Its in fact the infuriating thing about this whole 'terrorism era', we didn't even need to have it.
Of course! And the people in charge are smart enough to know it. But they achieved their goal nonetheless: far greater control over their own population, and an incredible drain of money towards their own wallets. The rest - Iraq, Afghanistan, bin Laden, and all that other shit - are just tools to reach this goal. Those tools are working fine; you might even call it "mission accomplished".
And such a worthwhile contribution it is, too! I raise a glass for you sir, that you have come this far, and here's to another 7000 mindblowing epistles from such a great poster! Cheers!
I don't want to be all negative here, but this would be a good time to keep your eyes open for whatever new tactics the record labels will inevitably deploy. Experience has taught that whenever this much money is involved, the parties responsible do not so easily give up. Instead they appear to give up, only to come back in a worse guise.
Real life is much like Dragonball Z, in that way...
He was lead on Deus Ex 2, if memory serves. Even during development Warren Spector was distancing himself from the lead role, giving Harvey Smith all the 'credit' - or so we assumed at the time. Then the game came out, and well, you know the rest...
That seems rather shortsighted. What if one of the files in the library you are linking to has the following text, somewhere in the middle?
"LICENSE: under no circumstance you are you allowed to GPL this code, or to link this code to another piece of code that is under GPL. Failure to do so will cause immediate termination of your license for this piece of code."
You'd be royally screwed, if you just happened to link to some GPL'ed code as well - especially if your code is out there for all to see.
And yes, I know it is not very likely to happen, but can you really be sure if you haven't inspected all those lines of code? Would your company lawyers accept it?
I still don't buy that the license file itself isn't sufficient. Having to inspect every file for contradictions to this license file is madness.
Are you telling me that the license file could be incorrect, and that to know for sure I would need to manually inspect every last line of source code to see if a different license file is specified?
1. I cannot see that hold up in court, but I'm not a lawyer.
2. That means using Open Source software has just become about a thousand times more expensive. Rather than just send the license file down to our lawyers, now we need them to read the entire source code? That will be an easy answer then: "buy some commercial library instead".
But in this case I happen to agree with the first poster: libarc appears to be covered by a NON-GPL license and therefore Sony is not going to have any problems. Even if libarc itself turns out to be in violation of GPL'ed code, then it is the problem of its author, rather than Sony.
On the other hand, if people do sue Sony over this, I fully expect it to become a Microsoft slide entitled "risks of open source software - even if you comply with the license you are at risk..."
You will also notice that the french don't really have a sensor of humor. Yes, previous posters, I know it is because your language has a different word order, I was just making a joke. You know, an ekoj;-)
Actually, the french tend to invert acronyms (for example, "OTAN" instead of "NATO"), so I would expect them to use LMXOO.
Of course, now that France is surrendering to open formats, the americans will have no choice but to create a new "Freedom Office", complete with its own "Office Free XML" (OFXML). Freedom Office will quickly become the official office suit of choice is Free and Democratic Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Agreed. Worst case: simplified interface, simplified gameplay, just a plain shooter without any storyline or depth (I'm looking at you Bioshock!). Give us a deep story that has relevance to the world as it is (that *really* shouldn't be hard, given the state of the world), and don't dumb down the ruleset. Add some good locations and you are all set for a fantastic game.
And don't give us the fake choices of Deus Ex 2. I'd rather play through a good story with a small choice at the end then having a choice in every level, only for it to make no difference at all in the end...
Re:a more wretched hive of scum and villainy
on
Spying On Tor
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have been saying this about Google for a long time. What is the best way to know what people are thinking? Make it easy to answer their questions. What is the best way to know what they are talking about? Offer them an easy, free communication mechanism. What is the best way to know what part of the globe they are interested in? Offer them free maps...
Does anyone see any real benefit for a business user not to switch to Vista?
They won't have to pay for buying, rolling out, and troubleshooting Vista, nor for retraining users? They won't run the risk of having compatibility problems with their current software?
No no, that would be something along the lines of printing out the code and then throwing darts at the listing to figure out the incorrect line. I hear it is popular in Redmond, although they reputedly use chairs instead of darts.
That's the number I was referring to, although it showed only 430 when I was looking. And I think it is ridiculously low. I just find it incredibly hard to believe that almost everyone with a TFT would choose to run in a non-native resolution. The image quality degrades so badly I find it almost useless (well, for text - I suppose gaming is not so bad), and yet almost everyone does it?
So either:
1. People just don't care about bad image quality (hard to believe, given how much they spend on graphics cards).
2. People don't know about native resolution and what it can do for image quality. That's plausible, I suppose.
3. People are still using CRT's in large numbers. I find that hard to believe: the only CRT I've seen in the last year or so is the one I dumped in my own basement.
4. Valve is measuring incorrectly.
So which is it?
I for one cannot wait for the inevitable flood of future headlines: "WoW hits 9.4 million subscribers!" "WoW hits 9.5 million subscribers!" "WoW hits 9.503721 million subscribers!"
This is a pretty common native resolution for a great many of those 17" and 19" screens that are so popular, yet it doesn't even show up in the list. Is Valves methodology flawed, or are there really only 430 people (out of potentially 8000 or so) using the native resolution on their screen?
I was pointing out something that about 2 people understood by their posts: Most "experts" aren't.
And you were attacking programmers why...? Because they are such an easy target? Because programmers are typically in charge of external security, in your worldview? I still don't see what the first point in your post had to do with anything - it would be at best borderline relevant in a discussion about good programming practices, and even then only if you want to be extremely pedantic.
By mentioning those specific items in this context you are very loudly implying that programmers are at fault for not installing firewalls. I pose that programmers have no business touching firewalls or system configuration - that is a job for system maintainers.
And yet, what they should be doing is learning how to write good software, instead of writing borderline flamebait.
BORDERLINE flamebait? Damnit, I should try harder...
Oh, and I smile on your implication that I don't already know how to write good software;-)
Most C programmers don't bother to check the return of system calls like printf()
So what? Do you really think the number of characters written is important, interesting, or vital to security in some way? More importantly, what will you do if you find that not all characters were written? Or that too many were written, and your buffer has overflown (this means the catastrophe has already happened, so chances of actually detecting that condition are slim).
Most C++ programmers have no idea what an invariant is.
...or how it relates to databases having no firewalls. I sure don't.
There are a lot more people who can "just put together a database for us" than can tell a company why they do or don't need one
There are far too many people who think they know about databases when really, they don't, too. Always harping about normal form-this, normal-form that - but half of them haven't even heard of (D, E)-normalization even though this is a vital technique to obtaining good database performance.
Most users of computers have little to no security on their machines.
So you are saying that the reason many databases are unprotected is because many systems are unprotected? That's some stellar reasoning there, Captain Obvious!
The simplifications in Unix are its most important contribution to the art of OS design.
Gimme a break. Yes, you have a point, for sure, but UNIX has also introduced the mindset of "just barely good enough"; the notion that a solution is acceptable if it solves 80% of a problem rather than all of it. That malevolent spirit still pervades Linux and Open Source today, and is the reason both have such a hard time gaining acceptance. UNIX may have contributed simplicity, but in doing so it also contributed mediocrity.
Is there some way to stop Windows from creating "system restore" information on my external harddisks? Sure, I can turn it off manually, but the next time I attach the disk it will happily create it again.
The internet, liike many things that were invented decades ago, is an American thing used by the entire world. That's not to the detrimant of the rest of the world, as its productivity seems to be eclipsing the US quite a bit, but we made this internet, and it's fair that we have more control over it. Until we do such a bad job that there is enough incentive to make a new network, we ought to keep what's ours. It's not like we're any more evil than the UN... quite less actually.
The americans have contributed the basic protocol. I don't believe they paid for any of the hardware that actually runs the internet, apart from the small amount residing within their own borders, of course. I also don't believe they pay for maintenance to any of that hardware either. And some of the most important protocols, HTTP and HTML, are assuredly not an american invention. So I'm not sure where this sense of ownership comes from, but you can stick it in the dark spot behind my German-designed, Chinese-built router.
As for the UN, when will you americans understand that it is not a government. It is nothing more than a structure in which individual nations meet to make decisions together. It has no power beyond what those nations grant it. Your own country, being such a powerful member, sometimes grants it great power (for example when it seeks to legitimize wars) and at other times it grants it no power at all. Blaming them for anything is pretty much the same as blaming yourself.
Thank you for a well-thought out reply. However, I'd like to point out that I was already well aware of why things are the way they are; I just don't agree with the reasons anymore. I don't believe that system administration is well-served by having files everywhere, or rather, that it could be better served by having files centralized. Even if you want to share packages between different users, symlinks provide a much better way to make applications visible within their own home directories without taking up massive amounts of space - and without losing the benefit of giving each user his own set of preferences, or being able to store the packages on a networked drive.
As for the reasons why Ubuntu keeps things the way they are, my guess is they don't want to change thousands of packages, rather than holding any firm believe in things being better as they are. And didn't OS X start out from a UNIX core? The fact that Apple made this change is also a hint.
But I have to ask the obvious question here: In just what way does Linux NOT have a clean filesystem?
In the way that files that belong to applications are spread over a dozen directories. To name just one example: why is it considered a good idea to have a single directory with all the help files for everything that is installed? Just put them in the application directory already. It reduces the chances of having naming clashes with files that are already there, and it would allow installation and de-installation using nothing more than drag and drop instead of the elaborate scripting systems now in place. It would also make it far easier to understand what specific files do: if you now find a file, let's say/etc/y13f4, and assuming for a moment that there is nothing on your system even remotely called "y13f4", would you know what it is for or who put it there? If every application was well-behaved and stored that file in $appdir/etc/ it would be utterly clear to everyone that it was part of that specific application. And then there is security: access to files in/etc and other directories could be far more limited than it is today, since no applications would have any business sticking their files there.
And let's have a look how Windows does it: every application writes a bunch of crap into the registry, and everyone is moaning about it. Yet when it is UNIX doing it it is fine? That really doesn't make ANY sense.
Yes, the idea that we want full control over our OS, rather than it having full control of us, is a bad thing.
I cannot image where that came from. Are you sure you were even replying to my post?
Also, the idea that we should not strive too hard to copy the ideas of someone else is a bad thing. I can definitely see the point in not avoiding lawsuits or stale, cheap imitations or accusations that we're just copying off of somebody else.
There are really only two models for storing applications: store everything related to the application together in one folder (the model used by Commodore and Apple), or to store everything all over the filesystem (the model used by UNIX and Windows). So you get to be like Windows, or you get to be like Apple. On that basis I would strongly prefer to be more like Apple - even when discounting the advantages of that model.
I completely understand now that the first Model T was the penultimate in cars because it was made by professionals, and we should never have made cars which were different.
But you do believe we should stick with the original UNIX model of storing files all over the place? I guess you must: you are violently attacking me when I support a proposed change to the original model.
My alternative theory is that you urgently need to take some more medication.
Okay, rant over. I guess I'm just not sure what you mean by keeping a clean filesystem. Please to elaborate, so that I may investigate its feasability. No seriously, I need something to do.
Oh, NOW I see: you are the person in charge of development over at Ubuntu! Sorry, I had no idea! Well, it is really simple. The original poster would like to see a system whereby applications don't write crap all over the/etc,/var,/lib,/usr,/usr/lib,/var/log, and whereever you stick manfiles these days. Instead he would like to store ALL THAT SHIT in one directory (per application, of course). Wouldn't that be neat? Moreover, I support that position: it would be extremely neat.
Of course, I realize this represents a Change From The Way Things Were. I understand the fear and uncertainty ANY change causes. Really! But rather than simply be an uber-arrogant asshole and say "rejected" without ANY consideration or discussion of the merits of the stated idea, we could and should have had a civilized discussion why this is good or bad.
Your baseless flaming of me, mostly based on statements that I did not actually make but only occurred in your head, unfortunately rules out that possibility. Too bad, but maybe we can try again in three years or so...
Slashdot Mirror
Of course! And the people in charge are smart enough to know it. But they achieved their goal nonetheless: far greater control over their own population, and an incredible drain of money towards their own wallets. The rest - Iraq, Afghanistan, bin Laden, and all that other shit - are just tools to reach this goal. Those tools are working fine; you might even call it "mission accomplished".
And such a worthwhile contribution it is, too! I raise a glass for you sir, that you have come this far, and here's to another 7000 mindblowing epistles from such a great poster! Cheers!
I don't want to be all negative here, but this would be a good time to keep your eyes open for whatever new tactics the record labels will inevitably deploy. Experience has taught that whenever this much money is involved, the parties responsible do not so easily give up. Instead they appear to give up, only to come back in a worse guise.
Real life is much like Dragonball Z, in that way...
He was lead on Deus Ex 2, if memory serves. Even during development Warren Spector was distancing himself from the lead role, giving Harvey Smith all the 'credit' - or so we assumed at the time. Then the game came out, and well, you know the rest...
That seems rather shortsighted. What if one of the files in the library you are linking to has the following text, somewhere in the middle?
"LICENSE: under no circumstance you are you allowed to GPL this code, or to link this code to another piece of code that is under GPL. Failure to do so will cause immediate termination of your license for this piece of code."
You'd be royally screwed, if you just happened to link to some GPL'ed code as well - especially if your code is out there for all to see.
And yes, I know it is not very likely to happen, but can you really be sure if you haven't inspected all those lines of code? Would your company lawyers accept it?
I still don't buy that the license file itself isn't sufficient. Having to inspect every file for contradictions to this license file is madness.
Are you telling me that the license file could be incorrect, and that to know for sure I would need to manually inspect every last line of source code to see if a different license file is specified?
1. I cannot see that hold up in court, but I'm not a lawyer.
2. That means using Open Source software has just become about a thousand times more expensive. Rather than just send the license file down to our lawyers, now we need them to read the entire source code? That will be an easy answer then: "buy some commercial library instead".
But in this case I happen to agree with the first poster: libarc appears to be covered by a NON-GPL license and therefore Sony is not going to have any problems. Even if libarc itself turns out to be in violation of GPL'ed code, then it is the problem of its author, rather than Sony.
On the other hand, if people do sue Sony over this, I fully expect it to become a Microsoft slide entitled "risks of open source software - even if you comply with the license you are at risk..."
You will also notice that the french don't really have a sensor of humor. Yes, previous posters, I know it is because your language has a different word order, I was just making a joke. You know, an ekoj ;-)
Actually, the french tend to invert acronyms (for example, "OTAN" instead of "NATO"), so I would expect them to use LMXOO.
Of course, now that France is surrendering to open formats, the americans will have no choice but to create a new "Freedom Office", complete with its own "Office Free XML" (OFXML). Freedom Office will quickly become the official office suit of choice is Free and Democratic Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Agreed. Worst case: simplified interface, simplified gameplay, just a plain shooter without any storyline or depth (I'm looking at you Bioshock!). Give us a deep story that has relevance to the world as it is (that *really* shouldn't be hard, given the state of the world), and don't dumb down the ruleset. Add some good locations and you are all set for a fantastic game. And don't give us the fake choices of Deus Ex 2. I'd rather play through a good story with a small choice at the end then having a choice in every level, only for it to make no difference at all in the end...
I have been saying this about Google for a long time. What is the best way to know what people are thinking? Make it easy to answer their questions. What is the best way to know what they are talking about? Offer them an easy, free communication mechanism. What is the best way to know what part of the globe they are interested in? Offer them free maps...
Does anyone see any real benefit for a business user not to switch to Vista?
They won't have to pay for buying, rolling out, and troubleshooting Vista, nor for retraining users? They won't run the risk of having compatibility problems with their current software?
No no, that would be something along the lines of printing out the code and then throwing darts at the listing to figure out the incorrect line. I hear it is popular in Redmond, although they reputedly use chairs instead of darts.
That's the number I was referring to, although it showed only 430 when I was looking. And I think it is ridiculously low. I just find it incredibly hard to believe that almost everyone with a TFT would choose to run in a non-native resolution. The image quality degrades so badly I find it almost useless (well, for text - I suppose gaming is not so bad), and yet almost everyone does it? So either: 1. People just don't care about bad image quality (hard to believe, given how much they spend on graphics cards). 2. People don't know about native resolution and what it can do for image quality. That's plausible, I suppose. 3. People are still using CRT's in large numbers. I find that hard to believe: the only CRT I've seen in the last year or so is the one I dumped in my own basement. 4. Valve is measuring incorrectly. So which is it?
I for one cannot wait for the inevitable flood of future headlines: "WoW hits 9.4 million subscribers!" "WoW hits 9.5 million subscribers!" "WoW hits 9.503721 million subscribers!"
This is a pretty common native resolution for a great many of those 17" and 19" screens that are so popular, yet it doesn't even show up in the list. Is Valves methodology flawed, or are there really only 430 people (out of potentially 8000 or so) using the native resolution on their screen?
So what? Do you really think the number of characters written is important, interesting, or vital to security in some way? More importantly, what will you do if you find that not all characters were written? Or that too many were written, and your buffer has overflown (this means the catastrophe has already happened, so chances of actually detecting that condition are slim).
There are far too many people who think they know about databases when really, they don't, too. Always harping about normal form-this, normal-form that - but half of them haven't even heard of (D, E)-normalization even though this is a vital technique to obtaining good database performance.
So you are saying that the reason many databases are unprotected is because many systems are unprotected? That's some stellar reasoning there, Captain Obvious!
The simplifications in Unix are its most important contribution to the art of OS design.
Gimme a break. Yes, you have a point, for sure, but UNIX has also introduced the mindset of "just barely good enough"; the notion that a solution is acceptable if it solves 80% of a problem rather than all of it. That malevolent spirit still pervades Linux and Open Source today, and is the reason both have such a hard time gaining acceptance. UNIX may have contributed simplicity, but in doing so it also contributed mediocrity.
Is there some way to stop Windows from creating "system restore" information on my external harddisks? Sure, I can turn it off manually, but the next time I attach the disk it will happily create it again.
The americans have contributed the basic protocol. I don't believe they paid for any of the hardware that actually runs the internet, apart from the small amount residing within their own borders, of course. I also don't believe they pay for maintenance to any of that hardware either. And some of the most important protocols, HTTP and HTML, are assuredly not an american invention. So I'm not sure where this sense of ownership comes from, but you can stick it in the dark spot behind my German-designed, Chinese-built router.
As for the UN, when will you americans understand that it is not a government. It is nothing more than a structure in which individual nations meet to make decisions together. It has no power beyond what those nations grant it. Your own country, being such a powerful member, sometimes grants it great power (for example when it seeks to legitimize wars) and at other times it grants it no power at all. Blaming them for anything is pretty much the same as blaming yourself.
Having read the fine article, I'd say that would be because the bad translation was the work of Israeli journalists.
How much would it cost to pay you to just go the fuck away?
If you give me a million euro's I promise I won't log on to Slashdot again. Please?
Thank you for a well-thought out reply. However, I'd like to point out that I was already well aware of why things are the way they are; I just don't agree with the reasons anymore. I don't believe that system administration is well-served by having files everywhere, or rather, that it could be better served by having files centralized. Even if you want to share packages between different users, symlinks provide a much better way to make applications visible within their own home directories without taking up massive amounts of space - and without losing the benefit of giving each user his own set of preferences, or being able to store the packages on a networked drive. As for the reasons why Ubuntu keeps things the way they are, my guess is they don't want to change thousands of packages, rather than holding any firm believe in things being better as they are. And didn't OS X start out from a UNIX core? The fact that Apple made this change is also a hint.
But I have to ask the obvious question here: In just what way does Linux NOT have a clean filesystem?
/etc/y13f4, and assuming for a moment that there is nothing on your system even remotely called "y13f4", would you know what it is for or who put it there? If every application was well-behaved and stored that file in $appdir/etc/ it would be utterly clear to everyone that it was part of that specific application. And then there is security: access to files in /etc and other directories could be far more limited than it is today, since no applications would have any business sticking their files there.
/etc, /var, /lib, /usr, /usr/lib, /var/log, and whereever you stick manfiles these days. Instead he would like to store ALL THAT SHIT in one directory (per application, of course). Wouldn't that be neat? Moreover, I support that position: it would be extremely neat.
In the way that files that belong to applications are spread over a dozen directories. To name just one example: why is it considered a good idea to have a single directory with all the help files for everything that is installed? Just put them in the application directory already. It reduces the chances of having naming clashes with files that are already there, and it would allow installation and de-installation using nothing more than drag and drop instead of the elaborate scripting systems now in place. It would also make it far easier to understand what specific files do: if you now find a file, let's say
And let's have a look how Windows does it: every application writes a bunch of crap into the registry, and everyone is moaning about it. Yet when it is UNIX doing it it is fine? That really doesn't make ANY sense.
Yes, the idea that we want full control over our OS, rather than it having full control of us, is a bad thing.
I cannot image where that came from. Are you sure you were even replying to my post?
Also, the idea that we should not strive too hard to copy the ideas of someone else is a bad thing. I can definitely see the point in not avoiding lawsuits or stale, cheap imitations or accusations that we're just copying off of somebody else.
There are really only two models for storing applications: store everything related to the application together in one folder (the model used by Commodore and Apple), or to store everything all over the filesystem (the model used by UNIX and Windows). So you get to be like Windows, or you get to be like Apple. On that basis I would strongly prefer to be more like Apple - even when discounting the advantages of that model.
I completely understand now that the first Model T was the penultimate in cars because it was made by professionals, and we should never have made cars which were different.
But you do believe we should stick with the original UNIX model of storing files all over the place? I guess you must: you are violently attacking me when I support a proposed change to the original model.
My alternative theory is that you urgently need to take some more medication.
Okay, rant over. I guess I'm just not sure what you mean by keeping a clean filesystem. Please to elaborate, so that I may investigate its feasability. No seriously, I need something to do.
Oh, NOW I see: you are the person in charge of development over at Ubuntu! Sorry, I had no idea! Well, it is really simple. The original poster would like to see a system whereby applications don't write crap all over the
Of course, I realize this represents a Change From The Way Things Were. I understand the fear and uncertainty ANY change causes. Really! But rather than simply be an uber-arrogant asshole and say "rejected" without ANY consideration or discussion of the merits of the stated idea, we could and should have had a civilized discussion why this is good or bad.
Your baseless flaming of me, mostly based on statements that I did not actually make but only occurred in your head, unfortunately rules out that possibility. Too bad, but maybe we can try again in three years or so...
Have you even considered the proposals on their own merits? Keeping a clean filesystem is a noble goal, and definitely worth considering.
Oh, and that attitude of yours is what I consider to be the *PRIMARY* thing that's wrong with Linux. But I guess it will be hard to fix as well...