Re:Whats specific about Taiwan?
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Spam from Taiwan
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· Score: 1
I'm quite surprised that your estimate of the average income is so different (like over 1000%) compared to any numbers found on the net. So what's the explanation? Are your friends or your home area so different to the average, or did you just get the conversion wrong?
Websites, guestbooks, and forums shouldn't publically display e-mail addresses. Maybe showing them in a picture file, a graphic, would make it a bit more difficult and could be an okay compromise.
I don't think that's a real solution. First, it makes legitimate use more difficult (I guess soon someone starts to print e-mail addresses like captchas...). Second, all that 'security' is blown away when one of your acquaintances does something stupid (like installs a trojan that sends all addresses in his address book to spammers). Remember, just one mistake by one person is enough here.
There are extensions that do this for Firefox. Which doesn't sound that stupid -- I can't imagine most people would be interested in a feature like that.
If the iPod got stolen, does the industry expect the original to be destroyed.
Sorry to be blunt, but why the fuck would they?
You are imagining a scary scenario that just doesn't exist. The unlicensed copy in that case would of course be the one on the stolen device. There's no reason to think otherwise (and there are a few other, more valid scare-scenarios you could have brought up, if you insist on it...)
Well, I hadn't read the article, but it didn't really contain anything new to me. Let's see:
* We are currently on Firefox 1.5
* The next major release is Firefox 2, which should come out this summer. It will support Win98.
* The release after that (version 3) is scheduled for Q1 2007. This is the one that will drop support.
It seems now that it's day has passed even for browsing, as the forthcoming versions of both IE and firefox have stopped support, and now patch support has stopped as well.
The forthcoming release of Firefox will support Win98 -- unless this MS decision changes something.
There were also good reasons for not doing an ITP in this case. Whether or not it should have been put in to non-free was an issue, but now that the FAQ has been clarified this doesn't seem to be a real problem for anyone.
Do you mean the FAQ that, according to Sun, has no legal weight (or is there a new turn of events)?
There may have been reasons to not do an ITP, but I just checked the Debian Policy Manual: It clearly says that when there is doubt about a license debian-legal should be contacted. We know that the ftp-masters worked with Sun on the license (that's why the FAQ was written), to me that implies they had some doubts... For some reason they decided to contact Sun lawyers (which was good) and not SPI lawyers and debian-legal (which was bad).
ftp-masters handed the way they do with all non-free software.
Excuse me? I'm not Debian expert but as far as I know the normal process for new packages is to issue an ITP (intent-to-package) stating among other things the license of the package and send a copy to debian-devel -- this is all documented in the developers-reference. New licenses are typically sent to debian-legal for review.
None of that happened this time. There may be good reasons for that, but stating that this case was handed just like any other sounds like a lie to me... but, like I said I'm not an expert, please enlighten me.
But in order for a computer seller to "support" Linux, these things should just work at least to some acceptable degree. Which is not the case really.
No, that's not the only definition of support. What I would love to have is information on what works out-of-the-box (or with a work-around) -- then I'd know what I'm buying. Say, a web page with a table of a few linux distributions and hardware features. I could easily see that "Ok, modem won't work, 3D needs fiddling, otherwise everything works on distro X version Y".
As long as Linux will continue its "opensource only" policy for drivers, this situation will continue. Simply because Linux does not have the market power to enforce anything (as MS does have). It is quite easy for harware manufacturers to simply ignore Linux. Developing good drivers for Linux would cost more money than they would gain by additional sells.
Yes, yes. The same story I had listen to over and over again about Firefox and web development... until 2005. I'm not claiming it's the exact same situation, but I am saying that there is a breaking point (in the number of users) where one of the manufacturers starts to take the market segment seriously -- and after that competitors get scared and do the same.
No it's not. Apt upgrading is a really nice system, but it's definitely not dead easy if the system has already been used extensively (as in, lots of configuration files have changed). Saying so is just false advertisement.
During the upgrade, you will have to be able to decide if you want to keep or upgrade (or mix) configuration files that have been chaged since the installation of the original OS version -- this is not always trivial, as the changes may have been done by a setup script or something similar (not by hand anyway).
Luckily, if something goes wrong, it's usually fixable by purging the offending piece of software and re-installing it...
Should self-proclaimed security experts, like Bruce Schneider, be liable for bad security advice?
If he had told me to use MD5 ten years ago, could I sue him now that MD5 has been discovered to be "insecure"?
Of course you could, just like you can sue any consultant you hire (anyone who has read Schneier can tell you that if you had hired him, he would never have promised you that MD5, or any hash function, is secure ten years from now...). So what's your point, and why is this modded interesting?
Like another poster already said, calling Schneier self-proclaimed makes you look a little uninformed -- he did write Applied Cryptography, which is pretty much the standard textbook on crypto... Not getting his name right is just bad manners.
I guess your suggestion is this (although you didn't really specify what "work" means):
1. All firefox copies poll mozilla.org every minute to check for updates
2. All firefox copies download the update at the exact same moment
I can't imagine a normal LAN card would have problems coping with typical DSL speeds... If you meant WLAN specifically, then I agree -- I've heard people complain about their internet, and later seen their setup: a cheapo USB-wlan-device connected to the cheapest possible basestation three rooms away!
Well, like I said, this only applies to jurisdictions i know: Courts do use common sense when there is no exact precedent in the law (and the commentaries) -- The questions they're going to ask are: "Did the previous owner mean to leave his passwords on the computer for others to use?" and "Did the buyer know or should he have known that they weren't left there for him to use.
"Assuming" things (against common sense) will get you in trouble...
If really you want a configuration UI for selecting different screensaver systems, maybe Gnome is not the DE for you... That is just so much against the "idea of Gnome" that I don't if I should be laughing or crying.
Besides, I honestly don't see why most (or even many) people would like to tweak their screensavers more than they can now.
ubuntu-desktop is a meta-package -- removing it doesn't remove any programs, installing it ensures that you have all of the parts that form Ubuntu Desktop... If you had bothered to read the description you had seen this: It is safe to remove this package if some of the desktop system
packages are not desired. However, it is recommended that you keep
it installed, because it is used to carry out certain upgrade
transitions (such as adding new packages to the system).
I don't know of any jurisdiction where you are allowed to use passwords you find like this. It has nothing to do with copyright, lot to do with common sense...
* Two char dos new line. There is no real reason to keep using \r\n in text files to represent a new line. It wastes one byte for every line of every text file.
Again... not sure why you are complaining about this. 1 byte per 80 characters is not going to kill you. Not only that, but the same argument could be used against multibyte encodings such as UTF-8. Why use UTF-8 because it doubles your text files size.
Ehh? UTF actually gives you something in return for those wasted bytes and \r\n doesn't, so your point is pretty weak (the killer here is obviously backwards compatibility).
Joe Average doesn't buy new operating systems, ok? Joe Average buys a new computer and gets the OS on the side. This is exactly why being a monopoly-OS on pre-installed machines is so important to Microsoft.
1. harder for sales people to sell a product with the moto "hai its got less features"
* It'll be lighter and smaller -- you didn't think those megapixels are weightless, did you?
* It'll have a longer battery life (or an even smaller battery)
2. Companies don't like reducing the per unit average cost of phones, because this also means you reduce your gross income.
Those are real features I described, features I'm ready to pay for.
As an extreme characterisation of the problem, imagine this: A DVD retails at $10.00. Person a) buys it, watches it, and sells it to person b) for $8. b) watches and sells to c) for $7 and so on, until it reaches $1.
This means that the studio would sell 1 DVD, despite having served 10 people.
They haven't "served" (done) anything more than if the first guy had kept the DVD, and you conveniently didn't mention that even the first person might not have bought the DVD at 10 bucks if he hadn't had the possibility of resale.
The Industry can't "price their products accordingly" because higher prices would encourage more resale if anything, and nobody could afford to keep the games they like.
Of course they can, the method is called EULA, and it's used in software "sales" all the time. If they want to enjoy the ease of selling stuff based on just copyright AND still prevent resale... well, tough luck, that's impossible by definition.
Personally I find reselling used artistic products, items with unlimited usage, to be theft (Reselling your half used pack of tic tacs doesn't bother me).
That would hold some water, if the producer of the work didn't know about the resale right... But they do, and they price their product accordingly: The same good without the resale right is worth less. This is exactly similar to DVDs: if I can only watch it once (renting) it's worth less to me than if I can watch it multiple times (buying) -- no-one is cheated, because goods are priced according to value...
I find it really strange that you've apparently given quite a lot of thought to this, and hadn't thought of this point (or at least didn't explain why you think it doesn't apply).
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I'm quite surprised that your estimate of the average income is so different (like over 1000%) compared to any numbers found on the net. So what's the explanation? Are your friends or your home area so different to the average, or did you just get the conversion wrong?
There are extensions that do this for Firefox. Which doesn't sound that stupid -- I can't imagine most people would be interested in a feature like that.
You are imagining a scary scenario that just doesn't exist. The unlicensed copy in that case would of course be the one on the stolen device. There's no reason to think otherwise (and there are a few other, more valid scare-scenarios you could have brought up, if you insist on it...)
* We are currently on Firefox 1.5
* The next major release is Firefox 2, which should come out this summer. It will support Win98. * The release after that (version 3) is scheduled for Q1 2007. This is the one that will drop support.
There may have been reasons to not do an ITP, but I just checked the Debian Policy Manual: It clearly says that when there is doubt about a license debian-legal should be contacted. We know that the ftp-masters worked with Sun on the license (that's why the FAQ was written), to me that implies they had some doubts... For some reason they decided to contact Sun lawyers (which was good) and not SPI lawyers and debian-legal (which was bad).
None of that happened this time. There may be good reasons for that, but stating that this case was handed just like any other sounds like a lie to me... but, like I said I'm not an expert, please enlighten me.
If he's correct, the site was taken down because of content not registration details. It was CADNS and not CIRA though.
During the upgrade, you will have to be able to decide if you want to keep or upgrade (or mix) configuration files that have been chaged since the installation of the original OS version -- this is not always trivial, as the changes may have been done by a setup script or something similar (not by hand anyway).
Luckily, if something goes wrong, it's usually fixable by purging the offending piece of software and re-installing it...
Like another poster already said, calling Schneier self-proclaimed makes you look a little uninformed -- he did write Applied Cryptography, which is pretty much the standard textbook on crypto... Not getting his name right is just bad manners.
1. All firefox copies poll mozilla.org every minute to check for updates
2. All firefox copies download the update at the exact same moment
Looks good. Can't see any flaws there.
I can't imagine a normal LAN card would have problems coping with typical DSL speeds... If you meant WLAN specifically, then I agree -- I've heard people complain about their internet, and later seen their setup: a cheapo USB-wlan-device connected to the cheapest possible basestation three rooms away!
"Assuming" things (against common sense) will get you in trouble...
Besides, I honestly don't see why most (or even many) people would like to tweak their screensavers more than they can now.
Nice rant, anyway.
I don't know of any jurisdiction where you are allowed to use passwords you find like this. It has nothing to do with copyright, lot to do with common sense...
Joe Average doesn't buy new operating systems, ok? Joe Average buys a new computer and gets the OS on the side. This is exactly why being a monopoly-OS on pre-installed machines is so important to Microsoft.
1350? Talk about holding a grudge...
Twenty dollars for (almost) unlimited calls, unlimited SMS and unlimited data? ... Please provide links, codegen.
* It'll have a longer battery life (or an even smaller battery) Those are real features I described, features I'm ready to pay for.
I find it really strange that you've apparently given quite a lot of thought to this, and hadn't thought of this point (or at least didn't explain why you think it doesn't apply).