An agreement between individuals is not a law, so that's irrelevant to "What part of no law..."
Even significant rights may be impinged if there is a compelling state interest and the restriction used to accomplish that interest is the least restrictive means.
Then the Constitution should've said so. "Compelling state interest to abridge rights" is a dangerous concept to let stand, because it can also be applied to speedy & fair trials, uncompensated seizure of property, and more...
As it stands, both the criminal libel code and campaign-finance regulations are both unconstitutional on their faces. (Blatant unconstitutionality is of course only a minor barrier to widespread enforcement of a USA law).
Blacklists and whitelists both have been shown to be problematic at best for most instances.
Blacklists are fundamentally imperfect, but whitelists can work great with only some minor technical steps needed. The only additional requirement is some way for a non-whitelisted sender to get a message to you, by having additional transactional cost transfered onto her. Both micropaynments and computational time ("hashcash") have been proposed (by Bill Gates, amoung others), and either could work (with varying degrees of infrastructural prerequisites)
Someone might respond with "Well if whitelists are so great, then why aren't we happily using them already?" That's a variant of the "neophobic" fallacy. In this case, the response is simple: An effective spamfighting system hasn't been created yet because spam is not a big problem.
That last might shock internet activists, but its true. Spam is not bothersome enough to encourage average consumers to really demand solutions. Normal AOL users are inured to unsolicited commercials, and power-users are resigned to workarounds (such as fearfully protecting their email addresses from public view on web pages).
If there was a strong enough desire to solve the problem, it'd get solved.
At this point, we have to conclude that people continue to buy insecure software either
I suggest an additional reason: People continue using insecure software because they (to some extent) can rely on the US FBI and other law-enforcers to protect them from defects and exploits.
Many disruptive hackers and virus-authors have found themselves in prison after lengthy manhunts, for example. This creates a "case closed, problem solved" mentality in the public, and reassures them to go back to doing things the way they always have.
If the government were to expend less effort pursuing and punishing those who exploit software flaws, then consumers would become less willing to pay for insecure software. (And as a side-effect, FBI agents would have more time to hunt actual terrorists)
By 'racism against Indians', I mean the assumption that Indians are less intelligent, or less capable of producing good code, because of their skin colour or religion or culture.
That's a misdefinition of "racism". Only skin colour is reasonably tied to racism- relgion and culture are non-racial things that can also become objects of discrimination.
With closed source (proprietary) solutions, they compile it themselves, so they (e.g. Microsoft) would be responsible.
No system based on "who compiles it" (or similar) can protect Debian without creating a loophole for Microsoft.
For example, Microsoft could just ship a compiler with each copy of Windows, and then distribute their applications (and most of Windows itself) in encrypted, obfuscated source code.
Wouldnt it just be easier to pass laws making software vendors responsible for the bugs that they produce instead of spending our tax money to provide a shelter for insecure code?
That's half an acceptable idea, and half a horrible one.
Not spending federal funds to protect insecure code: good. Spending federal funds to punish insecure code: bad.
(Notice the pattern here? "Spending federal funds" should be considered a bad thing in general, unless specifically shown otherwise. Smaller government should be preferred by default.)
If the government scaled back on spending to capture and punish virus-authors and other hackers*, they'd save money, enhance freedom of speech, and yet authors of insecure software would still be punished.
They'd just be punished in the marketplace, not the courts. And that's the best place for it.
Imagine if the next time an Outlook worm brought down all email servers for 12 hours, the police found the guy and put him back on the street with a $100 fine? Microsoft would suddenly face a tremendous pressure to finally fix the code, or face losing all their big corporate customers. Allowing the free market to dispense punishment in the form of lost revenue is the best way, because it shields small hobbyiest programmers from arrest when a user claims "Your screen-saver erased my hard-drive!"
* Yes, virus authors are really one kind of hacker, no matter what ESR claims
But the govt. , like any entity/company, can take open source to use....can modify it, and don't have to release the 'secret' parts at all. Can be used as they want internally.
That is incorrect, although it is a common myth. But in reality, most Open Source licenses have no exception for "internal" use. (BSD does, but GPL does not).
Having managed software acquisition and development for the DoD, I know what I'm talking about. At one point they wanted to use Trolltech's QT in a project. But they didn't want to pay for it, and the GPL wouldn't let them keep the software secret otherwise. So they didn't use QT.
In all matters, the government tries to be fair to all parties involved, as well as show concern to its constituents.
Superb troll! There's a hilariously blatant giveaway in the first line, and the moderators still fell for it!
It costs $90 to register a corporation (in my state) and $15 annually to maintain that registration. No matter if you have earnings over $1B or just over $100. There is no favoratism,
And even with silly examples like that, mods don't pick up on it. Hint: a flat per-corporation fee of $90 is a fatal bias against the hypothetical $100-revenue company in that example. But since such companies don't exist, the whole example is just silly.
I thought it would be better to debunk your reactionary rhetoric.
While I agree that Sharp should include X11 capabilities by default, my reasons are different then yours. I don't think most of your hopes would pan out.
until the thing ships with X11, it's no more than a PDA,
At least for the prior Zaurus versions, X11 would've been worthless for the uses you describe. With a 240x320 screen, you can't even view a single Save File box from a popular desktop program.
Editing the software to function sanely on a smaller screen is technically possible, but it requires not only programming skills, but also a level of artistry few have reached.
Several QT apps were ported to Zaurus and shrunk down, but they're still awkward to use in comparison to Palm or even many WinCE apps. In fact, because the main Zaurus UI looks much like a microscopic KDE, it too has grave usability flaws.
In short, ease of porting desktop apps can actually be a liability, because rewriting the GUI will force the developer to create it entirely PDA-focused.
Going to 480x640 will ameliorate the above problems, of course... but will it be enough?
Anyway, I said I believed that Zaurus should include X11 standard. My reasoning is not that it'll make porting apps trivial, but that it'll enhance the device's power for end-users. (It will also accelerate the workflow for writing PDA apps, but that's a separate benefit)
The important point is that not only should there be an X server running on the PDA, but also on the desktop. A Win32 Xserver should automatically be installed along with whatever "Qtopia Desktop" sync software comes with the Zaurus. When the Zaurus is plugged in, the desktop software should present a list of every X11 application on the PDA, which the user can click to view on her desktop. This has many cool possibilities.
Additionally, since the Zaurus can act like a USB storage device, it could hold a mini XServer program that can be executed in place on any desktop computer the user happens to find himself nearby. This gives you the benefit of having all the data carried with you on a PDA, but still being able to manipulate it with a large, comfortable desktops that are scattered far and wide about the landscape.
Not to mention that I can develop commercial and free software for Palm without paying anybody.
Technically you can write commercial Zaurus software without payment, as long as you don't use Qt/emb. You can make a Java program. Or a native binary can write to the console, or access the screen device directly, or use libSDL or such. Of course, any choice other than Qt will worsen the already poor state of inter-application consistency...
if they want to sync with your e-mail client, has to either pick-and-choose which clients to support, or must support them all!
Or they could instead just provide a modicum of support for other developers to provide sync utilities. Just include a program which syncs the PDA's data with a single fat XML file on your desktop, and let the J. Random Hacker take it from there.
But instead, not only did Sharp not add a "Sync to Self-Explanatory File" feature, they've actually changed the PDA formats used by the Zaurus as the line has developed.
I would imagine that tech support would be a nightmare if they tried.
Corporations are free to add specific "experimental" product features which their tech-support is instructed to ignore. It would be a small effort to allow neutral-format export, and from then on, it ceases to be their problem.
KDE's filemanager has an optional mode to view like that (the FSPartView plugin). But it isn't shiny, so it's not useful. The standalone KDirStat is better.
What concerns me about high-speed planes is their vulnerability to terrorism. Heck, who needs a bomb? All you need is a frickin' 50-cal rifle a mile away. One bullet through the cockpit at takeoff, and sit back and watch all hell break loose.
Strangely, Japan already makes heavy use of high-speed trains. And what do their local terrorists do? Drive around downtown spraying a weak poison.
Wasn't anyone paying attention to what just happened in Spain???
Yes, I was paying attention. And it wasn't that great of a target. Of course its very hard to measure the success of terrorism numerically,
The baseline for terrorism is that a bomb in a minivan parked adjacent to an apartment building at night and detonated on a 5 minute timer will kill 200 people. That attack needs only one terrorist to place himself at minor risk of capture.
The Madrid attack had multiple terrorists working in sync, and they killed less than 200. The ratio is probably just 30 victims per terrorist. Plus they're getting arrested now, instead of being free to repeat it on following months (so the form of attack must've been riskier than the apartment-bombings popular in eastern Europe).
Of course, there are other measurements where hitting a transportation system is better- the shutdown will disrupt the economy, for example. And travellers from across the nation might make better victims than residents of a single city.
Do the figures you cite include the massive governmental subsidies of highway systems?
And don't forget the federal subsidy on gasoline importation (which also aids rail lines, but to a lesser extent). That adds up to more than $100 billion some years.
The recent "Operation Iraqi Freedom", for example, was really an oil-industry subsidy.
You're a mechanical engineer, and you don't understand that air travel is safer than train travel?
Air travel is much more dangerous overall. Not for the travellers themselves, but for everybody.
Planes can be trivially weaponized to an extent that trains simply cannot achieve. A single well-aimed plane crash can dwarf national railways deaths for a whole year.
Even if you discount the factors of terrorism and warfare, trains are still statistically much safer than planes per passenger-hour. (Per passenger-mile, the plane improves to the point where it's hard to measure the winner).
Occasionally the airline industry is able to trumpet "12 months with zero passenger deaths", but that statistically anomaly is from the disparity in sample size and affulence.
Ur, he asked 2 things. One was about frameworks, the other was for an application.
Ur, he asked one thing, and it was neither of the two things you "answered".
Transcode is handy to mention, but MPI should not be considered as the path forward for problems of this class (which includes both compiling and video encoding)
high-speed cars though (which you don't have in the USA)
No, Americans have fast cars- they just don't acknowledge it legally. It's normal to see Texans travelling between Houston and Dallas at 150 km/h.
(Then, when the tires burst from exceeding the rated speed, the whole 8 tonne car will roll onto its back because it needed extra height to be a "sport" vehicle)
hint: the proper term for citizens of the United States of America is "Americans", for citizens of the United States of Mexico is "Mexicans", etc
Hint: "American" properly means "A resident of America", which is a pair of continents (not a country as some geographically-impaired individuals have assumed).
Compare with "European" (resident of the continent Europe) and "Asian" (resident of the continent Asia)
Citizens of the USA are called "US citizens", or USians as an internet-only abbreviation. Widely-recognized colloquial forms include "Yank" and "Great Satan".
and thus can be used for calulcations that are not trivially parralisable.
MPI is not what he wants. Both of the applications tji asked for are video recompression tasks. Those fall deep in the "trivially parralisable" category.
Just split up the input file into megabyte chunks, allow each helper computer to convert one chunk, then concatenate the results on the master. There is no need for the helper computers to communicate amoungst themselves while the calculation is going on, which is the ability MPI enables.
Slashdot Mirror
The post you replied to never said "everyone," and didn't seem to imply that either.
Quiz time! Find the word "everyone" in this sentence:
"Everyone should respect the copyright of the GPL."
It does not apply as between private parties.
An agreement between individuals is not a law, so that's irrelevant to "What part of no law..."
Even significant rights may be impinged if there is a compelling state interest and the restriction used to accomplish that interest is the least restrictive means.
Then the Constitution should've said so. "Compelling state interest to abridge rights" is a dangerous concept to let stand, because it can also be applied to speedy & fair trials, uncompensated seizure of property, and more...
As it stands, both the criminal libel code and campaign-finance regulations are both unconstitutional on their faces. (Blatant unconstitutionality is of course only a minor barrier to widespread enforcement of a USA law).
Blacklists and whitelists both have been shown to be problematic at best for most instances.
Blacklists are fundamentally imperfect, but whitelists can work great with only some minor technical steps needed. The only additional requirement is some way for a non-whitelisted sender to get a message to you, by having additional transactional cost transfered onto her. Both micropaynments and computational time ("hashcash") have been proposed (by Bill Gates, amoung others), and either could work (with varying degrees of infrastructural prerequisites)
Someone might respond with "Well if whitelists are so great, then why aren't we happily using them already?" That's a variant of the "neophobic" fallacy. In this case, the response is simple: An effective spamfighting system hasn't been created yet because spam is not a big problem.
That last might shock internet activists, but its true. Spam is not bothersome enough to encourage average consumers to really demand solutions. Normal AOL users are inured to unsolicited commercials, and power-users are resigned to workarounds (such as fearfully protecting their email addresses from public view on web pages).
If there was a strong enough desire to solve the problem, it'd get solved.
So the Nazi extermination of Ashkenazi Jews and the Roma, who are both 'white' peoples, wasn't racism?
I didn't say that racism only means skin colour. But of the 3 factors you listed (skin colour, religion, culture), only one of them is tied to race.
Reglious and cultural persecution exists, but it is not racism.
On the other hand, Roma appear very dark compared to the German Aryan ideal.
At this point, we have to conclude that people continue to buy insecure software either
I suggest an additional reason: People continue using insecure software because they (to some extent) can rely on the US FBI and other law-enforcers to protect them from defects and exploits.
Many disruptive hackers and virus-authors have found themselves in prison after lengthy manhunts, for example. This creates a "case closed, problem solved" mentality in the public, and reassures them to go back to doing things the way they always have.
If the government were to expend less effort pursuing and punishing those who exploit software flaws, then consumers would become less willing to pay for insecure software. (And as a side-effect, FBI agents would have more time to hunt actual terrorists)
By 'racism against Indians', I mean the assumption that Indians are less intelligent, or less capable of producing good code, because of their skin colour or religion or culture.
That's a misdefinition of "racism". Only skin colour is reasonably tied to racism- relgion and culture are non-racial things that can also become objects of discrimination.
With closed source (proprietary) solutions, they compile it themselves, so they (e.g. Microsoft) would be responsible.
No system based on "who compiles it" (or similar) can protect Debian without creating a loophole for Microsoft.
For example, Microsoft could just ship a compiler with each copy of Windows, and then distribute their applications (and most of Windows itself) in encrypted, obfuscated source code.
Wouldnt it just be easier to pass laws making software vendors responsible for the bugs that they produce instead of spending our tax money to provide a shelter for insecure code?
That's half an acceptable idea, and half a horrible one.
Not spending federal funds to protect insecure code: good.
Spending federal funds to punish insecure code: bad.
(Notice the pattern here? "Spending federal funds" should be considered a bad thing in general, unless specifically shown otherwise. Smaller government should be preferred by default.)
If the government scaled back on spending to capture and punish virus-authors and other hackers*, they'd save money, enhance freedom of speech, and yet authors of insecure software would still be punished.
They'd just be punished in the marketplace, not the courts. And that's the best place for it.
Imagine if the next time an Outlook worm brought down all email servers for 12 hours, the police found the guy and put him back on the street with a $100 fine? Microsoft would suddenly face a tremendous pressure to finally fix the code, or face losing all their big corporate customers. Allowing the free market to dispense punishment in the form of lost revenue is the best way, because it shields small hobbyiest programmers from arrest when a user claims "Your screen-saver erased my hard-drive!"
* Yes, virus authors are really one kind of hacker, no matter what ESR claims
But the govt. , like any entity/company, can take open source to use....can modify it, and don't have to release the 'secret' parts at all. Can be used as they want internally.
That is incorrect, although it is a common myth. But in reality, most Open Source licenses have no exception for "internal" use. (BSD does, but GPL does not).
Having managed software acquisition and development for the DoD, I know what I'm talking about. At one point they wanted to use Trolltech's QT in a project. But they didn't want to pay for it, and the GPL wouldn't let them keep the software secret otherwise. So they didn't use QT.
Unapproved drivers/video codecs/etc. in Windows XP still get installed -- a lot.
Because you can't be thrown in jail for installing them. Yet.
In all matters, the government tries to be fair to all parties involved, as well as show concern to its constituents.
Superb troll! There's a hilariously blatant giveaway in the first line, and the moderators still fell for it!
It costs $90 to register a corporation (in my state) and $15 annually to maintain that registration. No matter if you have earnings over $1B or just over $100. There is no favoratism,
And even with silly examples like that, mods don't pick up on it. Hint: a flat per-corporation fee of $90 is a fatal bias against the hypothetical $100-revenue company in that example. But since such companies don't exist, the whole example is just silly.
I thought it would be better to debunk your reactionary rhetoric.
Please, go ahead, if you think you can.
I have one simple recommendation I keep giving the government (and they keep ignoring me):
- Stop subsidizing insecure software with taxpayer dollars.
I've yet to read a cogent argument against that idea.Issue advisiories. There are organizations like CERT that do this."
Have you heard that CERT has been subsumed by the United States Department of Homeland Security?
While I agree that Sharp should include X11 capabilities by default, my reasons are different then yours. I don't think most of your hopes would pan out.
until the thing ships with X11, it's no more than a PDA,
At least for the prior Zaurus versions, X11 would've been worthless for the uses you describe. With a 240x320 screen, you can't even view a single Save File box from a popular desktop program.
Editing the software to function sanely on a smaller screen is technically possible, but it requires not only programming skills, but also a level of artistry few have reached.
Several QT apps were ported to Zaurus and shrunk down, but they're still awkward to use in comparison to Palm or even many WinCE apps. In fact, because the main Zaurus UI looks much like a microscopic KDE, it too has grave usability flaws.
In short, ease of porting desktop apps can actually be a liability, because rewriting the GUI will force the developer to create it entirely PDA-focused.
Going to 480x640 will ameliorate the above problems, of course... but will it be enough?
Anyway, I said I believed that Zaurus should include X11 standard. My reasoning is not that it'll make porting apps trivial, but that it'll enhance the device's power for end-users. (It will also accelerate the workflow for writing PDA apps, but that's a separate benefit)
The important point is that not only should there be an X server running on the PDA, but also on the desktop. A Win32 Xserver should automatically be installed along with whatever "Qtopia Desktop" sync software comes with the Zaurus. When the Zaurus is plugged in, the desktop software should present a list of every X11 application on the PDA, which the user can click to view on her desktop. This has many cool possibilities.
Additionally, since the Zaurus can act like a USB storage device, it could hold a mini XServer program that can be executed in place on any desktop computer the user happens to find himself nearby. This gives you the benefit of having all the data carried with you on a PDA, but still being able to manipulate it with a large, comfortable desktops that are scattered far and wide about the landscape.
Not to mention that I can develop commercial and free software for Palm without paying anybody.
Technically you can write commercial Zaurus software without payment, as long as you don't use Qt/emb. You can make a Java program. Or a native binary can write to the console, or access the screen device directly, or use libSDL or such. Of course, any choice other than Qt will worsen the already poor state of inter-application consistency...
if they want to sync with your e-mail client, has to either pick-and-choose which clients to support, or must support them all!
Or they could instead just provide a modicum of support for other developers to provide sync utilities. Just include a program which syncs the PDA's data with a single fat XML file on your desktop, and let the J. Random Hacker take it from there.
But instead, not only did Sharp not add a "Sync to Self-Explanatory File" feature, they've actually changed the PDA formats used by the Zaurus as the line has developed.
I would imagine that tech support would be a nightmare if they tried.
Corporations are free to add specific "experimental" product features which their tech-support is instructed to ignore. It would be a small effort to allow neutral-format export, and from then on, it ceases to be their problem.
this one that represents file sizes
KDE's filemanager has an optional mode to view like that (the FSPartView plugin). But it isn't shiny, so it's not useful. The standalone KDirStat is better.
Slightly OT, but Jar Jar reminds me of the Drunken Master prestige class in D&D...
This kind of cultural ignorance is just saddening. Even if it's pop-culture... everybody should've at least heard of Jackie Chan.
You wouldn't say that Viggo Morgensten reminds you of the Ranger from D&D, would you?
What concerns me about high-speed planes is their vulnerability to terrorism. Heck, who needs a bomb?
All you need is a frickin' 50-cal rifle a mile away. One bullet through the cockpit at takeoff, and sit back and watch all hell break loose.
Strangely, Japan already makes heavy use of high-speed trains. And what do their local terrorists do? Drive around downtown spraying a weak poison.
Wasn't anyone paying attention to what just happened in Spain???
Yes, I was paying attention. And it wasn't that great of a target. Of course its very hard to measure the success of terrorism numerically,
The baseline for terrorism is that a bomb in a minivan parked adjacent to an apartment building at night and detonated on a 5 minute timer will kill 200 people. That attack needs only one terrorist to place himself at minor risk of capture.
The Madrid attack had multiple terrorists working in sync, and they killed less than 200. The ratio is probably just 30 victims per terrorist. Plus they're getting arrested now, instead of being free to repeat it on following months (so the form of attack must've been riskier than the apartment-bombings popular in eastern Europe).
Of course, there are other measurements where hitting a transportation system is better- the shutdown will disrupt the economy, for example. And travellers from across the nation might make better victims than residents of a single city.
Do the figures you cite include the massive governmental subsidies of highway systems?
And don't forget the federal subsidy on gasoline importation (which also aids rail lines, but to a lesser extent). That adds up to more than $100 billion some years.
The recent "Operation Iraqi Freedom", for example, was really an oil-industry subsidy.
Completely wrong. The airport check-in time is so long because planes go up in the sky, while trains are stuck on tracks.
Being on tracks means
Train stations don't waste as much time on security because trains don't need as much security. More popularity won't change this.
You're a mechanical engineer, and you don't understand that air travel is safer than train travel?
Air travel is much more dangerous overall. Not for the travellers themselves, but for everybody.
Planes can be trivially weaponized to an extent that trains simply cannot achieve. A single well-aimed plane crash can dwarf national railways deaths for a whole year.
Even if you discount the factors of terrorism and warfare, trains are still statistically much safer than planes per passenger-hour. (Per passenger-mile, the plane improves to the point where it's hard to measure the winner).
Occasionally the airline industry is able to trumpet "12 months with zero passenger deaths", but that statistically anomaly is from the disparity in sample size and affulence.
Ur, he asked 2 things. One was about frameworks, the other was for an application.
Ur, he asked one thing, and it was neither of the two things you "answered".
Transcode is handy to mention, but MPI should not be considered as the path forward for problems of this class (which includes both compiling and video encoding)
high-speed cars though (which you don't have in the USA)
No, Americans have fast cars- they just don't acknowledge it legally. It's normal to see Texans travelling between Houston and Dallas at 150 km/h.
(Then, when the tires burst from exceeding the rated speed, the whole 8 tonne car will roll onto its back because it needed extra height to be a "sport" vehicle)
hint: the proper term for citizens of the United States of America is "Americans", for citizens of the United States of Mexico is "Mexicans", etc
Hint: "American" properly means "A resident of America", which is a pair of continents (not a country as some geographically-impaired individuals have assumed).
Compare with "European" (resident of the continent Europe) and "Asian" (resident of the continent Asia)
Citizens of the USA are called "US citizens", or USians as an internet-only abbreviation. Widely-recognized colloquial forms include "Yank" and "Great Satan".
and thus can be used for calulcations that are not trivially parralisable.
MPI is not what he wants. Both of the applications tji asked for are video recompression tasks. Those fall deep in the "trivially parralisable" category.
Just split up the input file into megabyte chunks, allow each helper computer to convert one chunk, then concatenate the results on the master. There is no need for the helper computers to communicate amoungst themselves while the calculation is going on, which is the ability MPI enables.