I just realized that when I read Linus, his personality seems to correlate with that of Linus from the peanuts comics. Alway polite, good sense of humor, very low key.
Remember, all of the great lakes drain into the ocean in the long term. It's not like they're pumping energy into a stagnant body of water. Also, because this is far more efficient than an air conditioner the net energy pumped into the environment as heat is far lower using this method - they're actually just transfering energy from the air to the water adding extremely little. That's why they claim reduced energy from the grid and reduced CO2. OK, they're counting the same thing twice - any reduction in energy usage off the grid results in reduced CO2.
We americans like to tease Canadians about that "eh" thing, but I don't think anyone ever said they're not smart.
I've been buying DVDs out of the discount bin at Best Buy. Mostly crap, but we picked 3 last time that looked good for $6.00 each. The time before that, we picked up 5 movies. It's a little more than renting, but you get to keep the movie (legally). Most of them are very old, but that's not usually an issue. If I want to see todays hot films I will go to a theater.
Why does Hollywood insist on providing movies on PCs where the "copy" command has been around since day one?
DVD was their "protected" consumer distribution method and it failed for several reasons. 1 - providing the content and the key to the consumer. 2 - because the system was enforcing a political agenda as well. 3 - poor implementation mostly due to #2 and ignorance.
The cost of actually doing a wiretap is small. I believe they can just configure the switch to call-forward to another number in addition to completing the call. The cops/feds/whoever just need to sit at a computer for a couple minutes to set it up (remotely) and then just wait for the phone to ring and record the calls. $0.25/month would probably cover the cost of tapping your phone once per year. That's a whole lot of tapping - every phone once per year...
"If I patent something useful, but don't actually have an implementation, I'm using the system to stifle others, and not really giving anything back."
Patents allow startups with no implemenation or funding or manufacturing, to show thier idea to investors so they can bring it to market. Without this capability many smaller companies couldn't get started. A large company with much capability would steal the idea an put it in volume production before the inventor could get a good prototype working. Actual product development is expensive, so without patent protection you limit new ideas to those who already have a lot of money.
First rule for patent reform: Do NOT extend the term of protection. Nothing else is worth compromising on this one thing.
I would favor a reduction to 10 years - if you can't get to market in that time and make a buck, you're probably scamming your investors anyway.
There already is an arcade game called I, Robot from 1984. The first game to use 3D solid models with flat shaded polygons. The next one was about 4-5 years later. 500 sold, several hardware problems, not popular, mostly converted/destroyed. IMHO a great arcade game. BTW, there is a MAME driver for it - John M., I still don't know how you reverse engineered that rasterizer and MathBox blindly;-)
"it's not clear to me how relevant their earnings per share are since they are still slightly positive."
IANAFA (I am not a financial advisor) and this should not be considered advise.
If you're buying stock in order to sell it to someone else at a higher price, you're going on the Greater Fool Theory (GFT). That's like trading baseball cards and is not IMHO a long term way to invest. Some people consider dividends the proper way to make money in stocks - you continually get benefit from your initial investment without having to sell it. The maximum rate of return you can hope to get through dividends is inversly proportional to the Price/Earning ratio (P/E). So it matters a LOT to some people. The PE does not indicate return, only possible return. It's still up to the company to offer a dividend.
I'd rather see a panel with a few different blind deconvolution algorithms to try out. At least for photo editing:-) That and reduced load time. BTW, Most people don't demand BD because they don't know it's possible - not entirely well defined, but some things are possible.
"If there are those people that DONT care about those features, get the one-use ones. Hell, they even have digital one-time use camera now."
So don't buy a camera with features if you're not going to use the features? His point is just to make a camera with features that I don't have to worry about if I don't want to use them. If that means a lower quality picture fine - it should be at least the same quality as the disposable without the features though. It should not be complex to not use the complex features. That's all.
"It doesn't really control other programs. A Window Manager controls the Windows on the current display."
Ya, and there's that MS windows exploit where one program pastes arbitrary code into a textbox (via messages) on another windows and then executes it by sending a WM_TIMER event. No controlling the application, just the "windows".
"So does launching a program that is found in the current PATH count as doing something based on untrusted data?"
No, because your path should not include any directories that don't require root write access - hence it takes a very deliberate and concious act to put something there. So the apps are trusted, but they should not take parameters from the web. If they do, someone could pass nasty parameters (the rm command comes to mind - or something that can execute scripts). We assume commands are executed by the user and therefore trust them to execute. As long as we have this assumption, simple web links should not be allowed to pass parameters. Why you'd want sites to launch a program with no parameters is beyond me. No one complained that the Mozilla fix was to just disable it.
"Every X11 application I run is executing on a machine remote from my X-Server"
That's fine. You are running applications you trust on remote machines that you trust. My airline reservation system example was intended to show that you could do even more with X if not for its faults. I'm thinking you should be able to allow untrusted apps to run on your desktop (with explicit permission like clicking a link) sort of like JAVA. This means they should not have access to other "windows" on the display. They should not be able to do screen capture. They should not be able to "warp mouse pointer" to arbitrary locations or send events to other apps (sorry, other windows). I could be mistaken, but I don't think X provides a secure display sandbox. Until it does it will not live up to its full potential. This will obviously require window managers/destops to be special in some way so you can still drag and drop etc... Perhaps that's how it is and I just don't know it. Would you allow me to run a malicious program on my machine using your display? I didn't think so.
"'Good' security is always a balance between safety and utility."
Effective security is never a balance. Balance generally involves compromise. Compromising security is not something you want to do. Obviously the shell: thing was put into Mozilla on a whim without much thought given to utility or security - it has no utility if done securely. This is indicative of what I see as a growing trend in "community developed" software that I think needs to stop. Let me be clear, the whim thing needs to stop, not the community development:-)
Since you have the freedom to set your own schedule, I have something to suggest. I once read that your internal clock can easily be pushed in one direction but not the other. As supporting evidence I'd like to site a number of people I know who experience jet lag more when traveling east vs west. I read of a study that claimed it's simple to go to be 1-2 hours later each night until you come around to the time you actually want to go to sleep (not sure what they did about sunlight). The problem is that most people don't have the flexibility to even try this.
Part of the problem is that developers update the underlying libraries just as fast as the applications. GTK gets updated and then the next Gnome release uses the update which is then fed into the next Fedora Core release. If libs are updating that fast they aren't really usable. Barring a new widget, GTK should have been done a long time ago. Gnome itself should be stable by now, but they're treating it like a distibution - including a certain list of applications, with each one a moving target.
How hard is it to make a disto? Someone needs to make it easy to create a distribution with nice hardware detection and automatic installation. Then we can all select Gnome 2.8, Kernel 2.6.7 etc and produce our own set of install disks. I see this as the future and it looks like Debian or Gentoo with some added goodies (Knoppix?).
They are probably trying to get a better price from Microsoft. Those preloaded copies of Windows cost a lot. While they are Intel only they often evaluate the offerings from AMD and Intel knows it and offers fair prices to them. Now they're going to play Linux against MS and hope for better pricing there too.
The software should not allow a web site to initiate any action on the client side. Security 101 here people. Opening files using the default application is pushing the limit. Allowing the site to specify what you run was just plain stupid. The Mozilla team should not just disable that feature by default, but should remove it entirely. There are work arounds for the small fraction of users who have a legitimate use for that.
IMHO, desktops (GNOME, KDE) are crossing the line and even X itself has some "features" that may lead to exploits if developers aren't careful - remember the window manager is just a program that can actually control other programs on the machine. No application should ever tell another what to do based on untrusted data, that's reserved for the user (clicking a link doesn't count as approval - the link may not do what it claims).
When you add a feature, consider what a criminal might use it for and who the burden will land on to prevent it. With shell: the burden lands on any application you might possibly launch and that's just unacceptable. With a window manager, consider that I may want to offer my display server to some untrusted application (airline reservation system) running on a remote machine - great possibilities and a great security risk. Because so much is accessible through X we don't use it that way.
I'm rambling now trying to gather too many thoughts in too little time.
You're supposed to stop and consider what you're dealing with. Not what you're doing with the computer today: writing a document/email/whatever but consider the product/business/whatever that you're talking about in all those documents you create. If it's business, simulate the business. If it's a product, simulate that. Once you have a simulation you can tweak it and see what happens. What is a "simulation" here? Any type of computer model you can create that gives some indication of how the thing you're simulating acts under different conditions. The tool you choose depends on the thing you're trying to simulate.
One of those recent Mars stories suggested that the Matian atmosphere was blown away over time by solar flares/radiation because Mars doesn't have a magnetic field to concentrate that activity to the poles. If we go fieldless for some time during the flip we best hope for a minimum of solar flares. OTOH, this has happened many times before so it might be very cool after all.
"but it is a rather useful feature to have if somebody wants to tell everybody on a company network how to run a program that was just installed."
Ya, tell them to start the new program by opening a URL in IE then click on the "start new program" link. Ya, it's great for explaining that. There is NO need for any program to run another program based on the content of data (web pages).
I was wondering how to contact them about doing some development for it. I've got this really neat ray tracer that should be fantastic on all those processors....
"Interestingly enough, there are many places where the 32 bit versions outshine the 64 bit ones."
Are you sure that wasn't on the ones where lower numbers indicate better performance? Another poster said the charts seemed backward compared to the text. When measuring frames per second, longer bars indicate better performance. When measuring time to do something, shorter bars are better performance. You may want to check those ones again (so might I).
I sent an email to a few people pointing to the articles (not/.) about the Dept of Homeland security saying IE is insecure. I also included links to the popular and more safe alternative Mozilla. (Sorry other browsers, I didn't want them to be lost in options) I did suggest getting OOo while they're at it. Then, for the first time in my life I added a bit about sending to everyone you know:-)
Short and sweet: IE is bad, use this instead, tell people.
It probably didn't circulate too widely, so perhaps you all should do the same - use variations to ensure proper natural selection.
We're talking about space hotels here stupid. What do you suppose people do in hotel rooms? I think the zero gravity aspect would be a bit different don't you? Or do you read too much slashdot to understand all this?
Let me rephrase: Space porn - How far does a money-shot go in zero G?
I don't mean to be hostile, I never thought about this either untill you asked.
Does this mean all the great stuff on sourceforge will no longer download properly? You know: Your download should start in 5 seconds, if not click here. I assume this means those automatically started DLs won't work any more. OTOH, I would never download (or do) anything with IE anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I just realized that when I read Linus, his personality seems to correlate with that of Linus from the peanuts comics. Alway polite, good sense of humor, very low key.
We americans like to tease Canadians about that "eh" thing, but I don't think anyone ever said they're not smart.
Go Canada! eh.
I've been buying DVDs out of the discount bin at Best Buy. Mostly crap, but we picked 3 last time that looked good for $6.00 each. The time before that, we picked up 5 movies. It's a little more than renting, but you get to keep the movie (legally). Most of them are very old, but that's not usually an issue. If I want to see todays hot films I will go to a theater.
Why does Hollywood insist on providing movies on PCs where the "copy" command has been around since day one?
DVD was their "protected" consumer distribution method and it failed for several reasons. 1 - providing the content and the key to the consumer. 2 - because the system was enforcing a political agenda as well. 3 - poor implementation mostly due to #2 and ignorance.
The cost of actually doing a wiretap is small. I believe they can just configure the switch to call-forward to another number in addition to completing the call. The cops/feds/whoever just need to sit at a computer for a couple minutes to set it up (remotely) and then just wait for the phone to ring and record the calls. $0.25/month would probably cover the cost of tapping your phone once per year. That's a whole lot of tapping - every phone once per year...
They should fill those wings with Helium next time.
Patents allow startups with no implemenation or funding or manufacturing, to show thier idea to investors so they can bring it to market. Without this capability many smaller companies couldn't get started. A large company with much capability would steal the idea an put it in volume production before the inventor could get a good prototype working. Actual product development is expensive, so without patent protection you limit new ideas to those who already have a lot of money.
First rule for patent reform: Do NOT extend the term of protection. Nothing else is worth compromising on this one thing.
I would favor a reduction to 10 years - if you can't get to market in that time and make a buck, you're probably scamming your investors anyway.
There already is an arcade game called I, Robot from 1984. The first game to use 3D solid models with flat shaded polygons. The next one was about 4-5 years later. 500 sold, several hardware problems, not popular, mostly converted/destroyed. IMHO a great arcade game. BTW, there is a MAME driver for it - John M., I still don't know how you reverse engineered that rasterizer and MathBox blindly ;-)
Lisp is about 50.
IANAFA (I am not a financial advisor) and this should not be considered advise.
If you're buying stock in order to sell it to someone else at a higher price, you're going on the Greater Fool Theory (GFT). That's like trading baseball cards and is not IMHO a long term way to invest. Some people consider dividends the proper way to make money in stocks - you continually get benefit from your initial investment without having to sell it. The maximum rate of return you can hope to get through dividends is inversly proportional to the Price/Earning ratio (P/E). So it matters a LOT to some people. The PE does not indicate return, only possible return. It's still up to the company to offer a dividend.
I'd rather see a panel with a few different blind deconvolution algorithms to try out. At least for photo editing :-) That and reduced load time. BTW, Most people don't demand BD because they don't know it's possible - not entirely well defined, but some things are possible.
So don't buy a camera with features if you're not going to use the features? His point is just to make a camera with features that I don't have to worry about if I don't want to use them. If that means a lower quality picture fine - it should be at least the same quality as the disposable without the features though. It should not be complex to not use the complex features. That's all.
Ya, and there's that MS windows exploit where one program pastes arbitrary code into a textbox (via messages) on another windows and then executes it by sending a WM_TIMER event. No controlling the application, just the "windows".
"So does launching a program that is found in the current PATH count as doing something based on untrusted data?"
No, because your path should not include any directories that don't require root write access - hence it takes a very deliberate and concious act to put something there. So the apps are trusted, but they should not take parameters from the web. If they do, someone could pass nasty parameters (the rm command comes to mind - or something that can execute scripts). We assume commands are executed by the user and therefore trust them to execute. As long as we have this assumption, simple web links should not be allowed to pass parameters. Why you'd want sites to launch a program with no parameters is beyond me. No one complained that the Mozilla fix was to just disable it.
"Every X11 application I run is executing on a machine remote from my X-Server"
That's fine. You are running applications you trust on remote machines that you trust. My airline reservation system example was intended to show that you could do even more with X if not for its faults. I'm thinking you should be able to allow untrusted apps to run on your desktop (with explicit permission like clicking a link) sort of like JAVA. This means they should not have access to other "windows" on the display. They should not be able to do screen capture. They should not be able to "warp mouse pointer" to arbitrary locations or send events to other apps (sorry, other windows). I could be mistaken, but I don't think X provides a secure display sandbox. Until it does it will not live up to its full potential. This will obviously require window managers/destops to be special in some way so you can still drag and drop etc... Perhaps that's how it is and I just don't know it. Would you allow me to run a malicious program on my machine using your display? I didn't think so.
"'Good' security is always a balance between safety and utility."
Effective security is never a balance. Balance generally involves compromise. Compromising security is not something you want to do. Obviously the shell: thing was put into Mozilla on a whim without much thought given to utility or security - it has no utility if done securely. This is indicative of what I see as a growing trend in "community developed" software that I think needs to stop. Let me be clear, the whim thing needs to stop, not the community development :-)
Since you have the freedom to set your own schedule, I have something to suggest. I once read that your internal clock can easily be pushed in one direction but not the other. As supporting evidence I'd like to site a number of people I know who experience jet lag more when traveling east vs west. I read of a study that claimed it's simple to go to be 1-2 hours later each night until you come around to the time you actually want to go to sleep (not sure what they did about sunlight). The problem is that most people don't have the flexibility to even try this.
How hard is it to make a disto? Someone needs to make it easy to create a distribution with nice hardware detection and automatic installation. Then we can all select Gnome 2.8, Kernel 2.6.7 etc and produce our own set of install disks. I see this as the future and it looks like Debian or Gentoo with some added goodies (Knoppix?).
Never critisize, condemn, or complain...
Competition reduces cost - economics 101.
IMHO, desktops (GNOME, KDE) are crossing the line and even X itself has some "features" that may lead to exploits if developers aren't careful - remember the window manager is just a program that can actually control other programs on the machine. No application should ever tell another what to do based on untrusted data, that's reserved for the user (clicking a link doesn't count as approval - the link may not do what it claims).
When you add a feature, consider what a criminal might use it for and who the burden will land on to prevent it. With shell: the burden lands on any application you might possibly launch and that's just unacceptable. With a window manager, consider that I may want to offer my display server to some untrusted application (airline reservation system) running on a remote machine - great possibilities and a great security risk. Because so much is accessible through X we don't use it that way.
I'm rambling now trying to gather too many thoughts in too little time.
You're supposed to stop and consider what you're dealing with. Not what you're doing with the computer today: writing a document/email/whatever but consider the product/business/whatever that you're talking about in all those documents you create. If it's business, simulate the business. If it's a product, simulate that. Once you have a simulation you can tweak it and see what happens. What is a "simulation" here? Any type of computer model you can create that gives some indication of how the thing you're simulating acts under different conditions. The tool you choose depends on the thing you're trying to simulate.
One of those recent Mars stories suggested that the Matian atmosphere was blown away over time by solar flares/radiation because Mars doesn't have a magnetic field to concentrate that activity to the poles. If we go fieldless for some time during the flip we best hope for a minimum of solar flares. OTOH, this has happened many times before so it might be very cool after all.
Ya, tell them to start the new program by opening a URL in IE then click on the "start new program" link. Ya, it's great for explaining that. There is NO need for any program to run another program based on the content of data (web pages).
I was wondering how to contact them about doing some development for it. I've got this really neat ray tracer that should be fantastic on all those processors....
Are you sure that wasn't on the ones where lower numbers indicate better performance? Another poster said the charts seemed backward compared to the text. When measuring frames per second, longer bars indicate better performance. When measuring time to do something, shorter bars are better performance. You may want to check those ones again (so might I).
Short and sweet: IE is bad, use this instead, tell people.
It probably didn't circulate too widely, so perhaps you all should do the same - use variations to ensure proper natural selection.
We're talking about space hotels here stupid. What do you suppose people do in hotel rooms? I think the zero gravity aspect would be a bit different don't you? Or do you read too much slashdot to understand all this?
Let me rephrase: Space porn - How far does a money-shot go in zero G?
I don't mean to be hostile, I never thought about this either untill you asked.
Does this mean all the great stuff on sourceforge will no longer download properly? You know: Your download should start in 5 seconds, if not click here. I assume this means those automatically started DLs won't work any more. OTOH, I would never download (or do) anything with IE anyway.