My first reaction to this was to scream & point out the obvious; that MS should be held liable for Windows security bugs, but who will have the $ and clout to win a lawsuit against MS if the DoJ couldn't sue 'em?
But then thinking further, I had a vision of a new virus that, instead of trashing your hard drive, established your machine as a Gnutella server, and made your whole HD visible.
I'd really love to see the defendents plead they didn't know their files were visible then! Heck, I'd love to see what the judge thinks!
My impression is the whole thing was a publicity stunt....
The whole thing makes absolutely no sense, except to get people to
read the "I'm so sorry I hurt the artists I love - please kids dont do
P2P!" message.
Possible but unlikely. If the RIAA wanted a publicity stunt, wouldn't they be better off suing a 12-year-old middle-class student? Or a college student?
What also strikes me is the utter hypocrasy of companies like Sony. If they are so against file sharing/piracy etc why do they promote and sell products such as CD/DVD writers, mp3 players, netMiniDiscs etc..?
The right hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing. Consider that AOL is the world's largest ISP, and certainly profit from P2P. But Warner is one of the founding members of the RIAA. So AOL/TW is selling broadband, and then suing people who use it to download MP3s!
And the industry wonders why broadband doesn't do too well!
The telemarketing industry estimates the do-not-call list could cut its business in half,
I'm confused. This means that half the people that buy products from telemarketers will sign up and therefore prevent themselves from buying new products?
Someone's being really stupid here. Is it the people that buy products & prevent themselves from buying more? Is it the telemarketers making this up? Or is it just me?
So how would I go about paying someone online? Today I could use a credit card or Paypal at someone's web site...how could this be done from an ATM? (No, I'm not gonna try to punch in the recipient's URL!)
That's a rather critical detail not mentioned in the article.
Re:Actually thats the recommended approach
on
Inkblot Passwords
·
· Score: 1
though your post was meant to be humorous it also jibes with convention security wisdom for recalling strong passwords.
I forget who it was that said it, but a widely recomended strategy for strong passwords is to think of a shockingly graphic sexual phrase then use the first letters.
The vividness and the link to sexual activity makes it memorable (at least in males). And also its not likely to be a phase you would blurt out or something anyone cold easily guess about you.
Exactly, No one here ever blurts out shocking sexual phrases...we're a very civilized bunch. Anyone who disagrees can kindly kiss my....er...sig!
Sorry dude, but your title is misleading. I think you're implying that CEO's and other corporate leaders should be more afraid of revenge wrought as a result of their behavior. But how many terrorists target CEO's and leave the innocent population alone? How many individuals in the WTC had 'bad behavior'?
A terrorist can (and does) strike fear in the hearts of the just and unjust alike...wouldn't you rather strike fear in the hearts of the unjust and leave the just alone? Much harder problem...
These stats have actually remained fairly constant for a couple of weeks now. Back in May there was a lot of fluctuation on the EDonkey vs Overnet, and FastTrack was around 4.5M. I suppose it dropped because college students went home for the summer.
At any rate, Slyck's stats have noted no increase or decrease in filesharing in the last two weeks. So the media hype (both ways) seems to be just that...hype.
The TGZ packaging scheme (also mentioned in the article, along with RPM and DEB) just... Well... Sucks.
Show some respect, ya young whippersnapper. The TGZ is admittedly less
featureful than deb or RPM...mainly because its older...much
older. Who hasn't used tar and gzip at *some* time to transport files?
They have their uses, and until RPM & Co came along they worked pretty
damn well...especially considering that they are two programs that
were originally intended for general-purpose compression and making
backup tape archives!
What Linux really needs is a dir-independent application running system. Imagine a package of...oh, say, g++, where g++ runs properly even if you move the whole g++ package to a different dir (say from/usr/bin to/usr/local/bin). Most packages, including g++, configure themselves to run in one location, and they'll get confused if you move 'em.
Some packages (eg Tomcat) let you move them and they'll still work...but only if you set an environment variable (eg TOMCAT_HOME) so that Tomcat now knows where it lives. In a proper environment, an application could easily & consistently know where it currently resides on the filesystem *cough* OSX *cough*.
What Linux needs is some standard 'run-app' script that would inform a package of its location. For instance:
That would enable Linux to devise a package format (or better yet, improve rpm, deb, etc) for more flexible package management.
A package would no longer need to place its binary, libraries, manpages, etc. all in hardwired locations in the OS...it could just leave them in its original dir. (or maybe create a 'obj' dir that you can remove if you wish to clean up the package.)
If they can do this right, I'll be very happy. After all, Java's main
advantage over C++ is their abstracting away pointers. Course Java is
still slow, and that pointer abstraction is expensive, in terms of
garbage collection, program speed, and (most important) huge memory
footprint. C++ pointers are a major PITA, but they are fast 'n
cheap. How fast 'n cheap are smart pointers?????
So didn't the RIAA representative just suggest that we should all steal Bibles from our local motels rather than get them online from Freenet?
Hm, that's a really good analogy.
I'm sure if you stole a bible from a motel (personally I'd sooner
lift a _book of Mormon_ from a Marriot myself:), the motel *could*
choose to perse^H^H^Hprosecute you.
Or maybe they would decide that their church is the better for it,
and they will fervently pray that you study it. And come to a service
and drop $ in the plate:)
So maybe stealing bibles is like stealing sales brochures...it does
more good than harm. And maybe....just *maybe*....copying music is
the same?
I just read Feynman's speech
(referenced in someone else's comment.) Feynman has some experience
with psychology experiments there that closely match your own.
The Daubert case is definitely a major milestone in scientific
justice. Cecil Adams
gives a good summary of it here. (He's actually talking about
handwriting analysis, and pointing out that while casual
graphologists are often quacks, the professionals used by the courts
aren't much better.)
I remember hearing (on 60 Minutes IIRC) that a Pennsylvania judge is
questioning fingerprint analysis as legit evidence. I bet Daubert is
responsible for that contraversy as well. Wonder how that turned out.
Right. A good filebrowser can handle cut/copy/paste and only duplicate data under the hood when necessary. (I use KDE's file browser, but its cut/paste flakes out on me sometimes.)
But just because you can force the metaphor to work with some behind-the-scenes hackery doesn't mean its a good metaphor. The only real advantage of cut'n paste is that you are already familiar with it from wordprocessing. Bottom line, cut'n paste can be tweaked to work for file browsers, but move/duplicate is a better metaphor because it doesn't require as much tweaking.
Cutting and Pasting a file on the same volume should ONLY entail changing the entry in the FS table, and not move the data, just its pointed location.
OK, what if you want to:
Paste the file twice, after cutting it once?
(Admittedly doable after a bit of under-the-hood hacking, but
you've just stretched your metaphor rather thin.)
Move the file to a different filesystem (volume, network,
etc). That requires moving the data.
I suppose Apple could implement the cut'n paste metaphor and restrict
its use to intra-volume files. But they didn't want newbies worrying
their pretty little heads about volumes, partitions, and networks. So
is Mr Newbie going to use cut'n paste (which only works within this
here 'volume' thingy), or is Mr Newbie going to use move 'n
duplicate, which doesn't require any knowledge about volumes?
You're right re: Windows file dialog features. It still differs from the desktop or explorer windows in L&F (well, in L at least:)
Maybe the best thing to do is to plot a small-scale image of your desktop in your save dialog as background, at least when it is showing your Desktop directory. And for any other directory use whatever bg you've configured for that dir. Should be easy for Apple.
I suppose Apple could implement a seamless-looking Cut & Paste
functionality.
But the truth is the cut-n-paste is a metaphor that is only suitable
for small data chunks that are 'easy' to duplicate. (eg bits of text)
Files are not 'easy' to duplicate, in the sense that the time for
duplication is linear to the size of the file. (do you really want to
duplicate that 640MB CDROM image just to move it? Yes it's possible,
but who wants to wait that long for duplication just to move the damn
file?) Also since HFS is much more heavily based on an inode-like
structure, a duplicate-then-erase function (which is what cut really
is) is a very different beast semantically than a simple move. For a
texteditor, cut/paste works fine. But for the Finder you really want
move/duplicate.
Imagine being able to place windows anywhere around your head that you liked, or perhaps all over your room, and then manipulating them by hand rather than by mouse.
I don't want to think about where pop-up ads are going to appear! If they can appear anywhere in my room, at least.
And the only way to deal with them will probably still involve only
my middle finger!
Just look at the GTK file dialog for inspiration....
Not sure which dialog you're talking about (Mozilla, and the GIMP have
slightly different dialogs), but I'm not interested in something that
only shows a list (or array a la Windows dialog) of a single
directory's files...even if it does have pretty icon colors:) An
additional list containing directories doesn't cut it.
Ideally, I'd like the open/save dialog to be sort of a
'mini-Finder'. Make it a brushed-metal window that has the same
toolbar and same view of files (eg can be icons, lists, or
columns). Basically the dialog should have the same L&F as the
finder. It would also be nice to indicate to the user that the
default directory to save/open is the same as the desktop, but I'm
not sure how that would best be done.
Bottom line, directories confuse the hell out of new users. And so
does having two different views of your Desktop. Apple is good at not
confusing the hell out of new users...if anyone scratches my itch, it
will be them.
Slashdot Mirror
My first reaction to this was to scream & point out the obvious; that
MS should be held liable for Windows security bugs, but who will have
the $ and clout to win a lawsuit against MS if the DoJ couldn't sue
'em?
But then thinking further, I had a vision of a new virus that,
instead of trashing your hard drive, established your machine as a
Gnutella server, and made your whole HD visible.
I'd really love to see the defendents plead they didn't know their
files were visible then! Heck, I'd love to see what the judge thinks!
My impression is the whole thing was a publicity stunt. ...
The whole thing makes absolutely no sense, except to get people to
read the "I'm so sorry I hurt the artists I love - please kids dont do
P2P!" message.
Possible but unlikely. If the RIAA wanted a publicity stunt, wouldn't
they be better off suing a 12-year-old middle-class student? Or a
college student?
The right hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing. Consider that AOL is the world's largest ISP, and certainly profit from P2P. But Warner is one of the founding members of the RIAA. So AOL/TW is selling broadband, and then suing people who use it to download MP3s!
And the industry wonders why broadband doesn't do too well!
Are you kidding? If the vote is this easy to rig? Congratulations, CmdrTaco, you've been elected!
Videophones will become ubiquitrous only when you can watch pr0n on 'em.
Can you watch pr0n on yours?
IIRC Google took out the offending links, but inserted a link to the C&D order.
I'm confused. This means that half the people that buy products from telemarketers will sign up and therefore prevent themselves from buying new products?
Someone's being really stupid here. Is it the people that buy products & prevent themselves from buying more? Is it the telemarketers making this up? Or is it just me?
So how would I go about paying someone online? Today I could use
a credit card or Paypal at someone's web site...how could this be
done from an ATM? (No, I'm not gonna try to punch in the recipient's
URL!)
That's a rather critical detail not mentioned in the article.
Exactly, No one here ever blurts out shocking sexual phrases...we're
a very civilized bunch. Anyone who disagrees can kindly kiss
my....er...sig!
Sorry dude, but your title is misleading. I think you're implying
that CEO's and other corporate leaders should be more afraid of
revenge wrought as a result of their behavior. But how many
terrorists target CEO's and leave the innocent population alone? How
many individuals in the WTC had 'bad behavior'?
A terrorist can (and does) strike fear in the hearts of the just and
unjust alike...wouldn't you rather strike fear in the hearts of the
unjust and leave the just alone? Much harder problem...
Slyck keeps weekly stats on
filesharing usage...here's the usage statistics today:
FastTrack 3,525,734
iMesh 1,175,244
eDonkey 770,032
Overnet 458,752
MP2P 199,214
These stats have actually remained fairly constant for a couple of
weeks now. Back in May there was a lot of fluctuation on the EDonkey
vs Overnet, and FastTrack was around 4.5M. I suppose it dropped
because college students went home for the summer.
At any rate, Slyck's stats have noted no increase or decrease in
filesharing in the last two weeks. So the media hype (both ways)
seems to be just that...hype.
Move along; nothing to see here.
What Linux really needs is a dir-independent application running /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin). Most packages, including g++, configure
system. Imagine a package of...oh, say, g++, where g++ runs properly
even if you move the whole g++ package to a different dir (say from
themselves to run in one location, and they'll get confused if you
move 'em.
Some packages (eg Tomcat) let you move them and they'll still
work...but only if you set an environment variable (eg TOMCAT_HOME)
so that Tomcat now knows where it lives. In a proper environment, an
application could easily & consistently know where it currently
resides on the filesystem *cough* OSX *cough*.
What Linux needs is some standard 'run-app' script that would inform
a package of its location. For instance:
% run-app tomcat
Run-app would be simple, say, the following:
#!/bin/sh -f
$app = shift
$location = `which $app`
env {$app}_home = $location $location/bin/app
That would enable Linux to devise a package format (or better yet,
improve rpm, deb, etc) for more flexible package management.
A package would no longer need to place its binary, libraries,
manpages, etc. all in hardwired locations in the OS...it could just
leave them in its original dir. (or maybe create a 'obj' dir that you
can remove if you wish to clean up the package.)
If they can do this right, I'll be very happy. After all, Java's main advantage over C++ is their abstracting away pointers. Course Java is still slow, and that pointer abstraction is expensive, in terms of garbage collection, program speed, and (most important) huge memory footprint. C++ pointers are a major PITA, but they are fast 'n cheap. How fast 'n cheap are smart pointers?????
I'm sure if you stole a bible from a motel (personally I'd sooner lift a _book of Mormon_ from a Marriot myself :), the motel *could*
choose to perse^H^H^Hprosecute you.
Or maybe they would decide that their church is the better for it, and they will fervently pray that you study it. And come to a service and drop $ in the plate :)
So maybe stealing bibles is like stealing sales brochures...it does more good than harm. And maybe....just *maybe*....copying music is the same?
Hmm........naaaaw, couldn't be.
1337sp34K English!!!
I just read Feynman's speech (referenced in someone else's comment.) Feynman has some experience with psychology experiments there that closely match your own.
I remember hearing (on 60 Minutes IIRC) that a Pennsylvania judge is questioning fingerprint analysis as legit evidence. I bet Daubert is responsible for that contraversy as well. Wonder how that turned out.
But just because you can force the metaphor to work with some behind-the-scenes hackery doesn't mean its a good metaphor. The only real advantage of cut'n paste is that you are already familiar with it from wordprocessing. Bottom line, cut'n paste can be tweaked to work for file browsers, but move/duplicate is a better metaphor because it doesn't require as much tweaking.
OK, what if you want to:
(Admittedly doable after a bit of under-the-hood hacking, but you've just stretched your metaphor rather thin.)
I suppose Apple could implement the cut'n paste metaphor and restrict its use to intra-volume files. But they didn't want newbies worrying their pretty little heads about volumes, partitions, and networks. So is Mr Newbie going to use cut'n paste (which only works within this here 'volume' thingy), or is Mr Newbie going to use move 'n duplicate, which doesn't require any knowledge about volumes?
Maybe the best thing to do is to plot a small-scale image of your desktop in your save dialog as background, at least when it is showing your Desktop directory. And for any other directory use whatever bg you've configured for that dir. Should be easy for Apple.
But the truth is the cut-n-paste is a metaphor that is only suitable for small data chunks that are 'easy' to duplicate. (eg bits of text) Files are not 'easy' to duplicate, in the sense that the time for duplication is linear to the size of the file. (do you really want to duplicate that 640MB CDROM image just to move it? Yes it's possible, but who wants to wait that long for duplication just to move the damn file?) Also since HFS is much more heavily based on an inode-like structure, a duplicate-then-erase function (which is what cut really is) is a very different beast semantically than a simple move. For a texteditor, cut/paste works fine. But for the Finder you really want move/duplicate.
I don't want to think about where pop-up ads are going to appear! If they can appear anywhere in my room, at least.
And the only way to deal with them will probably still involve only my middle finger!
Not sure which dialog you're talking about (Mozilla, and the GIMP have slightly different dialogs), but I'm not interested in something that only shows a list (or array a la Windows dialog) of a single directory's files...even if it does have pretty icon colors :) An
additional list containing directories doesn't cut it.
Ideally, I'd like the open/save dialog to be sort of a 'mini-Finder'. Make it a brushed-metal window that has the same toolbar and same view of files (eg can be icons, lists, or columns). Basically the dialog should have the same L&F as the finder. It would also be nice to indicate to the user that the default directory to save/open is the same as the desktop, but I'm not sure how that would best be done.
Bottom line, directories confuse the hell out of new users. And so does having two different views of your Desktop. Apple is good at not confusing the hell out of new users...if anyone scratches my itch, it will be them.