"Which is harder, to be executed or to suffer the prolonged agony that consists in being trampled to death by geese?"
Spot on comment about Joe Sixpack. What will get his attention is when all those NRA-endorse politicians start sneaking in gun control under the guise of "protecting us all from terrorism."
Just a big fat MHO, but I think those silly yellow-orange-red alerts are just as terrorizing to the American public as some dude hiding in a cave in southeast Afghanistan.
"The people chosen to run ICANN in 1998 were those who knew more about the technology than anyone else - computer scientists. It was an apparently logical decision but tragically flawed. The characteristics that make a computer scientist are not those that make a good politician or decision-maker.
Now, I'd like to know exactly what characteristics that make a good computer scientist are incompatible with being a good decision-maker. Is the point here that governance is inherently the domain of the clueless?
The choice seems to be between computer scientists (ICANN) & telecommunications suits (ITU). Isn't ironic that the U.S. government is on the side of ICANN?
The ephemerality of web pages creates a situation that is more akin to a house fire that burns up Great-Aunt Gertrude's bundles of love letters from her sweetie in World War I.
A historian might use that bundle of letters to shed light on some historical question. But you can rest assured that same historian will exhaust every possible traditionally published resource in the process.
If the "knowledge" exists only at a website & the website disappears, thereby destroying a researcher's work, I'd offer that the researcher & not the archival medium is to blame.
We're just trying to protect the innocent and enforce the law, but the stereotypes we have to overcome are tremendous.
Yessiree! A pretty high percentage of Mississippi deputies are, in fact, black men, which flies in the face of the Hollywood stereotype. Pretty tough row to hoe when you're stereotyped as an entirely different race.
This applies, by analogy, to (h|cr)ackers, but if you can'f figure it out, I'm not telling!
There's an old guy named "Mr. Hacker" who lives in my town. His son (I think) has a motorcycle shop somewhere. So Mr. Hacker often is seen wearing a t-shirt that bears the bold incription "HACKER COMPETITION." At first, I thought maybe he'd gotten it at DEFCON...
When I was a kid, dads were all the time teaching kids how to defend themselves on the playground. "Knee 'em in the crotch & when the double over give 'em an uppercut in the nose," was my mantra.
Now, I guess we should teach our kids how to run tracerts, do ping attacks on the bully's IP, or sneak a little trojan into the ole IM...
Kid: "Hey, dad, Billy called me a faggot."
Dad: "What did you do?"
Kid: "I deleted Billy's term paper from his hard drive."
Dad: "That's my kid!" (proudly)
I've had a sneaky suspicion for a while that this is exactly how a number of self-proclaimed "security consultants" get their business: run an exploit or DoS attack on a target, then volunteer to make the system "immune" to future attacks.
To see this particular nigerian money laundering scheme?
Late '80s, by snail mail. In fact, the letter was posted from Nigeria & the exact mailing address was that I had used to send reprints of a couple of journal articles to a student at the University of Lagos.
So I actually got a Nigerian scam from a real Nigerian!
** Pulls lever for (take your pick) Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Reform **... Machine: BSOD.
** Pulls level for Republican **... Machine: "Thank you for being a good American"
... is more in line with Clippy & his pals. Ask Jeeves would be a better fit for Microsoft that most of the alternatives just based on this "aesthetic" consideration...
If I could, I'd make some kind of palm gaming application so that people could download ROMs of their favourite old-school games
Depending on how what you mean by "old-school," you may find that it's already been done. I tried the Liberty emulator on an old Palm IIIc & it wasn't much different from an old Gameboy in terms of speed, especially with the Palm overclocked. Not being much for Gameboy games, I treated it as an experiment & moved on.
Considering the the the latest Palm hardware runs a 400 MHz XScale processor, speed ought not to be a concern for emulation now. And the video display is something that a $100 handheld game unit won't be able touch.
Those who are tired of the snake & pong games on their cellphones might like to stick an emulator on this.
Maybe the real question is, "When will game devices start featuring PDA & phone functions?"
Let's face it: Novell is a company with no future.
A company that refuses to retool, change directions, acquire new interests, etc. is a company with no future. Acquiring Suse proves that Novell isn't quite ready to relegate itself to the footnotes of history.
Time will tell...
Personally, I don't think Novell will be able to every regain the dominance it enjoyed 10 years ago, but again, time will tell. At the very least, Novell is acquiring a technology that will be used, rather than following the lead of The-Company-That-Must-Not-Be-Named & just buying competition to kill it.
Steal a little,
And they put you in jail.
Steal a lot,
And they make you king.
My point being that the file-sharer "steals a little" & risks being sued by the RIAA. Meanwhile, the record labels steal hugely from the artists & get ever increasing power & control in return.
Face it (the RIAA certainly doesn't), the typical downloaded mp3 is of a bitrate comparable to an analog tape made from an FM broadcast in a thunderstorm. And by accusing file-sharers of "full-price stealing" for acquiring these copies, the RIAA is admitting that the officially-released CD is of no better quality than said analog tape, no value-added whatsoever.
Either that or they're admitting that the typical "product" is a throw-away item. In the latter case, their disposable music is grossly overpriced.
I might offer, sir, that certain government agencies are very keen to institutionalize hackers. In their view, the standard hacker "uniform" would be an orange jumpsuit with a number on it.
Doing that just points out that you A) have an axe to grind or B) you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Or both. Don't discount that possibility;-)
I still think it's a monumental cop-out to say that the head guy isn't responsible for what happens in his department, because the actual "decision" was made by some paper pusher stuffed away in a broom closet. Every politician who's ever come down the pike wishes that was the case.
But you are correct: the patent system for software has been screwy for as long as I can remember (and that's a fuzz longer than 20 years). So let's return to that. Why has the system been screwy for so long? Could the answer be, um, "politics"?
NOBODY caught the "black helicopter chaser" bit... My original point WAS that the answer to "WFT is going on in the USPTO" is "the place is run by political appointees." By which I meant "incompetent brown-nosers who've sucked a$$ to get every 'job' they've ever had." And I apply that definition equally to those appointed by both parties.
Regardless of when the patent was issued, the court decision happened on Rogan's watch. We'll soon know how much guts he really has & whether he really deserved those awards for "integrity" that he got in California.
James E. Rogan was sworn in as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on December 7, 2001. Secretary Don Evans presided over the ceremony. Judge Rogan becomes the 55th head of the agency. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on May 25, 2001, and confirmed by the United States Senate on November 30, 2001.
...
Judge Rogan served two terms in the House of Representatives. He served as a House Manager in the United States Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton, after which he was defeated for reelection in his Democrat-majority district.
Political appointee running the show. Any questions?
Some of you black helicopter chasers might want to look for any relationship between the Undersecretary & the "former University of California researcher";-)
A federal jury ruled against Microsoft in August and awarded $521 million to a former University of California researcher who holds the patent the Web consortium now wants revoked.
I thought most "work done for hire" belonged to the employer, not the employee. How much of this $521 million went to the University of California?
(Yes, I know that a lot of universities allow researchers & faculty to retain some rights to "inventions" & such, but the university is gonna skim a thick layer of cream off the top, too.)
Slashdot Mirror
... methinks those who insist on political correctness must be loaded.
I take offense to this "swap" business, too! Even if you can do without it for a few minutes...
Spot on comment about Joe Sixpack. What will get his attention is when all those NRA-endorse politicians start sneaking in gun control under the guise of "protecting us all from terrorism."
Just a big fat MHO, but I think those silly yellow-orange-red alerts are just as terrorizing to the American public as some dude hiding in a cave in southeast Afghanistan.
Now, I'd like to know exactly what characteristics that make a good computer scientist are incompatible with being a good decision-maker. Is the point here that governance is inherently the domain of the clueless?
The choice seems to be between computer scientists (ICANN) & telecommunications suits (ITU). Isn't ironic that the U.S. government is on the side of ICANN?
No need to roll your own if you have a big enough pipe ;-)
The ephemerality of web pages creates a situation that is more akin to a house fire that burns up Great-Aunt Gertrude's bundles of love letters from her sweetie in World War I.
A historian might use that bundle of letters to shed light on some historical question. But you can rest assured that same historian will exhaust every possible traditionally published resource in the process.
If the "knowledge" exists only at a website & the website disappears, thereby destroying a researcher's work, I'd offer that the researcher & not the archival medium is to blame.
Yessiree! A pretty high percentage of Mississippi deputies are, in fact, black men, which flies in the face of the Hollywood stereotype. Pretty tough row to hoe when you're stereotyped as an entirely different race.
This applies, by analogy, to (h|cr)ackers, but if you can'f figure it out, I'm not telling!
There's an old guy named "Mr. Hacker" who lives in my town. His son (I think) has a motorcycle shop somewhere. So Mr. Hacker often is seen wearing a t-shirt that bears the bold incription "HACKER COMPETITION." At first, I thought maybe he'd gotten it at DEFCON...
Sounds like a huge market for the enterprising lawyer, who only yesterday thought that tort reform had cut off his cash cow.
P.S. It ain't entrapment if the 'entrappee' is already committing or planning to commit a crime.
Now, I guess we should teach our kids how to run tracerts, do ping attacks on the bully's IP, or sneak a little trojan into the ole IM...
Kid: "Hey, dad, Billy called me a faggot."
Dad: "What did you do?"
Kid: "I deleted Billy's term paper from his hard drive."
Dad: "That's my kid!" (proudly)
More likely, Microspeak for "We haven't talked to a single user."
I've had a sneaky suspicion for a while that this is exactly how a number of self-proclaimed "security consultants" get their business: run an exploit or DoS attack on a target, then volunteer to make the system "immune" to future attacks.
Late '80s, by snail mail. In fact, the letter was posted from Nigeria & the exact mailing address was that I had used to send reprints of a couple of journal articles to a student at the University of Lagos.
So I actually got a Nigerian scam from a real Nigerian!
... is if Trinity or Persephone get NEKKID in this one?
** Pulls lever for (take your pick) Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Reform ** ... Machine: BSOD. ... Machine: "Thank you for being a good American"
** Pulls level for Republican **
... is more in line with Clippy & his pals. Ask Jeeves would be a better fit for Microsoft that most of the alternatives just based on this "aesthetic" consideration...
Considering the the the latest Palm hardware runs a 400 MHz XScale processor, speed ought not to be a concern for emulation now. And the video display is something that a $100 handheld game unit won't be able touch.
Those who are tired of the snake & pong games on their cellphones might like to stick an emulator on this.
Maybe the real question is, "When will game devices start featuring PDA & phone functions?"
My point being that the file-sharer "steals a little" & risks being sued by the RIAA. Meanwhile, the record labels steal hugely from the artists & get ever increasing power & control in return.
Face it (the RIAA certainly doesn't), the typical downloaded mp3 is of a bitrate comparable to an analog tape made from an FM broadcast in a thunderstorm. And by accusing file-sharers of "full-price stealing" for acquiring these copies, the RIAA is admitting that the officially-released CD is of no better quality than said analog tape, no value-added whatsoever.
Either that or they're admitting that the typical "product" is a throw-away item. In the latter case, their disposable music is grossly overpriced.
I might offer, sir, that certain government agencies are very keen to institutionalize hackers. In their view, the standard hacker "uniform" would be an orange jumpsuit with a number on it.
Or both. Don't discount that possibility ;-)
I still think it's a monumental cop-out to say that the head guy isn't responsible for what happens in his department, because the actual "decision" was made by some paper pusher stuffed away in a broom closet. Every politician who's ever come down the pike wishes that was the case.
But you are correct: the patent system for software has been screwy for as long as I can remember (and that's a fuzz longer than 20 years). So let's return to that. Why has the system been screwy for so long? Could the answer be, um, "politics"?
Regardless of when the patent was issued, the court decision happened on Rogan's watch. We'll soon know how much guts he really has & whether he really deserved those awards for "integrity" that he got in California.
According to the USPTO website:
Political appointee running the show. Any questions?
Some of you black helicopter chasers might want to look for any relationship between the Undersecretary & the "former University of California researcher" ;-)
I thought most "work done for hire" belonged to the employer, not the employee. How much of this $521 million went to the University of California?
(Yes, I know that a lot of universities allow researchers & faculty to retain some rights to "inventions" & such, but the university is gonna skim a thick layer of cream off the top, too.)
Looks to me like the Cult of the Dead Cow must be involved in developing Longhorn. Maybe that sidebar thingie is just Back Orifice in drag...