It was stupid and wrong, but I don't know how jail-worthy that is, legal technicalities aside.
They can get him for vandalism, destruction of private property, malicious mischief and probably some other things I haven't thought of if they want to badly enough. I don't know if they will, and I'm not sure they should, but the possibility's there.
...aren't the laws for trespass usually pretty weighted towards jail time?
No, although that's a common misconception. Trespass isn't a felony or even a misdemenor. It's an infraction, rather like a speeding ticket. If the trespasser does no damage and breaks no other laws in the process, the most the police will do (if they come out at all) is give them a ticket and ask them to leave.
I like most of this guy's article, but some of the things he says are too vague, and anyone with common sense would say the same things.
Cringly's predictions remind me of something I heard years ago on a radio talk show. The host would save all the psycic predictions he could find during the year and grade them. Not surprisingly, most of them had few, if any correct. However, one of his frequent callers scored over 80% with predictions like, "The results of this year's presidential election will astonish millions of Americans," and, "A famous person will die this year." The only strange thing about this is that he managed to get two of his ten wrong.
No. A scientist once proved that it was "impossible" for a bumblebee to fly. What he really proved is that if the bee's wings were stiff, then they wouldn't generate enough lift to keep it in the air. Therefore, it's wings must flex. Years later, films proved him right.
It's a "dwarf galaxy" and yet so big we couldn't see it before?
That's right. It's a dwarf galaxy because its actual size is small (compared to other galaxies) but its apparent size is 5,000 times that of the Full Moon because it's so close, as galaxies go.
In case that's not enough to explain it to you, consider that the Moon is much smaller than Jupiter, but appears to be larger because it's much nearer.
You make a good point. I wasn't thinking in terms of locked-in business apps, but things like games that have absurd, insecure requirements, such as running as admin. (I know of one on-line game that does, or at least did, run on an *arbitrary* port over 1024, requiring you to allow all such ports access through your firewall.) Things like games you can boycott until they wise up or go away; if your business depends on it, of course, all you can do is hope they use a good quality lube and plenty of it.
Can it show why lakes don't freeze from the bottom up as water approaches 0 Celsius?
No, because that has to do with an entirely different, well-understood phenominum. Unlike most substances, water gets less dense when it gets near its freezing point instead of continuing to get denser. When it freezes, it gets even less dense. (This is caused by something called "hydrogen bonds," but I'm not going to go into that.) Thus, ice is slightly less dense than the water surrounding it, making it float.
(Keep in mind, there are a$$holes like Even Balance who purposely wrote their anti-cheat to require true admin privileges)
Any program that does that is a security hole by definition. Just say NO, and don't buy it. Sooner or later, either they'll stop doing it or go out of business if enough people reject them. Either way, problem solved.
...it is not accurate to suggest that Microsoft has done nothing to address buffer overflows.
Microsoft will continue to have buffer overflow issues as long as they use static buffers. Geez, Louise, it's not rocket science!
1) Read in a line one character at a time, counting its length.
2) Allocate a buffer long enough to accomodate it.
3) Read the line into the buffer you've just allocated and process it.
4) Deallocate the buffer when finished.
5) Profit!
I think many people assume that since the ID model includes an original designer that it means we no longer need to understand how how something works-->God made it, I don't have to know how it works, it just does.
From what I understand of ID, it's not that we can't understand how it works, it's that it could not have evolved on its own and therefore somebody had to design it. In order for this to "refute" ID, they'd need to have shown how it could have evolved naturally.
Note that although I'm fairly religious, I'm not a believer in ID; I'm just pointing out that the article's claim to have refuted ID is wrong.
There's one problem, sometimes with the claim that business patents are too obvious: "If it's that obvious, why didn't anybody ever do it before?"
Sure, one-click shopping is obvious, once you've seen it. But Spamazon's landsharks can (and I'm sure would) say, "If it's that obvious, why weren't people doing it years ago?" It's a valid question, and one that needs to be answered.
The same thing goes for their assoiciate program, but their might be "non-web" prior art here. Let's say you put coupons in a number of magazines. Each magazine's version is identifiable, and you give the magazine a small kickback for each one brought in, in return for a smaller advertizing fee. That's the same thing, in principle. I don't know if it were ever done, but it would certainly be prior art, in my book.
The problem isn't that some submitters are popular. The problem is that some popular submitters are using Slashdot to publicize their own websites.
Recently, I got lucky and got two submissions in a row accepted. However, I didn't link to any site, because I have nothing to advertize. So that's not a problem. The problem comes when a slashdotter games the system by submitting large numbers of articles to use Slashdot as a free advertisement for their site.
Which is what most sites look like today. Instead of cartoons, we have banners. For instance, pr0n sites. Those animated banners are really distracting, can hardly remember the stories the next day:).
You mean they have stories too? I've never noticed.
I wasn't using Linux yet, but I remember when Win95 came out. Hell, I remember when MSDOS was new, before Gates and Jobs got the desktop idea from PARC.
Instead of comparing a present-day Linux distro on that hardware to Win95, compare a 1995 distro and see how it looks. I'll bet you not only have a GUI, it'll be faster than the GatesWare.
Interesting that a post that shows distrust of the Democrats is modded Flamebait. I'll bet that if it were an anti-Republican post it'd be Insightful. Group-think, ain't it grand!
That's true now, but it wasn't always. Back about ten years ago, any site could ask for your complete cookie list and view any cookie it wanted. That made it possible to track you across sites, and people didn't like it one bit. Then, browsers were changed so that no domain could see cookies it hadn't set itself. Naturally, computer illiterates who'd managed to learn "cookies are bad" never caught on to the fact that the problem's been fixe and still fear them. It's possible that the story about tracking marajuana sites came from back there, but I've never heard it before.
Surely that therefore makes it a debt to the government and uncancellable by bankrupcy (why this should be has still not been adequately explained, the government should be at the very bottom of the pile, instead it places itself at the top, even when the pile ceases to exist).
If debts to the government, such as fines and other court judgements, could be cancelled by bankrupcy, convicted criminals would simply declare bankrupcy whenever the costs of doing so were less than the amount owed. This way, you don't have an easy way to get out of paying, making sure that if you do the crime, you pay the fine.
It's been tried. Back in '84, a number of Scientologists bought supporting memberships and voted for Battlefield Earth. Although they were from all over the country, all the checks were from the same account in sequential order. After discussion, the votes were rejected and the checks returned. Not one of them objected.
I won't say it can't be done, but you'd probably need several hundred votes. That's at least $100/"member" for the supporting membership, possibly more, so there's ten to twenty thousand dollars invested, just to have a good chance. I doubt anybody'd find it worth their while.
Maybe the dark side of Mercury would be more feasible.
What "dark side of Mercury?" It's been known for over twenty years that Mercury rotates in 2/3 of the time it takes to orbit the sun rather than having its day equal to its year. It's just that the best times to observe the planet by telescope come about 2/3 or 4/3 of an orbit apart. (Not sure which one, but in either case, the same side was always lit when we could observe it. It took doppler radar to find out what was really going on.)
It all depends on what the members of the convention vote for. The concom doesn't decide who gets the Hugos, the members vote on it, just like for the Oscars.
Slashdot Mirror
They can get him for vandalism, destruction of private property, malicious mischief and probably some other things I haven't thought of if they want to badly enough. I don't know if they will, and I'm not sure they should, but the possibility's there.
No, although that's a common misconception. Trespass isn't a felony or even a misdemenor. It's an infraction, rather like a speeding ticket. If the trespasser does no damage and breaks no other laws in the process, the most the police will do (if they come out at all) is give them a ticket and ask them to leave.
Cringly's predictions remind me of something I heard years ago on a radio talk show. The host would save all the psycic predictions he could find during the year and grade them. Not surprisingly, most of them had few, if any correct. However, one of his frequent callers scored over 80% with predictions like, "The results of this year's presidential election will astonish millions of Americans," and, "A famous person will die this year." The only strange thing about this is that he managed to get two of his ten wrong.
You want a cite? OK, here's the Wikipedia article on Bumblebees. Is that good enough?
If the BBC ever announces, "Next [Some Show] followed by Dr. Who." does that mean that Who's on second?
No. A scientist once proved that it was "impossible" for a bumblebee to fly. What he really proved is that if the bee's wings were stiff, then they wouldn't generate enough lift to keep it in the air. Therefore, it's wings must flex. Years later, films proved him right.
In Soviet Russia, dwarf galaxies welcome you!
No, he's refering to the *area* of a Full Moon. Using your calculation as a basis, it covers SQRT(1666)degrees, or, slightly over 41.8 degrees.
That's right. It's a dwarf galaxy because its actual size is small (compared to other galaxies) but its apparent size is 5,000 times that of the Full Moon because it's so close, as galaxies go.
In case that's not enough to explain it to you, consider that the Moon is much smaller than Jupiter, but appears to be larger because it's much nearer.
You make a good point. I wasn't thinking in terms of locked-in business apps, but things like games that have absurd, insecure requirements, such as running as admin. (I know of one on-line game that does, or at least did, run on an *arbitrary* port over 1024, requiring you to allow all such ports access through your firewall.) Things like games you can boycott until they wise up or go away; if your business depends on it, of course, all you can do is hope they use a good quality lube and plenty of it.
No, because that has to do with an entirely different, well-understood phenominum. Unlike most substances, water gets less dense when it gets near its freezing point instead of continuing to get denser. When it freezes, it gets even less dense. (This is caused by something called "hydrogen bonds," but I'm not going to go into that.) Thus, ice is slightly less dense than the water surrounding it, making it float.
Any program that does that is a security hole by definition. Just say NO, and don't buy it. Sooner or later, either they'll stop doing it or go out of business if enough people reject them. Either way, problem solved.
Microsoft will continue to have buffer overflow issues as long as they use static buffers. Geez, Louise, it's not rocket science!
1) Read in a line one character at a time, counting its length.
2) Allocate a buffer long enough to accomodate it.
3) Read the line into the buffer you've just allocated and process it.
4) Deallocate the buffer when finished.
5) Profit!
From what I understand of ID, it's not that we can't understand how it works, it's that it could not have evolved on its own and therefore somebody had to design it. In order for this to "refute" ID, they'd need to have shown how it could have evolved naturally.
Note that although I'm fairly religious, I'm not a believer in ID; I'm just pointing out that the article's claim to have refuted ID is wrong.
Sure, one-click shopping is obvious, once you've seen it. But Spamazon's landsharks can (and I'm sure would) say, "If it's that obvious, why weren't people doing it years ago?" It's a valid question, and one that needs to be answered.
The same thing goes for their assoiciate program, but their might be "non-web" prior art here. Let's say you put coupons in a number of magazines. Each magazine's version is identifiable, and you give the magazine a small kickback for each one brought in, in return for a smaller advertizing fee. That's the same thing, in principle. I don't know if it were ever done, but it would certainly be prior art, in my book.
Recently, I got lucky and got two submissions in a row accepted. However, I didn't link to any site, because I have nothing to advertize. So that's not a problem. The problem comes when a slashdotter games the system by submitting large numbers of articles to use Slashdot as a free advertisement for their site.
You mean they have stories too? I've never noticed.
I wasn't using Linux yet, but I remember when Win95 came out. Hell, I remember when MSDOS was new, before Gates and Jobs got the desktop idea from PARC.
Instead of comparing a present-day Linux distro on that hardware to Win95, compare a 1995 distro and see how it looks. I'll bet you not only have a GUI, it'll be faster than the GatesWare.
Interesting that a post that shows distrust of the Democrats is modded Flamebait. I'll bet that if it were an anti-Republican post it'd be Insightful. Group-think, ain't it grand!
That's true now, but it wasn't always. Back about ten years ago, any site could ask for your complete cookie list and view any cookie it wanted. That made it possible to track you across sites, and people didn't like it one bit. Then, browsers were changed so that no domain could see cookies it hadn't set itself. Naturally, computer illiterates who'd managed to learn "cookies are bad" never caught on to the fact that the problem's been fixe and still fear them. It's possible that the story about tracking marajuana sites came from back there, but I've never heard it before.
If debts to the government, such as fines and other court judgements, could be cancelled by bankrupcy, convicted criminals would simply declare bankrupcy whenever the costs of doing so were less than the amount owed. This way, you don't have an easy way to get out of paying, making sure that if you do the crime, you pay the fine.
I won't say it can't be done, but you'd probably need several hundred votes. That's at least $100/"member" for the supporting membership, possibly more, so there's ten to twenty thousand dollars invested, just to have a good chance. I doubt anybody'd find it worth their while.
What "dark side of Mercury?" It's been known for over twenty years that Mercury rotates in 2/3 of the time it takes to orbit the sun rather than having its day equal to its year. It's just that the best times to observe the planet by telescope come about 2/3 or 4/3 of an orbit apart. (Not sure which one, but in either case, the same side was always lit when we could observe it. It took doppler radar to find out what was really going on.)
It all depends on what the members of the convention vote for. The concom doesn't decide who gets the Hugos, the members vote on it, just like for the Oscars.