Re:I agree; sounds nothing but trollish.
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Billy Joy? James Gosling? John Gage? Aren't they three of greatest leaders in IT (and science in general) in our generation?
The dude who invented Java as one of the great leaders in . . . science in general of our generation? I think the answer's no. I'm not really qualified to judge what is and isn't important work in whatever the heck IT is supposed to be, but I think it's safe to say that for a generation that has seen the rise of genomics and the human genome project, the cosomological and physical insights from all sorts of sources, including, say, the Hubble Space Telescope, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment, designing a bunch of the technology that Sun uses doesn't qualify you as a great "scientific leader".
Over on Fink's site they mention problems relating to some of the libraries that ship with the 0.1 version of Apple's X11 implementation. The download page only makes a non-specific reference to "bug fixes", and the Fink page doesn't say anything about the new release yet. Does anyone here know if the new release fixes the library issues?
Noone has a legitimate need for streaming several hundereds or thousands pings per second
As I understand it, DDoS attacks use the ping program that's installed on the compromised boxes. I wonder if a move to limit the number of packets that ping could send out in future versions of the ping utility would be worthwhile. Like the above poster says, i can't think of a situation where most users would really need to send out "weapons grade" ping floods. Does anyone out there know if this technically possible, and what the drawbacks would be?
Also, I wonder if switching the default permissions on ping so that only root (or some other privileged user -- I don't know how/if Windows implements this these days) wouldn't be a good idea.
I'm not an expert, but as I understand it, DNS attacks are relatively benign, since DNS info is cached all over the place and doesn't change much anyway (this is essentially what the article says). Now, the author seems much more worried about attackts against Top Level Domains, because of reasons related to the nature of the information that TLD servers have, and he suggests a few techniques that they could use. What he doesn't say is what techniques the TLD's are using currently, and how secure they are.
. ..but a news conference featuring a marching color guard and a military band playing patriotic songs such as "God Bless America" to introduce a truck seems straight outta the Simpsons. Like an inanimate carbon rod getting a medal from the president or something.
First Dude:
. ..but it had a few stability problems, mostly dealing with downloads and plugins. .. Second Dude. ..which is why you're switching to a beta release of a browser that doesn't support plugins.
Actually, it does -- check out Help -> Installed Plug-ins. It lists 2 Java plug-ins, Quicktime, RealPlayer and Flash for me. So far i've tested the Quicktime Plugin and it seems to work well. We'll see about the other ones. Over all I really like the browser (aside from the lack of tabs, which I've already bug-reported).
Is mathematics discovered or invented? Isn't software mathematics? Is mathematics really not an invention, and rather a discovery of the way the world works? In other words, should the patent belong to the Deity who created the mathematics of the universe (tabling argument regarding whether or there's a deity or the universe just happened).
Not to get too far off topic here, but I think that there are two key points here to consider:
Isn't software mathematics? I'd suggest that the answer here is no. I think there's a trichotomy here: theory, method and software. Mathematics is clearly a body of theory -- it might tell us the structure of certain abstract objects (say, weighted graphs). Now, we can derive methods from this body of theory (like, Dijkstra's Algorithm), and this is what I'd call computer science more than mathematics. (Things get complicated because there is a mathematical theory of algorithms: we can know and prove things about them in a systematic way. However, this doesn't break the trichotomy -- making algorithms is C/S, studying algorithms is math.) Finally, we have actual software, which implements the algorithms in a usable way. I'd suggest (as a non-developer), that there's much more to software development and engineering than simply implementing algorithms, and that although algorithm implementation is clearly a big part of the foundation of software development, it isn't the whole house.
So the question "Is mathematics really not an invention, and rather a discovery of the way the world works?" loses much of it's force in this area. All sorts of things which (assuming that you don't have a fundamental problem with patents in general) are clearly patentable are reflective at some level of an understanding of "a discovery of the way the world works" (heck, they all probably are at some level), but the issue is the implementation of that understanding at the level of the protected invention. I clearly cannot patent, say, facts about polymer chemistry, but I can patent my synthetic engine lubricant based on an application of those facts. Of course, I'm not sure how much this matters here. ..
I think your main claim is correct though -- these problems arise from the status of the W3C, and if a body with some more pull (like a branch of the government) were to step in, these problems could be cleared up.
. . But if you go to Springer-Verlag's Website and search on "wavelet" in the title, it comes up with a buttload of results, including this one which looks right up your alley. And the best part is that Springer has a sale on until the end of the year, so some of the books can be had more cheaply (well, really, less expensively). And Springer books usually Don't Suck.
Also, I'd second ignoring Amazon reviews of technical books -- in general Amazon isn't the right forum to seek advice about technical books. Poplular fiction maybe, but not specialized texts.
Okay, I know i'm feeding the trolls, but on at least three of your counts, you're just plain wrong:
Only Aqua on the desktop - I suppose that you're comparing it to all the choices availibe for Linux, but the thing is, with fink packages, you can run X with which ever window-manager and desktop environment you want, either rootless alongside Aqua, or in its own full screen. So if you happen to be a big AfterStep fan, for instance, you can run it fullscreen and only be a hotkey away from the Aqua desktop.
A single button mouse - Having owned my Powerbook for a few months now, most of the time when I use the single button trackpad (and keyboard modifiers), I don't notice that I'm missing much (even using Gnome apps that I used to run on my Linux box), but when I do need a 3 button mouse, I just plug my old USB mouse in, and it, uh, works.
To pay for the next bug fix - Bugfixes and security updates come free, and fast via software update. So do "point" OS revisions like 10.2.1. You do have to pay for major OS revisions (like 10.2), but that's an entirely different thing than a "bugfix"
Was it just me, or did anyone else get the impression that this was going to be another salvo in the "free vs. open" holy war (possibly the stupidest holy war out there, by the way) when he opened up with the bit about how it's obvious in this context that the proper term to use is "free" and not "open source"? It seems to me that rigid adherence to some dogma or other is the worst thing you can do for the preservation of human rights; human rights are better protected by a sensitivity to human diginity, and a willingness to examine all the possible ways to preserve human diginity. Dogmatism and demagoguery ultimately limit your ability to see a problem from all different angles, and to find the best solution for the situation.
And for the record, I think his arguments are bollocks too -- have you ever heard anyone say something like: "I'm sorry, I can't accept your statistical analysis -- it was done on MS Excel, which is non-free software". Maybe RMS would, but granting agencies and international organizations certainly wouldn't.
In the event of a colloquy, it picks the most vociferous participants.
Think someone had the old thesaurus going there? Jeez, how hard is it to write "when more than one person speaks at the same time, it chooses the loudest voice."?
. ..When's the HURD going to be ready for prime-time?
Once they stop needing Linux, then they can call it whatever they want. And they have had long enough -- the FAQ says they've been working on their project since '84, and they still don't have a production level kernel. After 18 years, I think it's safe to call it vapourware. Besides, I can't help but think that the sucess of the Linux kernel has been a boon for the GNU project -- since Linux is useful for people, they've been interested in working on the GNU tools that work with it. And this explains why GNU tools have been developed so much more quickly then the HURD -- Linux users need better tools, not a replacement kernel. Frankly, the GNU folks should be thankful to Linus for providing renewed momentum to their project, not issuing FAQs dripping with envy and derision over the way the community decided to name things.
And I'm sorry if this is redundant, but since there are already over 1000 posts on the thread, I don't think many people will make it this far down anyway.
not to be pedantic, but when he isn't writing his football column (which is pretty good), that "dumb jock" is "a senior editor of New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution", according to the author bio at the bottom of the page.
I think what's at issue here is that sending an e-mail takes almost no time or effort investment on the part of the writer, while snail mail takes time to write, address and mail. This is the same reason that flamewars start so easily on the internet -- if someone pisses you off, it takes under 30 seconds to hit 'reply', compose a nasty little flame, and hit 'send'. On the other hand, if you were sending it out by snail mail, you might have had a chance to calm down on your walk to the mailbox.
So what does this matter? Well, even discounting the cynical stuff about getting reelected, figuring out what really matters to constituents is an important part of a representative's job. And if someone goes out of their way to type and snail-mail a letter, you can be sure that the issue is important to them. If someone just filled in a few fields on a web-form and hit submit, it's much harder to tell to what extent the person cares about the issue, or has thought about it. And that has to factor into the thinking of the representative and his/her staff.
I wonder why they didn't call it Free Choice. Its so easy to abort an installation of Windows and to install another OS.
The word free has taken on an extremely specific sense in the world of software (a la Free Software Foundation), and as I understand it, Perens is more of an open (source) software kinda guy, so it's not really surprising that he stays away from the word free.
This is totally unsurprising; Rhapsody, something that was kinda like OSX's ancestor ran on both PPC and x86 Hardware (look here for screenshots). A whole wack of the NeXT and FreeBSD code that is under the hood of OSX runs natively on x86, so I don't think that maintaing code on both architechtures would be that difficult. But seriously, as probably half of the other posters have pointed out, Apple is a hardware company, and the only way you'd be able to run an x86 OSX would be on proprietary Apple hardware.
Besides, as much as people want to slag PPC chips for being slower than x86, they have certain advantages in terms of power use and temperature management which allow Apple to build neat-o computers like the new iMac and the TiBook. And even if neat-o doesn't cut it for the Slashdot crowd, Apple seems to be doing pretty well for themselves selling neat-o.
And even if Apple decided to radically shift their business model to selling OS software for x86 computers, Microsoft would squash that dream pretty quickly, using their agreements with OEMs.
leandrod said:
Few people know what's good for themselves. .. so Arandir said: That single phrase is the foundation stone of tyranny and slavery itself. then leandrod said: That single phrase is the foundation of education, which unfortunately has been phased off in favor of schooling and training
Seems to me that it can break either way: if you try to educate people by telling them what is good for them, then you're a demagogue, but if you give people the tools so they can figure out the good life for themselves, then you're helping them be free. Unfortunately, too often the GNU/FSF folks preach "freedom-through-doctrine". The whole attitude that "most people don't know what's best for them" is pretty paternalistic and dangerous, if you ask me.
There is a lot of software released under old versions of the licenses. Unless of course they are GPL programs which declare themlselves under GPL version n or later.
This whole version n or later thing means that you essentially are trusting the FSF/GNU with guarding your rights as a developer. I mean, what if the next version of the GPL contains a clause that assigns all rights to covered software exclusively to RMS? In a very real way this embeds an asymmetry into the GPL, since one organization (and only one organization) publishes versions of the GPL. If RMS and his organizations don't want us to trust Apple, Mozilla/Netscape and other groups enough to use licenses that assign those companies and organizations special rights, then is it any different to trust the FSF/GNU enough to give them the authority to rewrite our software licenses at will? Is the issue that asymmetrical rights are inherently offensive, or is it a matter of liking some groups more than others?
Re:Other People's Rights
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
It is very tempting to go along with racial profiling because it works!
Dunno about that. After the Word Trade Center bombing back in 1993 no amount of racial profiling would have stopped Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma. The thing about racial profiling is that in selecting a certain group for increased scrutiny, it implictly deselects other groups. If only Arab (or, more likely, Arab-looking) passengers are subjected to enhanced searches at airports, it just means that it's that much easier for some white guy with an axe to grind to get through security. It only seems prudent that if one group is going to be subject to extra scrutiny, then everyone should be subject to the extra scrutiny.
They found that 48 percent of respondents agreed the government should have the freedom to monitor religious groups in the interest of national security - even if that means infringing upon the religious freedom of the group's members. Forty-two percent said the government should have more authority to monitor Muslims. -- From the Bee article.
You have to wonder if there was a single Muslim in the 42% who favour giving the government more powers to snoop in on Muslims. It's the same story yet again: the people who are least likely to suffer the abuses are the most willing to give everyone's rights up. Racial profiling is okay with the majority because the majority doesn't get profiled, minorities get profiled. Pro-choice activists have been dealing with this for years too, with male lawmakers and jurists limiting the rights women have over their bodies. Documents like the American Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms exist to protect minorities and underpriveliged groups from the whims of the majority. I'm no civics expert (and heck, I'm not even American), but as I understand it, protecting minority groups from "the tyranny of the majority" was a major concern when the American Constitution was being written. No matter where we live, we'd do well to remember that now, more than ever.
Slashdot Mirror
The dude who invented Java as one of the great leaders in . . . science in general of our generation? I think the answer's no. I'm not really qualified to judge what is and isn't important work in whatever the heck IT is supposed to be, but I think it's safe to say that for a generation that has seen the rise of genomics and the human genome project, the cosomological and physical insights from all sorts of sources, including, say, the Hubble Space Telescope, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment, designing a bunch of the technology that Sun uses doesn't qualify you as a great "scientific leader".
Over on Fink's site they mention problems relating to some of the libraries that ship with the 0.1 version of Apple's X11 implementation. The download page only makes a non-specific reference to "bug fixes", and the Fink page doesn't say anything about the new release yet. Does anyone here know if the new release fixes the library issues?
As I understand it, DDoS attacks use the ping program that's installed on the compromised boxes. I wonder if a move to limit the number of packets that ping could send out in future versions of the ping utility would be worthwhile. Like the above poster says, i can't think of a situation where most users would really need to send out "weapons grade" ping floods. Does anyone out there know if this technically possible, and what the drawbacks would be?
Also, I wonder if switching the default permissions on ping so that only root (or some other privileged user -- I don't know how/if Windows implements this these days) wouldn't be a good idea.
I'm not an expert, but as I understand it, DNS attacks are relatively benign, since DNS info is cached all over the place and doesn't change much anyway (this is essentially what the article says). Now, the author seems much more worried about attackts against Top Level Domains, because of reasons related to the nature of the information that TLD servers have, and he suggests a few techniques that they could use. What he doesn't say is what techniques the TLD's are using currently, and how secure they are.
/. know?
Does anyone out there on
. . .but a news conference featuring a marching color guard and a military band playing patriotic songs such as "God Bless America" to introduce a truck seems straight outta the Simpsons. Like an inanimate carbon rod getting a medal from the president or something.
Actually, it does -- check out Help -> Installed Plug-ins. It lists 2 Java plug-ins, Quicktime, RealPlayer and Flash for me. So far i've tested the Quicktime Plugin and it seems to work well. We'll see about the other ones. Over all I really like the browser (aside from the lack of tabs, which I've already bug-reported).
Not to get too far off topic here, but I think that there are two key points here to consider:
I think your main claim is correct though -- these problems arise from the status of the W3C, and if a body with some more pull (like a branch of the government) were to step in, these problems could be cleared up.
Regards,
FM
. . .when you go to school in Amityville. Like the poster says: "For God's Sake, Get Out!".
. . But if you go to Springer-Verlag's Website and search on "wavelet" in the title, it comes up with a buttload of results, including this one which looks right up your alley. And the best part is that Springer has a sale on until the end of the year, so some of the books can be had more cheaply (well, really, less expensively). And Springer books usually Don't Suck.
Also, I'd second ignoring Amazon reviews of technical books -- in general Amazon isn't the right forum to seek advice about technical books. Poplular fiction maybe, but not specialized texts.
GNU/Hurd Delayed! In related news, sun rises in east!
Okay, I know i'm feeding the trolls, but on at least three of your counts, you're just plain wrong:
Only Aqua on the desktop - I suppose that you're comparing it to all the choices availibe for Linux, but the thing is, with fink packages, you can run X with which ever window-manager and desktop environment you want, either rootless alongside Aqua, or in its own full screen. So if you happen to be a big AfterStep fan, for instance, you can run it fullscreen and only be a hotkey away from the Aqua desktop.
A single button mouse - Having owned my Powerbook for a few months now, most of the time when I use the single button trackpad (and keyboard modifiers), I don't notice that I'm missing much (even using Gnome apps that I used to run on my Linux box), but when I do need a 3 button mouse, I just plug my old USB mouse in, and it, uh, works.
To pay for the next bug fix - Bugfixes and security updates come free, and fast via software update. So do "point" OS revisions like 10.2.1. You do have to pay for major OS revisions (like 10.2), but that's an entirely different thing than a "bugfix"
Hypercard!
Was it just me, or did anyone else get the impression that this was going to be another salvo in the "free vs. open" holy war (possibly the stupidest holy war out there, by the way) when he opened up with the bit about how it's obvious in this context that the proper term to use is "free" and not "open source"? It seems to me that rigid adherence to some dogma or other is the worst thing you can do for the preservation of human rights; human rights are better protected by a sensitivity to human diginity, and a willingness to examine all the possible ways to preserve human diginity. Dogmatism and demagoguery ultimately limit your ability to see a problem from all different angles, and to find the best solution for the situation.
And for the record, I think his arguments are bollocks too -- have you ever heard anyone say something like: "I'm sorry, I can't accept your statistical analysis -- it was done on MS Excel, which is non-free software". Maybe RMS would, but granting agencies and international organizations certainly wouldn't.
Think someone had the old thesaurus going there? Jeez, how hard is it to write "when more than one person speaks at the same time, it chooses the loudest voice."?
. . .When's the HURD going to be ready for prime-time?
Once they stop needing Linux, then they can call it whatever they want. And they have had long enough -- the FAQ says they've been working on their project since '84, and they still don't have a production level kernel. After 18 years, I think it's safe to call it vapourware. Besides, I can't help but think that the sucess of the Linux kernel has been a boon for the GNU project -- since Linux is useful for people, they've been interested in working on the GNU tools that work with it. And this explains why GNU tools have been developed so much more quickly then the HURD -- Linux users need better tools, not a replacement kernel. Frankly, the GNU folks should be thankful to Linus for providing renewed momentum to their project, not issuing FAQs dripping with envy and derision over the way the community decided to name things.
And I'm sorry if this is redundant, but since there are already over 1000 posts on the thread, I don't think many people will make it this far down anyway.
I'm running 10.2, I downloaded the patch last night, and it looks like it works. I clicked the link in the parent, and here's the Terminal.app output:
ls-la: No address associated with nodename
[Process exited - exit code 1]
what's really funny is that he thinks that making a computer game out of something dispels the notion that the thing is just for children.
not to be pedantic, but when he isn't writing his football column (which is pretty good), that "dumb jock" is "a senior editor of New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution", according to the author bio at the bottom of the page.
I think what's at issue here is that sending an e-mail takes almost no time or effort investment on the part of the writer, while snail mail takes time to write, address and mail. This is the same reason that flamewars start so easily on the internet -- if someone pisses you off, it takes under 30 seconds to hit 'reply', compose a nasty little flame, and hit 'send'. On the other hand, if you were sending it out by snail mail, you might have had a chance to calm down on your walk to the mailbox.
So what does this matter? Well, even discounting the cynical stuff about getting reelected, figuring out what really matters to constituents is an important part of a representative's job. And if someone goes out of their way to type and snail-mail a letter, you can be sure that the issue is important to them. If someone just filled in a few fields on a web-form and hit submit, it's much harder to tell to what extent the person cares about the issue, or has thought about it. And that has to factor into the thinking of the representative and his/her staff.
The word free has taken on an extremely specific sense in the world of software (a la Free Software Foundation), and as I understand it, Perens is more of an open (source) software kinda guy, so it's not really surprising that he stays away from the word free.
This is totally unsurprising; Rhapsody, something that was kinda like OSX's ancestor ran on both PPC and x86 Hardware (look here for screenshots). A whole wack of the NeXT and FreeBSD code that is under the hood of OSX runs natively on x86, so I don't think that maintaing code on both architechtures would be that difficult. But seriously, as probably half of the other posters have pointed out, Apple is a hardware company, and the only way you'd be able to run an x86 OSX would be on proprietary Apple hardware.
Besides, as much as people want to slag PPC chips for being slower than x86, they have certain advantages in terms of power use and temperature management which allow Apple to build neat-o computers like the new iMac and the TiBook. And even if neat-o doesn't cut it for the Slashdot crowd, Apple seems to be doing pretty well for themselves selling neat-o.
And even if Apple decided to radically shift their business model to selling OS software for x86 computers, Microsoft would squash that dream pretty quickly, using their agreements with OEMs.
Seems to me that it can break either way: if you try to educate people by telling them what is good for them, then you're a demagogue, but if you give people the tools so they can figure out the good life for themselves, then you're helping them be free. Unfortunately, too often the GNU/FSF folks preach "freedom-through-doctrine". The whole attitude that "most people don't know what's best for them" is pretty paternalistic and dangerous, if you ask me.
This whole version n or later thing means that you essentially are trusting the FSF/GNU with guarding your rights as a developer. I mean, what if the next version of the GPL contains a clause that assigns all rights to covered software exclusively to RMS? In a very real way this embeds an asymmetry into the GPL, since one organization (and only one organization) publishes versions of the GPL. If RMS and his organizations don't want us to trust Apple, Mozilla/Netscape and other groups enough to use licenses that assign those companies and organizations special rights, then is it any different to trust the FSF/GNU enough to give them the authority to rewrite our software licenses at will? Is the issue that asymmetrical rights are inherently offensive, or is it a matter of liking some groups more than others?
Dunno about that. After the Word Trade Center bombing back in 1993 no amount of racial profiling would have stopped Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma. The thing about racial profiling is that in selecting a certain group for increased scrutiny, it implictly deselects other groups. If only Arab (or, more likely, Arab-looking) passengers are subjected to enhanced searches at airports, it just means that it's that much easier for some white guy with an axe to grind to get through security. It only seems prudent that if one group is going to be subject to extra scrutiny, then everyone should be subject to the extra scrutiny.
You have to wonder if there was a single Muslim in the 42% who favour giving the government more powers to snoop in on Muslims. It's the same story yet again: the people who are least likely to suffer the abuses are the most willing to give everyone's rights up. Racial profiling is okay with the majority because the majority doesn't get profiled, minorities get profiled. Pro-choice activists have been dealing with this for years too, with male lawmakers and jurists limiting the rights women have over their bodies. Documents like the American Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms exist to protect minorities and underpriveliged groups from the whims of the majority. I'm no civics expert (and heck, I'm not even American), but as I understand it, protecting minority groups from "the tyranny of the majority" was a major concern when the American Constitution was being written. No matter where we live, we'd do well to remember that now, more than ever.