to show that it's possible to hack an identity, then the system is mooted and the conviction based on the system is invalid.
Possibly. Of course, if you take the situation with regards to DUIs, it's illegal in some states (California, I believe) for a defense attorney to even bring up the subject that a breathalyzer is anything but one hundred percent accurate. Said attorney can be up on contempt of court charges if he does. So yeah, it's pretty easy to imagine that the government will prevent any demonstration in court of the fallibility of their system.
and make the jobs of the vast legions of winged lawyers that much easier.
You mean angels? Oh wait ...
I like how you added "On windows" as if it actually mattered what OS you used for a voting machine.
You're a dumb troll. Go die.
Uh, what? It absolutely does matter, given that the likes of Diebold have been caught repeatedly changing the firmware in their voting machines after they were inspected and sealed. I also like the idea of using an operating system that is simple, robust, and doesn't have the layer upon layer of crap that is Windows, where nobody, not even Microsoft, can tell you exactly what is there. Something based around a stripped-down open-source OS, perhaps. One where the code that is running on the machine can be verified to be the exact code that is supposed to be running, down to the last bit, and furthermore is simple enough that one would have a damned hard time hiding anything.
Because developers are just racing to implement a raft of features from a bullet point list in a powerpoint presentation somewhere. Who the hell cares if it actually works for users out in the wild?
Dick Jones: "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED 209. Renovation program. Spare parts for 25 years. Who cares if it worked or not?"
They are pushing a bad solution to a technical problem and that's why Adobe will eventually lose even if they make it "good enough."
Bad solutions win more often than not, especially if there's a few billion in advertising dollars behind them.
"These days you can get that many viewers if you have a good band, a friend with a HD cam or a DSLR and another friend who's kind of good with FCP or Premiere (just film a few shows, get a little more material to match the mood of the song, edit and upload to youtube)."
If only producing things at the production quality people expect in music they pay money for were just as "you + computer, viola" as Slashdot believes...
It's not. But neither is the expense of hiring a couple of pros to do some of the work so high that it justifies the existence of the record labels. The big labels are criminal organizations that should have been disbanded decades ago.
You're conflating a lot things here. Talent is the first and last key to art, and can overcome inferior tools and distribution. However talent is singular, and cannot be bought or taught. At a certain point the quality of tools reaches a sort of "Monster Cables" level of diminishing returns. Truly good music will sound amazing whether it is recorded and produced in a high budget studio with a stupidly huge team or if it is recorded with a few hundred bucks worth of mid-grade hobbyist equipment and the artists themselves. Really expensive tools and teams can make talentless douchebags sound good, that's the whole pop music industry in a nutshell, but people with talent remain so even with inferior equipment.
That is very true. Let's assume for the sake of argument that that high budget studio is an absolute requirement for the production of good music (it's not.) Let's further assume that artists still need expensive advertising campaigns (they don't) or radio airplay (not anymore) to promote and sell their music. That still would not justify the incredible overhead of the big music studios, their profiteering, and the societal and legal damage they and their corrupt "trade organizations" are causing the world over.
Also, the various offers told a tale:
Yes. Sounds like you wisely avoided a major can of worms. And as we all know, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.
Just take the male map, remove reason and logic and voila, female brain map.
It took me a while to remember what your comment reminded me of.
Actually it belongs to the copyright holders, whether that be some giant music conglomerate, or an individual artist or group.
That's a fairly meaningless distinction. The record companies are the licensed representatives for the artists they've signed, and the RIAA is a trust composed of representatives from the record companies.
The RIAA is a bunch of lawyers and lobbyists. They don't hold copyright, they're just paid to a particularly sleazy job, to do what their lords and masters tell them. And because they've been so spectacularly unsuccessful at deterring mass copyright infringement via P2P, those masters aren't exactly thrilled, given the cost. BMG, for example, announced some time ago that it was going to cut substantially its share of the operating funds given to the RIAA every year. Why? Because BMG's management felt that the RIAA lawsuit mill wasn't serving its intended purpose. So, it is a meaningful distinction: if the big copyright holders eventually perceive that the RIAA is what we all know it to be, a liability, it (and similar organizations worldwide) my find themselves cut off at the balls.
("Your" music in this specific case meaning only that you're licensed to listen to it. It obviously doesn't actually belong to you; it belongs to the RIAA.)
Actually it belongs to the copyright holders, whether that be some giant music conglomerate, or an individual artist or group. The RIAA started out being a standards body, but is now nothing but a bunch of lawyers who lobby Congress to pass treasonous and un-Constitutional laws, and front for foreign-owned media companies. Oh, and sue music-lovers as well.
That's rich. A government that is big enough to give companies like Apple all the IP rights they want is big enough to take them away from the rest of us.
OK, I'm with you there 100%. I promise not to sneak into any Apple stores at midnight and 'hack' any of their products.
The thing is, though, once I buy the product, it isn't Apple's anymore, and I can and will do with it as I please.
And the likes of Apple and Sony (along with hordes of willing Congressmen) have and will do whatever they can to prevent you from learning how to do anything with that device but what the manufacturer wants you to do. Well ... they'll try.