Yes I can see a prosecution of downloaders might be hampered by how they were caught, if they were handed (corrupted) files by copyright holders themselves (RIAA/MediaDefender or allies). But 2 points you may have missed:
1) On a Windows system I've once seen a URL being opened as a direct result of playing some video file. Maybe there still exist similar leaks on many (unpatched) client systems out there, that allow arbitrary code execution. In that case: install some monitoring software, gather system info, identifiable data an so forth, and voila: you might proceed to prosecute that person not for sharing the video you handed him/her, but for all other illegal activity done using that computer. Failing that, an inside look in a file sharer's machine could be very helpful for rights holders.
2) By feeding corrupted downloads to users, you make their experience less satisfying, so that said users may turn away from using things like BitTorrent. Or give BT / file sharing in general a bad reputation (as in: works difficult, downloads often crap). That would also serve your purpose (although I expect the result to be minimal unless you succeed in causing mayor disruption of the file sharing network).
--Don't tell me this sounds good, and you won't me on your team. Up yours! File sharing may be illegal in some cases, but in general I don't feel it's unethical, or that it helps society at large to prevent it. Try and convince me otherwise, with solid arguments.
Nice, but ehm... was I the only one who thought 'load/run arbitrary Windows executables from your Linux desktop/commandline' ?
(I know that is possible for a large number of specific Windows applications -through Wine-, but I meant everywhere, transparent, use Windows executables *as if* they were normal Linux binaries)
The lithography at sub 100nm is getting extreme pricey.
Well 'pricey' is a relative term... if you're talking about the setup-cost for a factory that produces IC wafers, then yes you're talking enormous investments before the first wafers run of the production line with decent yields. But from an end-user point of view, you can buy a $50 CPU or memory module these days that may contain several hundred million transistors. Something equivalent being non-existent or 10 times more expensive a few years back...
I'm wondering more about practical applications, and how long they will take to hit the market. For regular structures, all sorts of semiconductor memory comes to mind. Cheap flash memory? Affordable solid state drives with capacities equal or bigger than magnetic disks? For such applications production errors may not matter much. If the process is cheap, add enough redundant memory cells, decent bad cell/sector management, and the end result could be very useful.
Anyway, looks very promising. We'll see what comes of it...
The "unauthorized" user can extend it and keep those extensions hidden, but I fail to see how that really hurts me: I can extend my copy too.
A) For GPL'ed software, there *are* no unauthorized users, only unauthorized distributors (which may include you or me). In your garage you can do as you please, with permission from copyright owners.
B) The idea is that if someone improves on GPL'ed software, and distributes such modified versions, then the improvement should be for everyone to profit from as well. Is that really too much to ask, if the entire foundation you build on, was thrown in your lap for free? Yes it's a two-edged sword, but you are free to accept that or leave it be.
This is the root of my problem with GNU in general: why show everybody how you achieved and developed a certain technological capability, without letting people actually use that method? I feel a little dumb here, but what exactly are you talking about?
From reading the higher modded posts on the previous story, I was surprised that few people seem to have bothered to take a quick look at these licenses. Let's give that a try-
Both the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL) and the Microsoft Limited Community License (Ms-LCL) contain a clause like this:
Platform Limitation- The licenses granted in sections 2(A) & 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system product
The Open Source Definition has this:
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
Either 5 or 6 look a like a clear contradiction to above clause. So IMHO, the 'limited' licenses shouldn't qualify for OSI approval. Then the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) has this:
the Licensor grants you a non-transferable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce the software for reference use
(Emphasis mine). Basically a 'look but don't touch' license. Thanks to other commenters for pointing out Open Source vs. Free/Libre: this could qualify as Open Source, but definately does not qualify as Free/Libre software.
I don't see any obvious problems with the other licenses though. And 1 thing I do like: they're nice and short, so that you can actually read them, and (try to) understand what they say. As opposed to reading through the pile of legal mumbo-jumbo in common EULA's.
One final point I'd like to make: one shouldn't take a license and complain about whether it does or doesn't suit your purpose. Instead, start with what you want to do with your code, and use a license that best suits that purpose. For some funny, new app the GPLv2/3 may be good, but for an implementation of a low-level networking protocol, that you want to become the defacto standard, a BSD-style license may be more appropriate (so that it can be used by anybody, even hidden deep inside black boxes, but using your protocol). You might be worried about the exact purpose of these MS licenses, but they may also be a vehicle to have your code included in MS products (and help improve standards compliance/interoperability). Not to mention that it's zero problem to contribute things like small bugfixes to projects licensed under these.
So I agree very much with parent poster. Why complain about MS when you think they're throwing you a bone, and you don't trust it? Simply throw them a bone back sometimes, and see what happens.
(..) the question is whether or not microsoft (and business week) understands that microsoft can't do ANYTHING substantial about piracy in india and china
Sure it can: through pricing. Lower price for the real thing -> fewer folks that will bother to get an unauthorised copy. MS does control that, and if they'd use efficient copiers & distribution (that is, about as efficient as their blackmarket competitors), there's nothing to prevent MS from selling XP/Vista or Office CD's for $1 a pop.
microsoft simply has nothing in it's hand at all
Sure it has: MS has an OS that can make the difference between a shiny paperweight (a computer with blank HD), or a computer that -mostly- does useful things: access your data, show webpages, run games, etc. And one that is the dominant (family of) OS used on desktops around the world. Regardless of how you feel about that, that is something computer users want, even if there would be better choices.
in the 1800s, american publishers openly flaunted european copyrights
Well duh, coprights are part of law, and that differs from place to place. Personally I think the question of respecting copy'rights' is mostly a moral rather than a legal issue. If you think you should pay for something or the producer of a work deserves to be payed, then do so. If not, choose between alternatives and unauthorised copying.
Makes me think of a (possible) new charity for people that want to support Free/OSS: a Chinese variant of the Business Software Alliance. Not the BSA itself perhaps, but some organisation that a) fights piracy*, and b) works primarily in China (or other growing IT-markets like India and South America).
If you support anti-piracy efforts in established markets like the US or Western Europe, I suspect targeted people/businesses would just cough up the money, and thus put more of that in the pockets of MS and the likes. But in places where most people and small businesses are short on cash, that would mean: bleed $ big time, or switch to free alternatives (the 'free as in beer' helping forward the 'free as in freedom' in this case).
Your thoughts on this, if it would be a good idea for folks that are considering a donation to a Free/OSS project? Donate to a 'Chinese BSA' instead? To help boost the number of Free/OSS software users there (and indirectly, elsewhere in the world, through increased use of open standards)?
* read: 'copyright infringement', the word piracy only used for brevity and common use (normally it involves ships & gunmen on the high seas).
Unfortunately it doesn't fix the real problem, only makes FF work around it. Other applications could have the same issue on affected systems. According to TFA:
(..) one reason for the new vulnerability is that Windows XP interprets the string %00 incorrectly. As a result, instead of the URL protocol handler, the FileType handler is called with the complete URL, via which it is then possible to call further programs with arbitrary arguments.
If this is true, it is the URL protocol handler that needs a patch (or whatever replaces/modifies its behaviour when IE7 is installed).
One more reason I prefer Open Source software: If you're a developer and run into a problem like this, then besides work around it in your application, you also have the option to fix the actual problem (in this case, the OS component that handles URL's). Next to impossible on a closed source OS.
You really need a psych prof to teach you that? Let's just think about it: A rat is an animal with a fairly limited number of interests, say: survive (eat/drink/not get killed) and reproduce. Maybe there are more, but it's significant less than humans, that also enjoy architecture, reading Harry Potter, play videogames, skydiving, or watch Oprah. Due to a limited number of interests, I'd say each of those is important to a rat. Finding food is important, finding another rat to mate with is important.
Now couple one of those important interests (food/survival) to a required action: give the rat some food if it presses a bar, let it starve otherwise. I'm sure the rat will try to survive hard enough to find out that it needs to press a bar. Now make it harder: have it press an X number of times before giving it food. I'm sure the rat's memory is good enough to remember that pressing once is not enough. Force of habit will make it easier for the rat: hang around, be bored until hungry, press bar until food comes, repeat until your keeper comes up with a new plan;-(
Now it's easy to see what happens if you increase X, and what is the upper limit: if you increase X, the rat will have to press the bar more often to get the same amount of food, and thus spend more time on it. The upper limit: spend all its waking hours pressing the bar, until finally, at the end of a long work day, some food comes, barely enough to make it through the next round. Having X below that is a waste of resources from the rat's keeper/'master'/abuser, a higher X and the rat dies from exhaustion. All this also known as: slave labour.
Personally, I'd go for some more interesting experiments. Like, provide a number of different options, and see what the rat prefers, or what it considers easier. Vary the difficulty of tasks, to find out what complexity the rat's brain can manage. But then again, I'm not into abusing rats for such purposes (enough folks are doing that already), and plain humans are almost as easy subjects: give them some (whatever, be creative) incentive, and see if they bite.
Is it just me, or do other people feel like gagging every time someone at Microsoft says something is "rich," has "richness," "rich user experience," etc.
Nahh, that's just marketing-speak. When a big-ass company is throwing such words at you, things are fine and you can relax. Image a Microsoft spokesperson stating:
"Last week, we added the Linux version of Word 2009 to Gentoo's portage and Debian repositories, although not many people seem to have noticed sofar. A Mac version will be included in the upcoming OSX release. The few remaining Windows users out there can expect a (somewhat older) version for their favorite OS this week.
It's just beta quality so far, but we've tried 3 different Word documents, and it seems to work okay. We've setup an anonymous CVS repository where users can upload patches, which (after review) will be included in the mainline source release.
Oh, and in other news: after ending support for Windows XP, a full source release (of the latest somewhat stable version) has been added to our download repositories such that interested users can make their own patches."
Now THAT is when you should get worried - take red pill asap.
That is weird... he could use some of this stuff himself to overcome his fear of terrorists, democrats, God, or anything else that will haunt him until ehm.. forever.
Hasn't he learned anything from his book 'How to overcome fear for Dummies' ?
As if fear is a disease (it is not), and it's better to not be 'bothered' by it. Fear helps you keep out of situations you shouldn't or don't want to be in, and prevents you from doing dangerous things.
One obvious application is the military. Good? Hmmm... do current-day armies really need more fearless, hell-surviving, brutal killing machines? I doubt it, that's what weapons are for. Let soldiers please have some brains, common sense, be aware that it's real people (with families) they're shooting at, and shit their pants sometimes when the situation calls for it.
Other than that, thumbs up for the researchers to crack this one!
I recognize most of that stuff, but what is a 12-phase power array?
Plz. ignore that nutcase below that refers to Wikipedia on 3-phase power, that's about something totally different. I suspect many/.'ers will have some understanding of electronics, but maybe less detailed than I assume. So I'll give it a go in layman's terms:
What you're looking at is a DC step-down switching regulator circuit (look that up if you want). On most mobo's, it converts 12V to around 1,5V, at many, many Amperes (fist rule: power = voltage x amps).
In it's most basic form, it consists of a coil, a (fast) switch, and a diode. The coil(s) are the thick copperwire/ceramic thingies on the board. As a switch, electronic versions known as power MOSFETs (usually black, square plastic thingies) are used. Because diodes have a small, but significant voltage drop when current passes through, this would give unacceptable losses (heat) at the high currents we have here. Therefore, another power MOSFET is used to replace the diode.
Such a pair of MOSFETs is switched on and off quickly (10s or 100s thousands of times a second), with 1 in conducting (low resistance), and 1 in non-conducting (high resistance) state at any given moment. BUT: when switching over, there is some overlap, where both are somewhat conducting, causing a momentary 'short circuit' (=losses, waste heat). Enter 3-state: switch one off, wait very short to make sure the MOSFET goes fully into non-conducting state, and only THEN switch on the other MOSFET.
My guess is this 'Quad-Triple Phase power' is a similar construction, but then 4 times, working in parallel (for more current), or alternating (to lengthen cooling periods between on-states). Basically: a high-current, energy-efficient 12V-to-CPU-voltage converter.
(..) because people fundamentally distrust others and do not like to be reliant on others when it can be trivally avoided (Linux)
And nowadays, >90% of desktop users run a closed source OS on their desktop, that automatically downloads and installs updates with unknown contents, whenever the user goes online. And extend it by clicking 'download plugin' whenever something appears to be missing or not working. And keep their mail online on their ISP's servers. And share their family pics online using a photo sharing site that popped up 2 months ago. That is in practice different from software-as-a-service, ehm... how?
If your assumption were true, people would flock en masse to Linux and other Free/OS systems, because it is easy enough (if you care).
Personally, I use Linux because (among other reasons) I have more trust in an open source system maintained by many groups of developers, that work on it for fun and a variety of other reasons, than I would trust a closed source system maintained by a single company, that does it just for the money. But hey, that's just me.
The current state of affairs tells me, that the average Jane trusts a closed source, commercial OS enough to do her daily work, and process sensitive data with it. Software-as-a-service is then just a streamlining of current software distribution methods. So people are ready for that, even if they don't realise it.
Why software-as-a-service is not the norm yet? Bandwidth limitations? Because no company did a solid execution of the idea so far? Copyright issues with 3rd party software? Because people are used to buying install CD's or computers with preloaded OS? As opposed to a bare minimal software install, and downloading the rest after hooking up the broadband connection? Hey wait, aren't folks already doing that anyway, sort of?
Who knows... My guess: it just hasn't been done yet (large scale, and well executed), but not because it wouldn't be possible.
You hit the nail on the head: 'something being worked on' (project) is NOT the same as 'something ready for use' (product). Note to mods: parent deserves credit for making this point.
However, there is a large overlap between 'project' and 'product'. In-development-systems can be quite useful, and when are products really 'done'? Look around in your average household store. Many simple items (like paperclips) may have evolved, but their basic form is the same as the 1st day they where conceived. Read: the very first incarnation of a paperclip may have been rude, but no less useful than the matured, modern-day version. For complex products: try and find one where every aspect of its use, from production, marketing, distribution, everyday use, to how it is discarded/recycled, is well-thought through and 'just works'. Good luck.
Basically: things that are both complex and well-engineered (in every aspect) are rare. 'Project' or 'Product' is not the same, but only a label. Which one applies, depends on your point of view.
Take some projects, add packaging, marketing, support, ask money for the whole, and voila: a product. See IBM, Red Hat, SUSE for example. Whether a Linux kernel or a Perl binary shipped by them is a project or a product, only depends on how you use it. If you're a developer working on it, it's your project. When you're selling DVD's that include these in bulk, the same thing becomes a product.
I've used Linux for different purposes starting around '94/'95 (normal desktop use these days, Windows is history for me), and I can assure you: it far exceeds what one might call 'consumer grade product'. That Linux has maybe around 1% market share among ordinary PC users, has nothing to do with quality or technical limitations, but everything with marketing, industry inertia and historical reasons.
Good job sending all those/.ers over there, it will be the mother of all process fights on that poor server now. Sysadmins battling their way through hordes of zombies and monster processes, with ammo (ehm.. mem,cpu) running lower and lower until they're out, just as another wave of uglies comes out of nowhere...
In another 30 years, many of these oldies will have died (if they haven't already) due to a variety of reasons. Mostly plain mechanical parts (cheap plastic, foil keyboard switches, rubber rolls crumbling and so on). Also think of programmed parts (EPROMs, programmable microcontrollers included for a specific task etc) that go into an erased state after a long, but finite time (usually several decades).
But if your machine still works after 30 years, plugging it into a monitor won't be the hard part. Last time I checked, even many of the latest LCD TV's have a variety of analog inputs. Why? Because analog inputs are often useful to hook up monitors to the widest possible variety of replay equipment. Even if many modern equipment is 'digitised', you're a fool to think that the option to display analog signals will disappear completely. Think of analog signals in general as a lower-level thing than most digital signals, meaning it's easier to do something with it, and easy to include in display equipment at near-zero added cost.
With audio, things are even easier/simpler.
For example this Sinclair ZX81 produces a TV UHF signal, but it's easy to pick up a plain composite video signal from its insides. Some soldering of wires might be required, but I expect you'll have a hard time finding a brandnew LCD TV that is not capable of producing an image with that.
One thing I personally like about these early Sinclair machines, is that they're built simple enough to recreate them with plain discrete logic, and perhaps a few analog parts. No complex video circuitry, no audio, a well-understood CPU and so on. Enough for instance to program a FPGA to behave like a ZX81 (try Google if you're interested). Also makes these machines relatively easy to repair. For ZX81: if you got the time, tools and knowledge, you can repair/keep these machines running as long as you want. I myself own 2 of these, last time I checked both were still working. 25 years old by now, and I'm pretty sure I can have these in a working state longer than a PC bought new today.
Physical limitations, energy and mass balances and the like don't give a crap about your sappy dreams.
I suggest you take some basic physics lessons, and then calculate the amount of energy it takes to lift a single person a few hundred kilometres up (where you can find low orbit satellites). Compare that to the amount of energy on your monthly electric bill (and what you pay for that), and you might be surprised.
Summarised: space travel isn't expensive or hard because of physical limitations, but because mankind hasn't (yet) mastered the art (as in: made it easy). Or because current state of the art is just very clumsy/inefficient.
And in a world where perhaps a billion people or more have never in their lives used a phone, what exactly sets a 200k space trip apart from a rollercoaster ride in an amusement park? You and I might be jealous of those 'elitist few', but they are paving the way, making space travel cheaper and (at some point) affordable for the rest of us. So stop whining. Wanna get up there? Find a way to earn 200k or whatever it costs by the time you're going.
In all these discussions about e-voting, I don't really understand why the emphasis on Open Source software for voting computers. Why? The whole problem with e-voting is in transparency of the process. Does Open Source inside such a machine change that? How?
Can you see what compiler was used to turn source into binary? Can you verify that published source/binaries are the same as what's inside the machine in front of you? Can you verify that the hardware is the same as what the software is expected to run on? Can you verify that the hardware works as intended (like, no memory errors etc)? I expect that for most (or all) of these questions, the answer will be: no, not really.
That's the whole point of a paper trail. Essentially, it makes the counting black box irrelevant (as long as the paper trail is considered the authoritive result, that is). Wrong vote stored on flash? Who cares, as long as the correct vote is written on the paper output (and the voter can verify that before leaving).
At that point, what's inside the black box doesn't matter much anymore, and basicly serves to make voting easier, or help to get a quick (preliminary!) count of what the end result might look like. Closed source software, or unknown hardware inside? What's the problem as long as the correct votes are printed on dead tree, and verified by the voter?
But also at this point, the 'added value' of a voting computer becomes a mystery to me. Why not just ditch them? If you want quicker results, organise better or get more people to count votes. Good organisation (and paper!) is really all you need for elections that are both fair, and with quick results.
Re: Piranhaz with frickin' laser beams??
on
WiiHelms Go on Sale
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Remember: You'll actually get Sharks with frickin' laser beams when you order those
Also remember: the delivery address need not be your own...
Bowcock said it was amazing to get anything at all from 2,000-year-old DNA.
More accurately: it is amazing to get anything at all from something 2,000 years old.
researcher: Hello kiddo, what's your name?
mummy:.....
researcher: Who's your daddy?
mummy:.....
researcher: Do you know where you are?
mummy:.....
researcher: What is 1+1 ?
mummy: 3 ?
researcher: Holy shit... let's get the hell outta here!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I can see a prosecution of downloaders might be hampered by how they were caught, if they were handed (corrupted) files by copyright holders themselves (RIAA/MediaDefender or allies). But 2 points you may have missed:
1) On a Windows system I've once seen a URL being opened as a direct result of playing some video file. Maybe there still exist similar leaks on many (unpatched) client systems out there, that allow arbitrary code execution. In that case: install some monitoring software, gather system info, identifiable data an so forth, and voila: you might proceed to prosecute that person not for sharing the video you handed him/her, but for all other illegal activity done using that computer. Failing that, an inside look in a file sharer's machine could be very helpful for rights holders.
2) By feeding corrupted downloads to users, you make their experience less satisfying, so that said users may turn away from using things like BitTorrent. Or give BT / file sharing in general a bad reputation (as in: works difficult, downloads often crap). That would also serve your purpose (although I expect the result to be minimal unless you succeed in causing mayor disruption of the file sharing network).
--Don't tell me this sounds good, and you won't me on your team. Up yours! File sharing may be illegal in some cases, but in general I don't feel it's unethical, or that it helps society at large to prevent it. Try and convince me otherwise, with solid arguments.
Nice, but ehm... was I the only one who thought 'load/run arbitrary Windows executables from your Linux desktop/commandline' ?
(I know that is possible for a large number of specific Windows applications -through Wine-, but I meant everywhere, transparent, use Windows executables *as if* they were normal Linux binaries)
Well 'pricey' is a relative term... if you're talking about the setup-cost for a factory that produces IC wafers, then yes you're talking enormous investments before the first wafers run of the production line with decent yields. But from an end-user point of view, you can buy a $50 CPU or memory module these days that may contain several hundred million transistors. Something equivalent being non-existent or 10 times more expensive a few years back...
I'm wondering more about practical applications, and how long they will take to hit the market. For regular structures, all sorts of semiconductor memory comes to mind. Cheap flash memory? Affordable solid state drives with capacities equal or bigger than magnetic disks? For such applications production errors may not matter much. If the process is cheap, add enough redundant memory cells, decent bad cell/sector management, and the end result could be very useful.
Anyway, looks very promising. We'll see what comes of it...
A) For GPL'ed software, there *are* no unauthorized users, only unauthorized distributors (which may include you or me). In your garage you can do as you please, with permission from copyright owners.
B) The idea is that if someone improves on GPL'ed software, and distributes such modified versions, then the improvement should be for everyone to profit from as well. Is that really too much to ask, if the entire foundation you build on, was thrown in your lap for free? Yes it's a two-edged sword, but you are free to accept that or leave it be.
This is the root of my problem with GNU in general: why show everybody how you achieved and developed a certain technological capability, without letting people actually use that method? I feel a little dumb here, but what exactly are you talking about?Aahh, right on time! I was just running low on ammo...
From reading the higher modded posts on the previous story, I was surprised that few people seem to have bothered to take a quick look at these licenses. Let's give that a try-
Both the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL) and the Microsoft Limited Community License (Ms-LCL) contain a clause like this:
Platform Limitation- The licenses granted in sections 2(A) & 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system productThe Open Source Definition has this:
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
Either 5 or 6 look a like a clear contradiction to above clause. So IMHO, the 'limited' licenses shouldn't qualify for OSI approval. Then the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) has this:
the Licensor grants you a non-transferable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce the software for reference use(Emphasis mine). Basically a 'look but don't touch' license. Thanks to other commenters for pointing out Open Source vs. Free/Libre: this could qualify as Open Source, but definately does not qualify as Free/Libre software.
I don't see any obvious problems with the other licenses though. And 1 thing I do like: they're nice and short, so that you can actually read them, and (try to) understand what they say. As opposed to reading through the pile of legal mumbo-jumbo in common EULA's.
One final point I'd like to make: one shouldn't take a license and complain about whether it does or doesn't suit your purpose. Instead, start with what you want to do with your code, and use a license that best suits that purpose. For some funny, new app the GPLv2/3 may be good, but for an implementation of a low-level networking protocol, that you want to become the defacto standard, a BSD-style license may be more appropriate (so that it can be used by anybody, even hidden deep inside black boxes, but using your protocol). You might be worried about the exact purpose of these MS licenses, but they may also be a vehicle to have your code included in MS products (and help improve standards compliance/interoperability). Not to mention that it's zero problem to contribute things like small bugfixes to projects licensed under these.
So I agree very much with parent poster. Why complain about MS when you think they're throwing you a bone, and you don't trust it? Simply throw them a bone back sometimes, and see what happens.
As long as it's based on LED technology, so that it doesn't waste power when not in use (as in, blinding people).
--You see? Black really is better!
Sure it can: through pricing. Lower price for the real thing -> fewer folks that will bother to get an unauthorised copy. MS does control that, and if they'd use efficient copiers & distribution (that is, about as efficient as their blackmarket competitors), there's nothing to prevent MS from selling XP/Vista or Office CD's for $1 a pop.
microsoft simply has nothing in it's hand at allSure it has: MS has an OS that can make the difference between a shiny paperweight (a computer with blank HD), or a computer that -mostly- does useful things: access your data, show webpages, run games, etc. And one that is the dominant (family of) OS used on desktops around the world. Regardless of how you feel about that, that is something computer users want, even if there would be better choices.
in the 1800s, american publishers openly flaunted european copyrightsWell duh, coprights are part of law, and that differs from place to place. Personally I think the question of respecting copy'rights' is mostly a moral rather than a legal issue. If you think you should pay for something or the producer of a work deserves to be payed, then do so. If not, choose between alternatives and unauthorised copying.
Makes me think of a (possible) new charity for people that want to support Free/OSS: a Chinese variant of the Business Software Alliance. Not the BSA itself perhaps, but some organisation that a) fights piracy*, and b) works primarily in China (or other growing IT-markets like India and South America).
If you support anti-piracy efforts in established markets like the US or Western Europe, I suspect targeted people/businesses would just cough up the money, and thus put more of that in the pockets of MS and the likes. But in places where most people and small businesses are short on cash, that would mean: bleed $ big time, or switch to free alternatives (the 'free as in beer' helping forward the 'free as in freedom' in this case).
Your thoughts on this, if it would be a good idea for folks that are considering a donation to a Free/OSS project? Donate to a 'Chinese BSA' instead? To help boost the number of Free/OSS software users there (and indirectly, elsewhere in the world, through increased use of open standards)?
* read: 'copyright infringement', the word piracy only used for brevity and common use (normally it involves ships & gunmen on the high seas).
Unfortunately it doesn't fix the real problem, only makes FF work around it. Other applications could have the same issue on affected systems. According to TFA:
(..) one reason for the new vulnerability is that Windows XP interprets the string %00 incorrectly. As a result, instead of the URL protocol handler, the FileType handler is called with the complete URL, via which it is then possible to call further programs with arbitrary arguments.If this is true, it is the URL protocol handler that needs a patch (or whatever replaces/modifies its behaviour when IE7 is installed).
One more reason I prefer Open Source software: If you're a developer and run into a problem like this, then besides work around it in your application, you also have the option to fix the actual problem (in this case, the OS component that handles URL's). Next to impossible on a closed source OS.
You really need a psych prof to teach you that? Let's just think about it: A rat is an animal with a fairly limited number of interests, say: survive (eat/drink/not get killed) and reproduce. Maybe there are more, but it's significant less than humans, that also enjoy architecture, reading Harry Potter, play videogames, skydiving, or watch Oprah. Due to a limited number of interests, I'd say each of those is important to a rat. Finding food is important, finding another rat to mate with is important.
Now couple one of those important interests (food/survival) to a required action: give the rat some food if it presses a bar, let it starve otherwise. I'm sure the rat will try to survive hard enough to find out that it needs to press a bar. Now make it harder: have it press an X number of times before giving it food. I'm sure the rat's memory is good enough to remember that pressing once is not enough. Force of habit will make it easier for the rat: hang around, be bored until hungry, press bar until food comes, repeat until your keeper comes up with a new plan ;-(
Now it's easy to see what happens if you increase X, and what is the upper limit: if you increase X, the rat will have to press the bar more often to get the same amount of food, and thus spend more time on it. The upper limit: spend all its waking hours pressing the bar, until finally, at the end of a long work day, some food comes, barely enough to make it through the next round. Having X below that is a waste of resources from the rat's keeper/'master'/abuser, a higher X and the rat dies from exhaustion. All this also known as: slave labour.
Personally, I'd go for some more interesting experiments. Like, provide a number of different options, and see what the rat prefers, or what it considers easier. Vary the difficulty of tasks, to find out what complexity the rat's brain can manage. But then again, I'm not into abusing rats for such purposes (enough folks are doing that already), and plain humans are almost as easy subjects: give them some (whatever, be creative) incentive, and see if they bite.
Nahh, that's just marketing-speak. When a big-ass company is throwing such words at you, things are fine and you can relax. Image a Microsoft spokesperson stating:
Now THAT is when you should get worried - take red pill asap.
That is weird... he could use some of this stuff himself to overcome his fear of terrorists, democrats, God, or anything else that will haunt him until ehm.. forever.
Hasn't he learned anything from his book 'How to overcome fear for Dummies' ?
As if fear is a disease (it is not), and it's better to not be 'bothered' by it. Fear helps you keep out of situations you shouldn't or don't want to be in, and prevents you from doing dangerous things.
One obvious application is the military. Good? Hmmm... do current-day armies really need more fearless, hell-surviving, brutal killing machines? I doubt it, that's what weapons are for. Let soldiers please have some brains, common sense, be aware that it's real people (with families) they're shooting at, and shit their pants sometimes when the situation calls for it.
Other than that, thumbs up for the researchers to crack this one!
Plz. ignore that nutcase below that refers to Wikipedia on 3-phase power, that's about something totally different. I suspect many /.'ers will have some understanding of electronics, but maybe less detailed than I assume. So I'll give it a go in layman's terms:
What you're looking at is a DC step-down switching regulator circuit (look that up if you want). On most mobo's, it converts 12V to around 1,5V, at many, many Amperes (fist rule: power = voltage x amps).
In it's most basic form, it consists of a coil, a (fast) switch, and a diode. The coil(s) are the thick copperwire/ceramic thingies on the board. As a switch, electronic versions known as power MOSFETs (usually black, square plastic thingies) are used. Because diodes have a small, but significant voltage drop when current passes through, this would give unacceptable losses (heat) at the high currents we have here. Therefore, another power MOSFET is used to replace the diode.
Such a pair of MOSFETs is switched on and off quickly (10s or 100s thousands of times a second), with 1 in conducting (low resistance), and 1 in non-conducting (high resistance) state at any given moment. BUT: when switching over, there is some overlap, where both are somewhat conducting, causing a momentary 'short circuit' (=losses, waste heat). Enter 3-state: switch one off, wait very short to make sure the MOSFET goes fully into non-conducting state, and only THEN switch on the other MOSFET.
My guess is this 'Quad-Triple Phase power' is a similar construction, but then 4 times, working in parallel (for more current), or alternating (to lengthen cooling periods between on-states). Basically: a high-current, energy-efficient 12V-to-CPU-voltage converter.
And nowadays, >90% of desktop users run a closed source OS on their desktop, that automatically downloads and installs updates with unknown contents, whenever the user goes online. And extend it by clicking 'download plugin' whenever something appears to be missing or not working. And keep their mail online on their ISP's servers. And share their family pics online using a photo sharing site that popped up 2 months ago. That is in practice different from software-as-a-service, ehm... how?
If your assumption were true, people would flock en masse to Linux and other Free/OS systems, because it is easy enough (if you care).
Personally, I use Linux because (among other reasons) I have more trust in an open source system maintained by many groups of developers, that work on it for fun and a variety of other reasons, than I would trust a closed source system maintained by a single company, that does it just for the money. But hey, that's just me.
The current state of affairs tells me, that the average Jane trusts a closed source, commercial OS enough to do her daily work, and process sensitive data with it. Software-as-a-service is then just a streamlining of current software distribution methods. So people are ready for that, even if they don't realise it.
Why software-as-a-service is not the norm yet? Bandwidth limitations? Because no company did a solid execution of the idea so far? Copyright issues with 3rd party software? Because people are used to buying install CD's or computers with preloaded OS? As opposed to a bare minimal software install, and downloading the rest after hooking up the broadband connection? Hey wait, aren't folks already doing that anyway, sort of?
Who knows... My guess: it just hasn't been done yet (large scale, and well executed), but not because it wouldn't be possible.
You hit the nail on the head: 'something being worked on' (project) is NOT the same as 'something ready for use' (product). Note to mods: parent deserves credit for making this point.
However, there is a large overlap between 'project' and 'product'. In-development-systems can be quite useful, and when are products really 'done'? Look around in your average household store. Many simple items (like paperclips) may have evolved, but their basic form is the same as the 1st day they where conceived. Read: the very first incarnation of a paperclip may have been rude, but no less useful than the matured, modern-day version. For complex products: try and find one where every aspect of its use, from production, marketing, distribution, everyday use, to how it is discarded/recycled, is well-thought through and 'just works'. Good luck.
Basically: things that are both complex and well-engineered (in every aspect) are rare. 'Project' or 'Product' is not the same, but only a label. Which one applies, depends on your point of view.
Take some projects, add packaging, marketing, support, ask money for the whole, and voila: a product. See IBM, Red Hat, SUSE for example. Whether a Linux kernel or a Perl binary shipped by them is a project or a product, only depends on how you use it. If you're a developer working on it, it's your project. When you're selling DVD's that include these in bulk, the same thing becomes a product.
I've used Linux for different purposes starting around '94/'95 (normal desktop use these days, Windows is history for me), and I can assure you: it far exceeds what one might call 'consumer grade product'. That Linux has maybe around 1% market share among ordinary PC users, has nothing to do with quality or technical limitations, but everything with marketing, industry inertia and historical reasons.
Good job sending all those /.ers over there, it will be the mother of all process fights on that poor server now. Sysadmins battling their way through hordes of zombies and monster processes, with ammo (ehm.. mem,cpu) running lower and lower until they're out, just as another wave of uglies comes out of nowhere...
Cool shirt!
BTW: The image on that screen behind you looks fimiliar... yup !!
In another 30 years, many of these oldies will have died (if they haven't already) due to a variety of reasons. Mostly plain mechanical parts (cheap plastic, foil keyboard switches, rubber rolls crumbling and so on). Also think of programmed parts (EPROMs, programmable microcontrollers included for a specific task etc) that go into an erased state after a long, but finite time (usually several decades).
But if your machine still works after 30 years, plugging it into a monitor won't be the hard part. Last time I checked, even many of the latest LCD TV's have a variety of analog inputs. Why? Because analog inputs are often useful to hook up monitors to the widest possible variety of replay equipment. Even if many modern equipment is 'digitised', you're a fool to think that the option to display analog signals will disappear completely. Think of analog signals in general as a lower-level thing than most digital signals, meaning it's easier to do something with it, and easy to include in display equipment at near-zero added cost.
With audio, things are even easier/simpler.
For example this Sinclair ZX81 produces a TV UHF signal, but it's easy to pick up a plain composite video signal from its insides. Some soldering of wires might be required, but I expect you'll have a hard time finding a brandnew LCD TV that is not capable of producing an image with that.
One thing I personally like about these early Sinclair machines, is that they're built simple enough to recreate them with plain discrete logic, and perhaps a few analog parts. No complex video circuitry, no audio, a well-understood CPU and so on. Enough for instance to program a FPGA to behave like a ZX81 (try Google if you're interested). Also makes these machines relatively easy to repair. For ZX81: if you got the time, tools and knowledge, you can repair/keep these machines running as long as you want. I myself own 2 of these, last time I checked both were still working. 25 years old by now, and I'm pretty sure I can have these in a working state longer than a PC bought new today.
I suggest you take some basic physics lessons, and then calculate the amount of energy it takes to lift a single person a few hundred kilometres up (where you can find low orbit satellites). Compare that to the amount of energy on your monthly electric bill (and what you pay for that), and you might be surprised.
Summarised: space travel isn't expensive or hard because of physical limitations, but because mankind hasn't (yet) mastered the art (as in: made it easy). Or because current state of the art is just very clumsy/inefficient.
And in a world where perhaps a billion people or more have never in their lives used a phone, what exactly sets a 200k space trip apart from a rollercoaster ride in an amusement park? You and I might be jealous of those 'elitist few', but they are paving the way, making space travel cheaper and (at some point) affordable for the rest of us. So stop whining. Wanna get up there? Find a way to earn 200k or whatever it costs by the time you're going.
In all these discussions about e-voting, I don't really understand why the emphasis on Open Source software for voting computers. Why? The whole problem with e-voting is in transparency of the process. Does Open Source inside such a machine change that? How?
Can you see what compiler was used to turn source into binary? Can you verify that published source/binaries are the same as what's inside the machine in front of you? Can you verify that the hardware is the same as what the software is expected to run on? Can you verify that the hardware works as intended (like, no memory errors etc)? I expect that for most (or all) of these questions, the answer will be: no, not really.
That's the whole point of a paper trail. Essentially, it makes the counting black box irrelevant (as long as the paper trail is considered the authoritive result, that is). Wrong vote stored on flash? Who cares, as long as the correct vote is written on the paper output (and the voter can verify that before leaving).
At that point, what's inside the black box doesn't matter much anymore, and basicly serves to make voting easier, or help to get a quick (preliminary!) count of what the end result might look like. Closed source software, or unknown hardware inside? What's the problem as long as the correct votes are printed on dead tree, and verified by the voter?
But also at this point, the 'added value' of a voting computer becomes a mystery to me. Why not just ditch them? If you want quicker results, organise better or get more people to count votes. Good organisation (and paper!) is really all you need for elections that are both fair, and with quick results.
Also remember: the delivery address need not be your own...
FTFA:
Bowcock said it was amazing to get anything at all from 2,000-year-old DNA.More accurately: it is amazing to get anything at all from something 2,000 years old.
researcher: Hello kiddo, what's your name? ..... ..... .....
mummy:
researcher: Who's your daddy?
mummy:
researcher: Do you know where you are?
mummy:
researcher: What is 1+1 ?
mummy: 3 ?
researcher: Holy shit... let's get the hell outta here!