This reminds me of another major government cover-up lately.
Remember the recent tobacco settlements? Billions of dollars the government is seizing from the evil tobacco manufacturers in order to protect us? Does anyone think the government didn't know about what was going on all along? So they ignore their own medical experts, pass laws to support and tax tobacco companies and all of sudden when the public finally figures it out, the government jumps in to protect us. They were the chief business partner of the tobacco companies. And yet most Americans think the settlement was fair. The Government, who profited enormously from the tobacco companies and knew all along it was hurting us, suddenly becomes our defender and takes more money from the tobacco companies. It's hypocritical political slimery.
This California thing sounds just like it. The auto manufacturers all meet the laws on the books. They in good faith work to reduce pollution and succeed. And now all of a sudden the government sues them because what they have been doing all along isn't enough. Does anyone alive think that California government should NOT be listed as a defendant in this case? Seems they are guilty of the exact same actions as those they are accusing.
Ah what the heck does it matter? Americas Government system is at a point of meltdown. Corruption, extremist, intentional public lying - we can't be far from a revolution.
I get a real kick out of reading some of the comments. Some people, programmers for the most part I assume just don't get it.
What would TV commercials be like if they all were written and produced by software programmers? It would be incredibly ugly and boring.
Do the people that make commercials think them out, write out a script and then turn it over to a programmer to produce? NO. They have tools like Adobe After Effects and Final Cut (and other high end stuff most people here never heard of).
I have not looked in depth at the flash approach, but I am investing a lot of time becoming as smart as I can at the Microsoft approach (XAML). This is a huge change in the way applications can be written; allowing designers to declaratively specify the User Interface. It might not apply to every single application out there, but in the ones where it makes sense, your application can become as creative and appealing as a super bowl commercial. Microsoft is giving the designers After Affect like tools to create their designs and they are not dependent on the developer to make it happen. And, it can happen in parallel. It does not need to be a back and forth effort as it currently is.
Programmers need to remember that it is not just programmers who use computers anymore. I know this is less true with the Slashdot crowd, but the computer illiterate user population has overtaken us quite a few years ago. Applications need to be visually appealing to people who are not computer professionals - changing the terminal font family and size is no longer enough. For years a lot of this crowd has talked about how much better the OS X interface is - well this is an effort to get rid of the OS UI limits and leave it up to the designers. Yes, we could have always done that with code, but now we are putting high end tools, like After Effects, in the hands of the UI designer and saying, "Let's see what you can come up with." Some will fail, and some will be great.
The biggest problem I see in this is I'm still stuck with clients who think every app should be web based. Microsoft's approach to web apps is the same as the previously failed Java web app approach - the browser simply hosts a local application. (I'm not saying the Java approach was bad or wrong, just that it has ZERO adoption and momentum). I don't have a lot of faith that web based XAML will do any better than web based Java applets (not script) did.
Credit reporting institutions and banks are some of the worst most disorganized institutions there is.
Take for example Bank of America, who lost thousands of customer records not long ago.
My first personal experience was that I had bogus charges from a moving company. They trashed my belongings and then charged without authorization the credit card I used initially. I wrote letters, made phone and Bank of America would do nothing about it, except report me to the credit bureau. That in turned caused the interest on my other accounts to go beyond what even a loan shark would charge (30%+). It also prevented from getting a home equity loan on a paid in full house when I really needed it - so now the bad credit I am further accumulating is real.
The banks and the credit bureau have the politicians so in their pocket it isn't funny. Does anyone think the recent changes to bankruptcy laws were to the benefit of ANY of the public?
My second experience was the mistake of suing a bank for blatant errors and illegal activity, removing funds from my account after an explicit in writing instructions not to. For some reason, the sheriff's department could not locate the bank to serve the warrant (5 local branches). But I now have the benefit of not being welcomed at any bank in my town. It's not only the politicians the banks have in there pocket.
No reply? Looks like someone else realized they may be in over their head:)
Re:Crypto is scary stuff
on
Crypto Snake Oil
·
· Score: 0, Troll
why would i back down? But tell you what - arguing with you now on this thread serves me no purpose - the government likes your type, it makes their job a lot easier - but I will offer to step up my game, write out big long sentences so that even slashdot crowds can understand them when the next crypto article comes around or gets repeated.
We can keep it civilized - i had a dozen arguments against your points earlier but i was too lazy to post them - but when they will be seen by more people I will gladly share them with you.
Deal? remind me if I forget - spiked3@gmail.com
google Kryptos - that was 'designed' by the man i worked for - not the artist.
peace
Re:Crypto is scary stuff
on
Crypto Snake Oil
·
· Score: 0, Troll
"Ohh, you're one of those people. The paranoid, cynic, LBJ-killed-Kennedy people with more willingness to post on slashdot than knowledge about the subject."
Nope, just someone with more security clearences than you'll ever know of who worked for a retired head of cryptography, CIA for a couple of years. Take your math and shove it, it has nothing to do with solving the problem.
That's double BS. Let's just be real honest with ourselves; with our big brother US government - there isn't an (unclassified) encryption scheme that they can't rip through like butter. Do really think they would let encrypted messages go across the internet if they couldn't get at them if they wanted to? Have you seen the news lately?
"Either you are lying or you have completely misunderstood the matter."
Obviously you have never done any research on areas that threaten national interests. People get visited every day and ask to 'study something else'. Refuse and you get to meet Mr. IRS man. I've seen it.
"Both open source, both readily available, and both uncrackable"
LOL
Look - you're obviously a little naive on reality here. The world is not a nice safe place and given the opportunity people will not all 'just get along'. There are sciences that you are totally ignoring because, well the government(s) doesn't want you to think about them - but go dig out an old movie - like Mercury Rising - and open your mind up a bit to reality based fiction.
I have been programming for 20+ years. The last 5 or so was done from home. One day I had the brainstorm that since I worked at home I could move somewhere less expensive and with less traffic, so I packed up and moved to east Tennessee.
Guess what I found? They barely have internet here. I had to pay $600 a month for a T1 from Bell South and then found out the infrastructure and/or local workers could not make it run reliably. I had SLAs which were totally ignored. Monthly credits were usually close to the cost. And finally the line went down completely for over a month. I was forced to switch back to dial up, and if I got a 2400 baud connection I felt (feel) special.
Needless to say, I have lost all of my clients, all of my work, they take my car in a month. Moving is not an option for unrelated reasons, but the bottom line is there are still places in the country where internet can not be reasonably obtained (i put satellite in the unreasonable group - it sucks - try VPNing with a dish) and it cost me everything. No this is not made up.
Actually I don't feel bad at all. Every where I look I see nothing but college trained monkeys trying to find a way to convince me to buy something.
Hell even college itself is not about learning, but about learning to put up with bull shit for 4 years and pay someone for it. What employer wouldn't want to hire someone that stupid (with a college degree)? Everything in your life (in the US and its equivalent peer countries) is a way for the top 5% to make more money.
I hate the fact that selling has become a science of thought control, but I guess it's slightly better than the thought control that religion tries to accomplish.
OK, I owned a pro broadcast post production studio in the early 90's. Most of our work was for 'news releases' done for corporations. You know, the ones like 'oompa oompa elementary school installs PCs in every classroom' and of course it was IBM that funded the 'news story'. Like I said, MOST of our work was this kind of production.
I can't believe anyone is making a big deal out of it now - probably %70 percent of the news you have seen in your lifetime was paid for by a corporation.
Do you feel there is any connection between Islamic radicals, terrorism and Microsoft?
I suppose you would argue that it's not about religion, but more about the attempt to suppress open source?
When i was a kid it definitely was the case that parents were legally responsible. I personally know parents (more than 1 including my own) who paid fines, one even served a night in jail for the kids mischievous.
Times have changed i guess. Time to hook my kids up with some bank cracking software I guess.
ok, i admit i haven't RTF'd, but since "Eventually her kid owns up to file sharing" when did the parent become not responsible for what their kids do? What is the basis for the eventual dismissal? Seems like we now have an admission of guilt and a responsible party?
I wouldnt argue with any of that. I don't think Microsoft was out front but they wanted to be and had to re-arrange the priorities because of the things i mentioned.
I have tried the various things from IBM and they suck as bad as anything else i've seen. Until some company with billions of R&D funds can prioritize this, we're stuck with double deletes. I guess we can only hope it is one of Ozzy's passions as well.
Why, you cant read a web page on your own? Try that link, there is a menu item on the left (ask your mommy if you dont know left from right) for press releases. There are quite a few mentioned there. Oh look, some of the research is done with universities! Isn't that exciting?
apparently the rock i'm under has more light than yours. Have you never heard of Micosoft Research?
http://research.microsoft.com/
There is a lot of technology that comes from there, asshole.
Here is a different perspective on why speech recognition STILL sucks;
Natural language interaction is one of BillG's hot buttons. Back in 95 he used to love demonstrating with poly the parrot. Polly the parrot could recognize speech and react to it - like "play miles davis". He demo'd it many times, and yes, it occasionally glitched but the potential was pretty cool. When he built his house, he put speech recognition technology all through it, thinking that it would be perfected very soon.
WTF happened? Well along came this distraction called 'the internet' and 'netscape'. And then another distraction called 'open source' and 'linux'. As a result of those distractions it set natural language recognition back 10 years. Yep, this is case where competition has stifled a particular innovation. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, maybe competition encouraged 5 other innovations, but I am positive it stifled this one in particular.
OK, the answer to the question, did ATT give the government call records is blatently obvious. The real question is should that be legal? I think the court just took the easy way out and said they didn't want to get involved. The only way to change this is by voting.
I'm not sure how I feel about the true question. I have worked with the spooks and I can tell you for a fact, they save lives. Whether I would rather have less privacy and less terrorism v. more privacy and more terrorism is a tough call to make (get it, call to make?:) ).
"Friedrichs noted that in the Linux networking stack, vulnerabilities and stability issues continue to surface well over five years after it was first released."
And about vista's new stack "This may provide for a more stable networking stack in the long term, but stability will suffer in the short term."
I think the report overall is positive for Vista. ANYONE who expects a new OS to come out bug free is a fool. Unfortunately, on CNET as on Slashdot, a positive microsoft article isn't news, thus the SPIN.
I play with a lot of R/C stuff - planes, helicopters etc. And the warnings about Li-Po batteries are pretty explicit. If you where to crash a plane with a Li-PO you need to set the battery in a fire proof container and keep an eye on it for an hour or so. Also never charge Li-Po un-attended - people have burned down houses because of it.
I suspect the laptop had a hard drop sometime in the not to distant past, got picked up, put on charge and kaboom.
The question is what is the right thing to do? Ban the batteries or make better efforts in consumer education? In the R/C hobby we are smart enough (well the majority anyhow) to treat Li-Pos with respect - but consumer laptops, that's somewhat scary.
Slashdot Mirror
This reminds me of another major government cover-up lately.
Remember the recent tobacco settlements? Billions of dollars the government is seizing from the evil tobacco manufacturers in order to protect us? Does anyone think the government didn't know about what was going on all along? So they ignore their own medical experts, pass laws to support and tax tobacco companies and all of sudden when the public finally figures it out, the government jumps in to protect us. They were the chief business partner of the tobacco companies. And yet most Americans think the settlement was fair. The Government, who profited enormously from the tobacco companies and knew all along it was hurting us, suddenly becomes our defender and takes more money from the tobacco companies. It's hypocritical political slimery.
This California thing sounds just like it. The auto manufacturers all meet the laws on the books. They in good faith work to reduce pollution and succeed. And now all of a sudden the government sues them because what they have been doing all along isn't enough. Does anyone alive think that California government should NOT be listed as a defendant in this case? Seems they are guilty of the exact same actions as those they are accusing.
Ah what the heck does it matter? Americas Government system is at a point of meltdown. Corruption, extremist, intentional public lying - we can't be far from a revolution.
Nope, sorry, I used to own a post house, we had designers who deliver TV ready video. I'm not sure where you got that idea.
I get a real kick out of reading some of the comments. Some people, programmers for the most part I assume just don't get it.
What would TV commercials be like if they all were written and produced by software programmers? It would be incredibly ugly and boring.
Do the people that make commercials think them out, write out a script and then turn it over to a programmer to produce? NO. They have tools like Adobe After Effects and Final Cut (and other high end stuff most people here never heard of).
I have not looked in depth at the flash approach, but I am investing a lot of time becoming as smart as I can at the Microsoft approach (XAML). This is a huge change in the way applications can be written; allowing designers to declaratively specify the User Interface. It might not apply to every single application out there, but in the ones where it makes sense, your application can become as creative and appealing as a super bowl commercial. Microsoft is giving the designers After Affect like tools to create their designs and they are not dependent on the developer to make it happen. And, it can happen in parallel. It does not need to be a back and forth effort as it currently is.
Programmers need to remember that it is not just programmers who use computers anymore. I know this is less true with the Slashdot crowd, but the computer illiterate user population has overtaken us quite a few years ago. Applications need to be visually appealing to people who are not computer professionals - changing the terminal font family and size is no longer enough. For years a lot of this crowd has talked about how much better the OS X interface is - well this is an effort to get rid of the OS UI limits and leave it up to the designers. Yes, we could have always done that with code, but now we are putting high end tools, like After Effects, in the hands of the UI designer and saying, "Let's see what you can come up with." Some will fail, and some will be great.
The biggest problem I see in this is I'm still stuck with clients who think every app should be web based. Microsoft's approach to web apps is the same as the previously failed Java web app approach - the browser simply hosts a local application. (I'm not saying the Java approach was bad or wrong, just that it has ZERO adoption and momentum). I don't have a lot of faith that web based XAML will do any better than web based Java applets (not script) did.
where I wish someone would just drop a nuc on all the participants.
WTF does so many people crave web apps to begin with?
Credit reporting institutions and banks are some of the worst most disorganized institutions there is.
Take for example Bank of America, who lost thousands of customer records not long ago.
My first personal experience was that I had bogus charges from a moving company. They trashed my belongings and then charged without authorization the credit card I used initially. I wrote letters, made phone and Bank of America would do nothing about it, except report me to the credit bureau. That in turned caused the interest on my other accounts to go beyond what even a loan shark would charge (30%+). It also prevented from getting a home equity loan on a paid in full house when I really needed it - so now the bad credit I am further accumulating is real.
The banks and the credit bureau have the politicians so in their pocket it isn't funny. Does anyone think the recent changes to bankruptcy laws were to the benefit of ANY of the public?
My second experience was the mistake of suing a bank for blatant errors and illegal activity, removing funds from my account after an explicit in writing instructions not to. For some reason, the sheriff's department could not locate the bank to serve the warrant (5 local branches). But I now have the benefit of not being welcomed at any bank in my town. It's not only the politicians the banks have in there pocket.
LOL
:)
No reply? Looks like someone else realized they may be in over their head
why would i back down? But tell you what - arguing with you now on this thread serves me no purpose - the government likes your type, it makes their job a lot easier - but I will offer to step up my game, write out big long sentences so that even slashdot crowds can understand them when the next crypto article comes around or gets repeated.
We can keep it civilized - i had a dozen arguments against your points earlier but i was too lazy to post them - but when they will be seen by more people I will gladly share them with you.
Deal? remind me if I forget - spiked3@gmail.com
google Kryptos - that was 'designed' by the man i worked for - not the artist.
peace
"Ohh, you're one of those people. The paranoid, cynic, LBJ-killed-Kennedy people with more willingness to post on slashdot than knowledge about the subject." Nope, just someone with more security clearences than you'll ever know of who worked for a retired head of cryptography, CIA for a couple of years. Take your math and shove it, it has nothing to do with solving the problem.
"That's complete BS. It hasn't been cracked"
That's double BS. Let's just be real honest with ourselves; with our big brother US government - there isn't an (unclassified) encryption scheme that they can't rip through like butter. Do really think they would let encrypted messages go across the internet if they couldn't get at them if they wanted to? Have you seen the news lately?
"Either you are lying or you have completely misunderstood the matter."
Obviously you have never done any research on areas that threaten national interests. People get visited every day and ask to 'study something else'. Refuse and you get to meet Mr. IRS man. I've seen it.
"Both open source, both readily available, and both uncrackable"
LOL
Look - you're obviously a little naive on reality here. The world is not a nice safe place and given the opportunity people will not all 'just get along'. There are sciences that you are totally ignoring because, well the government(s) doesn't want you to think about them - but go dig out an old movie - like Mercury Rising - and open your mind up a bit to reality based fiction.
I have been programming for 20+ years. The last 5 or so was done from home. One day I had the brainstorm that since I worked at home I could move somewhere less expensive and with less traffic, so I packed up and moved to east Tennessee.
Guess what I found? They barely have internet here. I had to pay $600 a month for a T1 from Bell South and then found out the infrastructure and/or local workers could not make it run reliably. I had SLAs which were totally ignored. Monthly credits were usually close to the cost. And finally the line went down completely for over a month. I was forced to switch back to dial up, and if I got a 2400 baud connection I felt (feel) special.
Needless to say, I have lost all of my clients, all of my work, they take my car in a month. Moving is not an option for unrelated reasons, but the bottom line is there are still places in the country where internet can not be reasonably obtained (i put satellite in the unreasonable group - it sucks - try VPNing with a dish) and it cost me everything. No this is not made up.
ok let's see, that $140 mil divided by Microsoft's cash on hand =
underflow error
nevermind.
Actually I don't feel bad at all. Every where I look I see nothing but college trained monkeys trying to find a way to convince me to buy something.
Hell even college itself is not about learning, but about learning to put up with bull shit for 4 years and pay someone for it. What employer wouldn't want to hire someone that stupid (with a college degree)? Everything in your life (in the US and its equivalent peer countries) is a way for the top 5% to make more money.
I hate the fact that selling has become a science of thought control, but I guess it's slightly better than the thought control that religion tries to accomplish.
OK, I owned a pro broadcast post production studio in the early 90's. Most of our work was for 'news releases' done for corporations. You know, the ones like 'oompa oompa elementary school installs PCs in every classroom' and of course it was IBM that funded the 'news story'. Like I said, MOST of our work was this kind of production.
I can't believe anyone is making a big deal out of it now - probably %70 percent of the news you have seen in your lifetime was paid for by a corporation.
Do you feel there is any connection between Islamic radicals, terrorism and Microsoft? I suppose you would argue that it's not about religion, but more about the attempt to suppress open source?
OK - i will have to admit i missed it then.
When i was a kid it definitely was the case that parents were legally responsible. I personally know parents (more than 1 including my own) who paid fines, one even served a night in jail for the kids mischievous.
Times have changed i guess. Time to hook my kids up with some bank cracking software I guess.
ok, i admit i haven't RTF'd,
but since
"Eventually her kid owns up to file sharing"
when did the parent become not responsible for what their kids do?
What is the basis for the eventual dismissal? Seems like we now have an admission of guilt and a responsible party?
I wouldnt argue with any of that. I don't think Microsoft was out front but they wanted to be and had to re-arrange the priorities because of the things i mentioned.
I have tried the various things from IBM and they suck as bad as anything else i've seen. Until some company with billions of R&D funds can prioritize this, we're stuck with double deletes. I guess we can only hope it is one of Ozzy's passions as well.
Why, you cant read a web page on your own? Try that link, there is a menu item on the left (ask your mommy if you dont know left from right) for press releases. There are quite a few mentioned there. Oh look, some of the research is done with universities! Isn't that exciting?
apparently the rock i'm under has more light than yours. Have you never heard of Micosoft Research? http://research.microsoft.com/ There is a lot of technology that comes from there, asshole.
Here is a different perspective on why speech recognition STILL sucks;
Natural language interaction is one of BillG's hot buttons. Back in 95 he used to love demonstrating with poly the parrot. Polly the parrot could recognize speech and react to it - like "play miles davis". He demo'd it many times, and yes, it occasionally glitched but the potential was pretty cool. When he built his house, he put speech recognition technology all through it, thinking that it would be perfected very soon.
WTF happened? Well along came this distraction called 'the internet' and 'netscape'. And then another distraction called 'open source' and 'linux'. As a result of those distractions it set natural language recognition back 10 years. Yep, this is case where competition has stifled a particular innovation. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, maybe competition encouraged 5 other innovations, but I am positive it stifled this one in particular.
Just a different thing to think about...
Yes, i have witnessed proof.
Any other thoughts on the matter are naive.
Get a life.
OK, the answer to the question, did ATT give the government call records is blatently obvious.
:) ).
The real question is should that be legal?
I think the court just took the easy way out and said they didn't want to get involved.
The only way to change this is by voting.
I'm not sure how I feel about the true question. I have worked with the spooks and I can tell you for a fact, they save lives. Whether I would rather have less privacy and less terrorism v. more privacy and more terrorism is a tough call to make (get it, call to make?
Anyhow - vote your choice and quit bitching.
"Friedrichs noted that in the Linux networking stack, vulnerabilities and stability issues continue to surface well over five years after it was first released."
And about vista's new stack "This may provide for a more stable networking stack in the long term, but stability will suffer in the short term."
I think the report overall is positive for Vista. ANYONE who expects a new OS to come out bug free is a fool. Unfortunately, on CNET as on Slashdot, a positive microsoft article isn't news, thus the SPIN.
I play with a lot of R/C stuff - planes, helicopters etc. And the warnings about Li-Po batteries are pretty explicit. If you where to crash a plane with a Li-PO you need to set the battery in a fire proof container and keep an eye on it for an hour or so. Also never charge Li-Po un-attended - people have burned down houses because of it.
I suspect the laptop had a hard drop sometime in the not to distant past, got picked up, put on charge and kaboom.
The question is what is the right thing to do? Ban the batteries or make better efforts in consumer education? In the R/C hobby we are smart enough (well the majority anyhow) to treat Li-Pos with respect - but consumer laptops, that's somewhat scary.
http://www.laureanno.com/RC/fire-pics.htm
on whether or not they were encrypting anything important. If they were then they were idiots.