That's a business issue. Business decisions can be affected by politics, but business can be affected by a lot of factors, e.g. money, capital, revenue, profit, etc. (hint, hint)
Like a tank of gasoline isn't anymore explosive than hydrogen?
Liquid gasoline/petrol is indeed less explosive than hydrogen: the gasoline must evaporate before it becomes explosive. Liquid gasoline will burn but IIRC only the gasoline vapors will explode. In most cases hydrogen is already gaseous and thus more ready to explode/burn.
Because of this a partially-empty gasoline tank is more dangerous than a completely full tank: the full tank has no air space to support evaporation (assuming the tank is sealed/capped).
The other day I was trying to install 'Pink Tie' Linux on a laptop, and every time the [CD] boot process got to/sbin/loader there would be a kernel panic. D'oh! Anyway, the cap-lock and scroll-lock were indeed blinking in what appeared to be Morse Code. Go figure. (I didn't try to record the characters, though.)
This sort of behaviour on the part of employers is exactly what kick-started the unionization movement in the US back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
So, in the hellish world of IT... Where are the diseases like black lung and mercury poisoning? Where are the mine fires and collapsed tunnels? Where are the unguarded machines that can maim or kill? Where are the 120F - or 20F - working environments?
I believe you are being a bit melodramatic when you say current employers' behavior is exactly what prompted unionization. Your job is not life-threatening - get over it. I am anti-union but still have a fair sense of history and perspective.
Ya know, that came from a Monty Python sketch but it takes on a slightly different meaning here. Eeww.
I'm sure we'll get an update...
on
X-prize Award paid
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I'm sure we here on/. will get an update when Rutan goes to the bank on Monday to deposit the check, and a follow-up news flash when he balances his checkbook later in the week.:-)
So, you wouldn't mind putting an image of your fingerprint on a webpage, where it can be downloaded and printed in gelatin, and then used to unlock all of your devices forever, thus excluding you from ever using fingerprint based security?
In 1997 at least one one vendor's (I forget the name - sorry) thumbprint readers had the capability to detect/monitor/measure the following data points:
temperature
elasticity [of the skin]
blood pressure
pulse
humidity/dampness of the skin
gases like CO2 that pass out through the skin
The story about the guy with the gelatin has been blown very much out of proportion to its actual significance. Show me how you can defeat all - or even a few - of the aforementioned characteristics with gelatin.
I was at the National Information Systems Security Coonference (NISSC - now defunct) in Baltimore that year, and was looking a thumbprint reader for laptops; it was connected to a serial port. The item at the show worked only on the physical pattern of the traditional fingerprint. Playing devil's advocate with the surprisingly knowledgeable booth guy, I asked if their device would be defeated if someone were to appropriate my thumb and try to use it. After a lot of questions and answers, the end result was the list above. Enough checks were available even back then to prevent the use of anything other than the correct, live, functional thumb.
Just because various organizations choose to test/review or deploy the cheapest biometric devices does not mean that all biometric devices are useless.
A lot of smaller countries tend to have population densities that are noticeably highter than in the US. The higher density makes new technologies (like wireless) easier to deploy because more people can take advantage of the service, distributing the overhead cost over a greater number of people. The following list was copied from here.
Population density of the continents:
* North America - 32 people/mi2
* South America - 73 people/mi2
* Europe - 134 people/mi2
* Asia - 203 people/mi2
* Africa - 65 people/mi2
* Australia and Oceania - 9 people/mi2
Countries with large surface areas like the US also tend to have population hotspots (like New York and Los Angeles) mixed with relatively low-pop-density areas like Nebraska and Montana.
Why would we need to wean ourselves from nuclear power? As we get better at disposing of or otherwise containing the waste, nuclear power will become cheaper and more feasible. We may want to look for an [additional,replacement] power source N years down the road but would not need to do so in the short term.
PS I am referring to generating electrical power to homes, businesses, etc.
The report noted, for example, a strong similarity in the email headers created by Send-Safe and SoBig. But Ibragimov said Send-Safe chose the particular order of headers merely to mimic Outlook Express and to better evade spam filters.
Somehow I think Ibragimov's righteous indignation over the accusation is a teensy bit misplaced...
That is untrue. Any hash can be reversed in the sense that you can generate an input that will result in a specific output.
That is NOT reversing the hash: this should be painfully bloody obvious since the process you describe runs the same hash in the same manner.
Reversing a hash - meaning you start w/ the hash and work backwards to recreate the original data - is impossible. Bits are lost during the hash process, and there is no data in the hash that will allow those bits to be reconstructed. Read _Applied_Cryptography_ by Bruce Schneier, or at least read any of the many crypto/hash FAQs available on the web. NIST has some good papers available.
Instead of using the brute-force computing approach of generating hashes and comparing them to the known hash (looking for a match), this process uses an already created list or table of passwds and their associated hashes. Creating the table is computationally and storage[ally] non-trivial, but once it is in place cracking a passwd is as easy as grep-ing through the list/table to find the known hash.
Nutshell:
cracking passwds individually: no up front work and extremely variable cracking time
creating the database: lots of work up front but dramatically reduced cracking time
The lookup approach is extremely helpful for large numbers of hashes; if you have only one or two hashes, the brute-force method probably makes more sense.
Duh, you get people to commission the creation of the project in advance. If all software is free after it's purchased, then people will find it perfectly normal to pay for the creation of this sort of software.
If I am a customer and I am paying for development of a new product, why the heck would I sign an agreement by which you take my money to develop the product, you retain the rights, and you subsequently release the source under the GPL? I have the product, but it is now available to everyone, including my competitors. Why on earth would anyone go along with this?
Obviously your firm will be the first one people call when enhancements to the software are desired since your programmers will be intimately familiar with it, so there will be future business to exploit.
This is not at all obvious. If I have developers in-house it might make more sense to use them, or to use any reasonable resource that costs less than you do.
We should change copyright law so that attribution and privacy are protected, but reproduction is not prohibited.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is ridiculous. Copyright law is quite complex, and making a statement like "Well, just do X and fix the whole system" indicates you don't grasp the magnitude of current copyright law.
Like I said,a serious deficit of imagination.
I don't believe you are equipped to assess the economic or copyright aspects of product development, and we should probably agree to disagree.
So charge a lot for the first copy. Simple as that. You can even GPL it, just don't release the first copy until you get paid.
Let's say I run a commercial software company. For the sake of using round numbers, let's say I have five developers who all work full-time for two weeks, and each developer costs me $50/hour. Let's further assume that I only want to break even (i.e. not make a profit).
5 developers * 80 hours * ($50/hour) = a cost to me of $20,000.
Does it make sense for me to charge $20,000 for the first copy and then GPL the rest? Of course not, because I would never be able to sell the first copy. Would you pony up and buy the first copy if you knew the app would be GPLd immediately thereafter? I doubt it. Neither would other right-thinking people. Now what?
We are left with the idea of selling 20 copies for $1,000 each, 50 copies for $400 each, or at some other price point until I recoup the $20,000. The number of copies (and associated price point) would have to be based on a realistic assessment of the market: I wouldn't want to charge $1 and expect to sell 20,000 copies.
In the real world I would expect to make a profit through sales of the product. Let's say I decided to sell it at $400/copy, and I have sold 100 copies. That's $40,000 - a profit of $20,000. If the product is still selling well, what is my motivation to cut off the revenue stream by releasing the product under the GPL?
From an economic standpoint it really only makes sense for me to GPL the software when I will no longer make enough money from it to justify support, patches, etc. Ideally - for the F/OSS community at large - the app will be GPLd as soon as possible. However, I suspect the F/OSS community is not the primary concern of a commercial entity; if the company is public, i.e. has shareholders, the F/OSS community better not be a priority. (The primary focus should be the shareholders.)
It appears (to me, at least) that quite a lot of purported members of the F/OSS community don't give a rip about the ideals [of F/OSS] and just insist that all software should be free-as-in-beer, regardless of the associated development costs. That is a naive, irksome, and ultimately harmful attitude.
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage.
I will say this as simply as possible:
The cost of reproducing a digital asset is completely unrelated to the cost of creating the asset.
People who say otherwise have obviously never created anything worth selling. If I spend 100 hours to invent a new widget, I will probably make blueprints or some other form of diagram. I can make copies of those documents in a local copy shop for ~2 cents apiece. Does that mean my time spent creating the new widget is worth what I spend for the copies? That is absolutely ridiculous: for some reason people expect commercial entities to do their R&D for free and sell the result for the cost of media. I can't imagine how that begins to make sense to anyone.
This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
Those "powerful entities" are the ones that created the intellectual property. Their "vested interest" is completely justified: designing and developing products is expensive, and compaines recoup that expense by - get this - selling the product.
Using lofty terms like "this fight" is silly, and the result of people expecting to get everything for free. Wake up, Sparky - some things actually cost money, and trying to spin your desire for zero-cost products as some sort of noble effort makes you look like ap spoiled child.
PS I am speaking here about commercial entities and products, not F/OSS (which should be obvious).
Just for you, zentex: more Dremel patterns
on
Dremel Pumpkin Carver
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's a neat idea, but using a small-diameter, high-RPM cutting tool to carve a pumpkin essentially guarantees the immediate area will be coated in a fine orange spray.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean that grandma can now knit me a bullet proof vest?
I figured you wouldn't need one. Maybe you should have been Kevlarsides or possibly CarbonNanotubesYarnSides.
Better tell Senator Frist
Senator Frist? Is Senator Psot involved, too?
it's A-OK to appropriate 300 mill for that Star Wars whatjamagig
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
That's a business issue. Business decisions can be affected by politics, but business can be affected by a lot of factors, e.g. money, capital, revenue, profit, etc. (hint, hint)
And you now must relinquish your
Bit of trivia: what was Kent Brockman's given name, before he became a TV personality and 'updated' it?
Kenny Brockelstein.
Like a tank of gasoline isn't anymore explosive than hydrogen?
Liquid gasoline/petrol is indeed less explosive than hydrogen: the gasoline must evaporate before it becomes explosive. Liquid gasoline will burn but IIRC only the gasoline vapors will explode. In most cases hydrogen is already gaseous and thus more ready to explode/burn.
Because of this a partially-empty gasoline tank is more dangerous than a completely full tank: the full tank has no air space to support evaporation (assuming the tank is sealed/capped).
The other day I was trying to install 'Pink Tie' Linux on a laptop, and every time the [CD] boot process got to
This sort of behaviour on the part of employers is exactly what kick-started the unionization movement in the US back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
So, in the hellish world of IT... Where are the diseases like black lung and mercury poisoning? Where are the mine fires and collapsed tunnels? Where are the unguarded machines that can maim or kill? Where are the 120F - or 20F - working environments?
I believe you are being a bit melodramatic when you say current employers' behavior is exactly what prompted unionization. Your job is not life-threatening - get over it. I am anti-union but still have a fair sense of history and perspective.
Re: melodramatic - yeah, I know: pot/kettle.
There, I've run rings round you logically.
"Oh, intercourse the penguin!"
Ya know, that came from a Monty Python sketch but it takes on a slightly different meaning here. Eeww.
I'm sure we here on
So, you wouldn't mind putting an image of your fingerprint on a webpage, where it can be downloaded and printed in gelatin, and then used to unlock all of your devices forever, thus excluding you from ever using fingerprint based security?
In 1997 at least one one vendor's (I forget the name - sorry) thumbprint readers had the capability to detect/monitor/measure the following data points:
temperature
elasticity [of the skin]
blood pressure
pulse
humidity/dampness of the skin
gases like CO2 that pass out through the skin
The story about the guy with the gelatin has been blown very much out of proportion to its actual significance. Show me how you can defeat all - or even a few - of the aforementioned characteristics with gelatin.
I was at the National Information Systems Security Coonference (NISSC - now defunct) in Baltimore that year, and was looking a thumbprint reader for laptops; it was connected to a serial port. The item at the show worked only on the physical pattern of the traditional fingerprint. Playing devil's advocate with the surprisingly knowledgeable booth guy, I asked if their device would be defeated if someone were to appropriate my thumb and try to use it. After a lot of questions and answers, the end result was the list above. Enough checks were available even back then to prevent the use of anything other than the correct, live, functional thumb.
Just because various organizations choose to test/review or deploy the cheapest biometric devices does not mean that all biometric devices are useless.
A lot of smaller countries tend to have population densities that are noticeably highter than in the US. The higher density makes new technologies (like wireless) easier to deploy because more people can take advantage of the service, distributing the overhead cost over a greater number of people. The following list was copied from here.
Population density of the continents:
* North America - 32 people/mi2
* South America - 73 people/mi2
* Europe - 134 people/mi2
* Asia - 203 people/mi2
* Africa - 65 people/mi2
* Australia and Oceania - 9 people/mi2
Countries with large surface areas like the US also tend to have population hotspots (like New York and Los Angeles) mixed with relatively low-pop-density areas like Nebraska and Montana.
It's spelled correctly in the article; what happened on the way to the summary?
However, I was in elementary school when Carter was elected.
The Bush reference is a tad more current/topical at the moment.
There, that's better.
Why would we need to wean ourselves from nuclear power? As we get better at disposing of or otherwise containing the waste, nuclear power will become cheaper and more feasible. We may want to look for an [additional,replacement] power source N years down the road but would not need to do so in the short term.
PS I am referring to generating electrical power to homes, businesses, etc.
ASPs. Very dangerous... You go first.
The report noted, for example, a strong similarity in the email headers created by Send-Safe and SoBig. But Ibragimov said Send-Safe chose the particular order of headers merely to mimic Outlook Express and to better evade spam filters.
Somehow I think Ibragimov's righteous indignation over the accusation is a teensy bit misplaced...
That is untrue. Any hash can be reversed in the sense that you can generate an input that will result in a specific output.
That is NOT reversing the hash: this should be painfully bloody obvious since the process you describe runs the same hash in the same manner.
Reversing a hash - meaning you start w/ the hash and work backwards to recreate the original data - is impossible. Bits are lost during the hash process, and there is no data in the hash that will allow those bits to be reconstructed. Read _Applied_Cryptography_ by Bruce Schneier, or at least read any of the many crypto/hash FAQs available on the web. NIST has some good papers available.
Instead of using the brute-force computing approach of generating hashes and comparing them to the known hash (looking for a match), this process uses an already created list or table of passwds and their associated hashes. Creating the table is computationally and storage[ally] non-trivial, but once it is in place cracking a passwd is as easy as grep-ing through the list/table to find the known hash.
Nutshell:
cracking passwds individually: no up front work and extremely variable cracking time
creating the database: lots of work up front but dramatically reduced cracking time
The lookup approach is extremely helpful for large numbers of hashes; if you have only one or two hashes, the brute-force method probably makes more sense.
The folks at Hormel have asked that people spell the name correctly when referring to their meat product - in all capital letters, i.e. SPAM.
See their Legal and Copyright Info page.
Duh, you get people to commission the creation of the project in advance. If all software is free after it's purchased, then people will find it perfectly normal to pay for the creation of this sort of software.
If I am a customer and I am paying for development of a new product, why the heck would I sign an agreement by which you take my money to develop the product, you retain the rights, and you subsequently release the source under the GPL? I have the product, but it is now available to everyone, including my competitors. Why on earth would anyone go along with this?
Obviously your firm will be the first one people call when enhancements to the software are desired since your programmers will be intimately familiar with it, so there will be future business to exploit.
This is not at all obvious. If I have developers in-house it might make more sense to use them, or to use any reasonable resource that costs less than you do.
We should change copyright law so that attribution and privacy are protected, but reproduction is not prohibited.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is ridiculous. Copyright law is quite complex, and making a statement like "Well, just do X and fix the whole system" indicates you don't grasp the magnitude of current copyright law.
Like I said,a serious deficit of imagination.
I don't believe you are equipped to assess the economic or copyright aspects of product development, and we should probably agree to disagree.
So charge a lot for the first copy. Simple as that. You can even GPL it, just don't release the first copy until you get paid.
Let's say I run a commercial software company. For the sake of using round numbers, let's say I have five developers who all work full-time for two weeks, and each developer costs me $50/hour. Let's further assume that I only want to break even (i.e. not make a profit).
5 developers * 80 hours * ($50/hour) = a cost to me of $20,000.
Does it make sense for me to charge $20,000 for the first copy and then GPL the rest? Of course not, because I would never be able to sell the first copy. Would you pony up and buy the first copy if you knew the app would be GPLd immediately thereafter? I doubt it. Neither would other right-thinking people. Now what?
We are left with the idea of selling 20 copies for $1,000 each, 50 copies for $400 each, or at some other price point until I recoup the $20,000. The number of copies (and associated price point) would have to be based on a realistic assessment of the market: I wouldn't want to charge $1 and expect to sell 20,000 copies.
In the real world I would expect to make a profit through sales of the product. Let's say I decided to sell it at $400/copy, and I have sold 100 copies. That's $40,000 - a profit of $20,000. If the product is still selling well, what is my motivation to cut off the revenue stream by releasing the product under the GPL?
From an economic standpoint it really only makes sense for me to GPL the software when I will no longer make enough money from it to justify support, patches, etc. Ideally - for the F/OSS community at large - the app will be GPLd as soon as possible. However, I suspect the F/OSS community is not the primary concern of a commercial entity; if the company is public, i.e. has shareholders, the F/OSS community better not be a priority. (The primary focus should be the shareholders.)
It appears (to me, at least) that quite a lot of purported members of the F/OSS community don't give a rip about the ideals [of F/OSS] and just insist that all software should be free-as-in-beer, regardless of the associated development costs. That is a naive, irksome, and ultimately harmful attitude.
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage.
I will say this as simply as possible:
The cost of reproducing a digital asset is completely unrelated to the cost of creating the asset.
People who say otherwise have obviously never created anything worth selling. If I spend 100 hours to invent a new widget, I will probably make blueprints or some other form of diagram. I can make copies of those documents in a local copy shop for ~2 cents apiece. Does that mean my time spent creating the new widget is worth what I spend for the copies? That is absolutely ridiculous: for some reason people expect commercial entities to do their R&D for free and sell the result for the cost of media. I can't imagine how that begins to make sense to anyone.
This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
Those "powerful entities" are the ones that created the intellectual property. Their "vested interest" is completely justified: designing and developing products is expensive, and compaines recoup that expense by - get this - selling the product.
Using lofty terms like "this fight" is silly, and the result of people expecting to get everything for free. Wake up, Sparky - some things actually cost money, and trying to spin your desire for zero-cost products as some sort of noble effort makes you look like ap spoiled child.
PS I am speaking here about commercial entities and products, not F/OSS (which should be obvious).
Clicky. Enjoy!
It's a neat idea, but using a small-diameter, high-RPM cutting tool to carve a pumpkin essentially guarantees the immediate area will be coated in a fine orange spray.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.