Many of the spams I get regularly top 50k (HTML spams, with flash, gifs, etc, etc). On a slow modem (I dont have one, mind you), it take take abit longer than 2 seconds to download.
Aside from that, its not about the money. It's about stopping the act of spamming. Unfortunately, the legal system tends to prioritize fiscal damages over inidivudual non-quantifiable damages, so it's probably wiser and faster to go the 'I'll sue to for time waster' route than the 'Spamming is unethical and against the law, and so I'll see if I can convince the police to lay charges' route.
This is a more effective and faster route to go, and hits spammers where it hurts; their wallets. If they can't make any money from spamming, because the damages people file outweigh the commissions on the referrals and subscriptions they make, whats the point?
Nothing to see except your glib attempt to discredit the time-honoured art of self defense.
He's the one that initiated the litigation, you idiot.
Thus, it isn't time that the offender owes him (or should owe him) for, because he is investing and sp[ending the time at his initiative and discretion to recoup the monetary damages (although we all know that the damages are more of a bonus on top of simply discouraging spammers through the act of instigating litigation when the law permits it.)
By your reasoning, I could prank call you 20 times a day. Then, when you decide to actually spend some time defending yourself, you're suggesting I'd get to make fun of you for taking more time to defend yourself than I'd originally taken by harrassing you.
You're an idiot, because you either dont realize (or are too glib to account for in your reasoning) that it's not about the money or time, it's about the harrassment. It's about getting spam to stop, regardless of the time and money it costs us. Unlike some people, many humans utilize the law to try and limit unscrupulous behaviour because it's unscrupulous, not because we can count pretty numbers that tell us how much money or time we 'lost' as a result of unethical behaviour by companies or individuals.
For whatever reason, in Quake3, having > 200 fps allows you to jump to a height a tiny bit higher than having 200fps (probably because you actually hit the 'peak' of the jump in a frame instead of 'between frames' (ie, the peak of your possible jumpable height happens on a frame instead of a point interpolated between frame, so the physics engine picks up on this and lets you up there.))
So it may not help the visuals, and aside from using the extra frames for motion blur, etc, it also provides you physics engine with a more 'correct' version of your path.. although this is probably dependant on how one implements their physics engine.
I think what he was saying is that the supposition of modern capitalism, that labour has intrinsic value, is so near a reductionist axiom that it might as well be untrue.
You can see this fairly easily by observing an employees behaviour in an environment they do not like or their effort on projects they cannot choose or have a hand at choosing. The 'value' of labour is heavily dependant on that labourers social environment, so it's a dangerous thing to try and quantify (ie, so and so is costing us 6 dollars per virus spread) with little or no regard to the possible 'cost' of changing their social environment.
What I find frightening is how many people shoot holes in those who question the underlying assumptions of our economic model by pointing out how they learned such and such in Econ 101.. I don't know if you remember, but when you learn the basics of schools of thoughts, you tend to have to take the axioms upon which the mathematical models are built on on faith. So sure, while everyone and their mother seems to know what was in Econ 101, the question is, what assumptions were made and taken on faith in order to get through Econ 101, and are those assumptions and underlying models of human behaviour true.
> people who see the value of a company as a sum of its physical assets divided by share value
Are you including labour (ie people) in 'physical assets'? While I respect that 'real' capitalists understand that people are required to bring value to a company, I suggest this is only because no work can be done without people, thus physical assets minus labour is no value at all, because nothing gets done to/with those assets. However, if your 'real' capitalists are simply people who factor labour into the value equation of a company, its still a long ways of from being that simple. Salary (supposedly a share of the 'value' one generates by working) generally dictates _who_ you might work for (ie, highest bidder), but rarely do I find it corolates with how much potential labour value is realized from a given person. That is to say, someone's 'value' as realized from their labour is heavily dependant on their social surroudings (coworkers, environment, rules and policies in working environment, culture, etc) rather than their intrinsic value based on their skill or knowledge set. I think this is where alot of 'real capitalists' still get tripped up, stubbornly blaming the worker for not delivering to their full potential rather than owning up to the very scary notion that people will naturally do better or worse in various environments regardless of their ability to self-discipline.
Re:Yet it still won't affect actors.
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Review: Showtime
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· Score: 2
And yet, in Japan, CG superstars have been around for awhile.
We *need* music. We dont need TV, but we certainly need theatre, in whatever form you choose. In western society, thats movies and TV. Obviously, we can do without TV, but we can't do without culture and art altogether, in whatever form that may be, regardless of quality, and by way of whatever medium delivers it.
It's not a troll, and I'm sorry people always have to focus on the trees instead of the forest. I'm not talking about the black box in your livingroom; I'm talking about the messages contained within it, regardless of the effect of value you place on those ideas and messages.
> But even Lamborghini prices are set by the entire market: by the.01% who are willing to pay the going rate and the 99.99% who aren't.
Well, okay, I get the point - I guess what I'm saying is 'willing' is not 'willing'. It's 'able'. And when you're talking 'able', to me, thats no longer a market. When people are not 'able' to afford something (like, maybe from their total net worth they could, but able as in able to have in addition to the other things they perceive they need), that is no longer a market. To me, thats a potential customer, but you have lost the priviledge of claiming he was part of the price setting decision your market made, because he isn't choosing not to buy your product - he flat out can't. And that was entirely your decision to experiment and exploit the eceonomic demographics of the people who express an interest in gaining access to what you are offering (ie, everyone, regardless of whether or not they are 'choosing' not to buy or 'cant' buy.)
So many people on earth dont want a lamborghini, even at 0$. There is not one person on earth who doesn't want music in some form in some way in their life. The US wouldn't have a [insert extremely frightening number that escapes me right now] consumer dept if people only offered up to 'what they were willing to pay' for going rates. People will often pay more than they feel is fair or can afford if that commodity is seen as something that most people should have reasonable access to in their society. People purchase things on leases, even if they can't afford it. If people offered what they felt they were willing to pay, we wouldn't have consumer debt. People pay more for certain things, because they cannot live with themselves in a world where they feel they are contributing but are not reaping the rewards that are advertised.
> which is precisely why we have antitrust laws
I'm under the impression that anti-trust laws allow monopolies, so long as they are not used to leverage business in different markets. This does not address, in any way, the fact that monoplies can hold markets that offer 'basic' commidities hostage, and cater to the best price/profit ratio, cutting access to said commodity off from many people, or turning them into criminals if a black market is available.
I think the problem is that I'm rejecting such fundamental tenets of free market ideology that I honestly cant argue the specifics without munging the semantics - I'm an astute thinker, but very 'model' oriented. I dont hold much interest in dicussing the ins and outs of a specific model if I believe it's built on a set of flawed axioms or assumptions regarding human purpose and behaviour. Thats porbably why I get so frusterated.. I am attempting to rely on demonstrated human behaviour in the last 2000 years, where everyone argues the aptness of this system using examples of how humans behave within it. To me, thats maddeningly circular.. you cant proove calculus with calculus, y'know?
Anyhow, if anyone's still reading, apologies to those I flame. =) I just get frusterated that I must learn the specifics of a game with feundamental rules I believe do disservice to large numbers of people playing it.
"Just a note, economies aren't meant to serve the interests of society; they simply evolve under a set of rules/regulations imposed on them by the participants. The exception to this is when economies are designed by Man (in the form of some kind of powerful government) to accomplish some outside goal - equality, Socialism, absolute State power, etc. And historically, these kind of structured economies fail miserably."
Duly noted. Although its worth noting that state-enforced property rights (contended to be the only purpose of government in a purely capitalist society, although its phrased "protect people from fraud and theft.. same thing") fall under this category. You need a centralized power to enforce property rights that a population would naturally consider 'unfair'. (Imagine if the police couldn't protect Bill Gates' house.. how many people do you think honestly believe he deserves the house? Many under neoclassical economics conditioning (that he deserves to have that big house, because if he didn't, people might actually consider not growing in wealth), but fundemantally in a pre-capitalist society, I would say few.) So free market eceonomics are also 'enforced' by the government in so far as to place a higher priority on the need for people to grow in wealth for capitalism to work than the overall social climate of a society. So while the markets are not 'planned', the system still is. I see your point tho. I guess you're saying that this eceonomy grew as a result of the rights we placed on private property, but the 'economy' is left to its own devices instead of centrally planned in communism.
Okay, I gotcha, but I think these are subjects so intertwined that it is unwise to discuss what are 'rights', and what economy serves and protects those rights 'naturally' as seperate issues.
> It is a sign of a true rational thinker that when you are wrong you lash out with personal attacks.
Sarcasm duly noted. Although I'd prefer to be called 'frusterated' in this case.
> ... give away genuine designer clothes for exactly $0.00 do you think it would hurt the stores?
Here's where people get confused. First off, I'm talking about monopolies. Second, leather goods are a luxury. Lets take a commidity everyone 'needs', where 'need' is not 'need to live' but 'need to have in order to feel like I am reaping the benifits of participating in this socioeceonomic system'. For example: you dont 'need' a car to live, but they are considered a commodity that you should be able to afford if you participate in the job market. If most people could not afford cars tommorow, one might argue, "dont buy until the prices come down". In reality, if only 5% of the population could afford/a car/, 95% of your society would be wondering why they are working 40 hours a week if they can't even afford (or justify the purchase at current market prices) something that should be within the reach of the majority of the participants of an economic system.
Okay, so CDs.. music. Music is something that no society has EVER lived without. Music is a very basic need of a human - we need art and culture. If you don't believe that, I challenge you to turn off your TV, radio, stop reading anything fictional, and basically live without any sort of cultural intake. It's destructive on a very fundamental level. If I can't assert that, then CDs are a luxery, in which case I agree with you. Then again, if Napster existed for leather goods, lots of people who wouldn't _mind_ a leather coat probably wouldn't napsterize one, because their desire not be a freeloader would outweigh their 'need' of a leather coat. The vast numbers of people playing the file sharing game really goes to show how basic the need for music and art is (to say nothing of the quality of that art.. just that we must have access to it in some form or other.)
So, lets say that shoes will replace leather goods in your example. You dont need shoes to live, but you'd probably question your involvement in an economic system if you felt the price was to high. You'd also not want to go without shoes as a means of attempting to force the price down. It's not an option. Fortunately, the shoe industry is not a monopoly, but imagine if it was! Would you really tell your brother to go without shoes if shoes were only available in a very narrow price range that he felt didn't reflect the value he placed on shoes? I mean, because people need shoes, is that a carte blanche to a monopolistic comany to raise their prices as high as they please? When do you order them to lower prices? When everyone in a society goes without shoes, or when people start setting up 'black market' shoe stores? Since we know nobody is going to go _without_ shoes, we have to assume that the existance of a black market is a good indication that shoes are too expensive (and there is no alternative). So understand this.. nobody is going to go _WITHOUT_ music, ok? Access to music at fair prices is a fairly universally accepted 'right' in an economic system. If only 40% of the people in an economy can justify the price of music, that is not an indication that 'everything is okay', because people are still buying music and the industry can continue to be profitable with that 40%. You might contend that it would be in the monopolies interest to bring prices down to expand their consumer base, but in reality, marketers are taught at a very early age that the majority of your profits come from a very small segment of your consumers (usually 20% of your consumer base is 70% of your profits.) So no, there is no motivation to serve the 'potential' market, because it is usually more profitable to extract higher prices from a heavier user base with the means and salaries to justify the purchase of the commodity.
So there you have it. If CDs are leather coats, I wouldn't give a fuck. Humans dont need leather coats. If CDs are coats (and I contend that they are), then I do give a fuck.
By your reasonsing, it would be impossible for bands or theatre companies to hold 'Pay what you can' nights, because nobody would pay anything. The reality is, if given a choice between unreasonable prices and nothing at all, a black market will form. People will not 'go without' just to drive a price down, unless the item is not fundamental to a 'normal' participation in a society. When monopolies exist in markets where the commidity is something humans have enjoyed fair access to for thousands of years, people will fuck the rules. That doesn't make them criminals - it makes the monopoly holder an asshole for forcing people into unethical behaviour, and for causing them to suspend caring about the livelihoods of the people the monopoly holder is supposedly attempting to protect.
I havn't met one single human being who felt music should be free. Not one. Ever. I have, however, met tons who think CDs are too expensive, or who would rather have lower prices than 20 songs and 'extras'. Those people napsterize, because they dont have a choice. The real irony is how many of them bought more CDs while they were napsterizing, because, for once, due to the fact that they could prelisten and evalauate recordings before they purchased them, they could be garaunteed of the value of the CD before they bought it, thus bringing the average price/value ratio of their purchases in line with their demands. However, the thing that got them started was a lack of choice. Not buying is not a choice. Only those who can afford to pay more than they intrisically value things, or who do accept a price most people deem unfair because they place less value 'per dollar' instead of more value on the commodity due to larger earnings on their part, will suggest that voting with your anti-wallet is an acceptable means of expressing displeasure with a monopoly.
On a side note, the reason you're a moron is because your argument completely discounts the 'neccessity' factor of particular commodities and services. The neoclassical economic rheotic in vogue these days absolutely ignores that fundamental needs and monopolies do not go well together. Monopolies/know/ how much their needed, and simply extort higher and higher prices until they find that proper balance between scarcity (how much of their potential market still finds the price 'fair' according to how much wealth they have) vs. profits (by serving a wealthier few, you will make more money than charging at a lower price point that a majority can justify.)
This is why you rarely see monopolies in the luxery markets - because luxuries, by their definition, are things that you can reasonably go without. Is music a luxery? Think carefully, I'm not sure you want to prevent people from hearing music...
And yeah, I get upset when people like you throw an Adam Smith or two at a vastly complex non self correcting eceonomic system that was designed to benifit the people participating in it, not make life better for a few people inside it so they could feel good about having access to things other people couldn't justify purchasing. Saying the people who refuse to fall on the 'i cant justify buying that at that price or I cant find a way of giving back in a way that I feel is comesurate with what I'm getting' side of commodity X are just a whiney bunch of criminals is essentially asserting that you don't agree with a democratic economic system - that you agree more with a system that actually encourages producers to limit their distribution to maximize their profits instead of accepting that the whole point of this all, in the first place, was to make basic commodity X at a price point that provides access to said commidity to people participating in the system at a price they deem fair. You miss the fact that most classic economists say that this system eliminates scarcity - when what we actually see is that it creates it where it otherwise wouldn't have to exist.
Part of my point was that the industry becomes weaker (and thus less capable of being evil) should they serve the/entire/ market, instead of those simply willing to pay higher and higher prices. So whether its death or elimination of power, the end result is the same. The industry dies, or is forced to serve the/entire/ market, in which case, they make less money and cant fuck nobody anymore (and also reliquish monopoly control of the distribution of culture and music.)
I totally agree with you. Those who claim Napster show that people steal if they can tivialize 1900 years of people who didnt steal and kill each other due to the lack of security cameras and network traffic sniffers. On the musician side, the most prolific and famous musicians will ALWAYS come as a result of reasonable control over their creations, not total control.
> If consumers think CD prices are too high, they're free to vote with their wallets
There is no such thing as the anti-vote with a wallet. I can only opt out of participating. This means that 30% of a potential consumer base can 'hide' the interests of a larger amount of people by keeping an industry profitable. Marketers and suits know that only 20% of your consumer base is 70% on your profits, so they are not entirely interested in serving the needs of a market, but rather serving the needs of 20% of their market. When all these people started stealing music, this wasn't people saying, "Hey, now I can get it for free.".. this was a large chunk of their non-heavyuse-consumer base saying, "Well, they wern't listening to us, so I guess this is the only alternative."
I understand the concepts behind market forces - I simply content that they do not find the price the market will bear. They find the price that a small segment of the people who want the product will bear. Since the music industry is a monopoly, there's only one price level, and thus no alternative for the opted-out (or reduced usage) consumer base. So sure, they are stealing, but only because the mechanics of the market are not serving the needs of the market; only those who contribute the most to it. (This makes sense, but an economy fails to meet the needs of a society when there is a monopoly on a commodity, because those who are not contributing (ie voting 'no' with their wallet) are often cast off as worthless of the monopoly holder right off the bat instead of being seen as potential customers.)
Which is to say, in a monopoly, it is usually more profitable to create scarcity than to serve the interests of 100% of your potential consumer base (think about 'Limited Edition' commidities. You increase the value of something by limiting distribution.. with CDs, you charge the few who can afford and make more than setting a price the entire market will bear.). That's just wrong. Eceonomies are to serve a society - a society should not bend to an economy.
"Given paying any price and free, people choose free."
"Why do you think there are so many surveillance cameras and plainclothes security in stores?"
You, my dear friend, are a moron. I'm sorry to say that, but this argument is the most moronic argument known to man. What you are telling me is that before surveilance cameras, everyone stole. Nobody paid for anything, because we couldn't keep tabs on people. Idiot. I am truely sorry for your narrow minded view of fundamental human values. The suits have turned you against your common man, and if your rhetoric is any indication, their tactics are working great. (Unless you're a suit, in which case you have a vested interest in beliving your assertions are true, because it gives you an excuse to exercise technological control (ie DCMA, SSSCA) over your consumer base.)
"The music being stolen is NOT your intellectual property and no matter what the owners of the property want to charge for it, that doesn't give you the right to steal it."
If many people in an economy steal it, yes it does. Does anyone remember that economies are to serve the interests of a society? What good does it do to hold a society hostage to the interests of an economy? Your argument is like the Brits saying to their American colony, "No matter how much you dont like this situation, the law says you must adhere to it. And you can always work within the rules to change it." When people realize those rules are not serving the social interestest of a society, you know what they do - they fuck the rules. Those in power always claim that its because the people are just immature and criminal. The people know better - they understand the situation is jury rigged, and that any opportunity to change the game within the rules of the game are futile.
What you simply cannot comprehend is that all these IP laws were passed under the nose of an unknowing public (indeed, who has the time to learn our complicated legal system as it stands today) by a few. Now that those laws are not reflecting the interests of a many, you can't lock up those many. You shouldn't have made those rules in the first place if it ran counter to the actual interests of people within that society.
You have to think bigger. Who made the rules, and why are people forced to abide by them when those rules were asked for and passed by an already wealthy few?
> Doesn't [widespread file trading] crowd out what was formerly a competitive menu of available choices? What if you just can't sell music any more? Nobody's going to go down to [Austin record store] Waterloo, nobody's going to hang out with them afterward...."
It says much about the misunderstanding of market principals when people equate circumvention of 'unfair prices' (as determined by the market) as the death of a market. The music industry is a monopoly. People dont feel the value/price ratio is fair. Given paying an unfair price and free, people choose free. What the music industry is trying to convince legislators is that between 0.1 cent per song and 0 cents, most people choose 0 cents. This is so untrue, its not even funny. People pay _fair_ prices, even whenfree alternatives are available. There is a host of research showing that humans dont like being or living with freeloaders, and that humans do expect to give something in exchange for something of value, provided they feel the price they pay is fair. There is no death of an industry here, only (potentially), the death of a monopoly. And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. Millions of napster users have every right to illustrate that an elite few are profiteering the fundamental human need for art and culture. Once the music industry realizes that they are spending too much on packaging and promotion, they will be able to offer things at a fair price. Until then, the music industry situation is like if only one auto maker existed, and they only sold cars with gold rims (which isn't to say that quality is high, but production values are through the roof.) While everyone needs a car, people dont want the gold rims. The monopoly is holding the market hostage by not offering cars without gold rims (ie, the extra production values that people think they want, but can't afford at the end of the day.)
Well, you dont have 40B dollars. However, if you did have 40B dollars, your 'spam filter' is not held to 100% perfection. People can't sue condom manufactures when they get pregnant, because the condom industry isn't so stupid to say, "Hey, these things are 100% effective." Presumably, as a sane individual, you wouldn't be selling a '100% effective spam filter', but a 'spam filter that can cut spamage, possibly up to 100%'.
Companies are liable when products do not live up to claims or they release products with known defects that cause damage. The OS community, if anything, would be less susceptable to releasing shoddy code under laibility laws, because there is no 'rush' to release unready code, nor any sales or market driven motivation to make claims about the product that dont stand up in the real world.
So, in closing, you would be on the hook if you distributed your software under the guise of unrealistic claims. Liability would not result in shitloads of lawsuits, it would result in companies having to think twice about their 'claims' about their products. OS developers would benifit, since they dont have sales teams and revenue expectations forcing them into situations where they must lie about the functionality, safety, or power of their solutions. Companies would finally be able to rein in their fucked up management and sales guys, because suddenly,/they/ would be the ones resonsible for lawsuits, not 'buggy software'. Developers in companies would finally get to say, "Fine. I'll release it. Just understand that you might incurr 40B dollars in damage on our company."
The problem isn't that software isn't perfect - EVERYONE knows it never will be. The problem is finding an honest to god reason to tell the sales team to go shove it up their ass and stop breathing down the software engineers neck. Because, FINALLY, EVERYONE IN A COMPANY will be resonsible for shipping software that didn't live up to claims, not the developer for not 'inventing' an extra 200 hours a week in order to make the software live up to the brochure that was printed 4 weeks ago by a bunch of suits who didn't know dick all about software.
To reiterate, so long as your product does not undermine your claims (absolutely no problem in the OS world, as you arnt trying to 'sell', so you can be realistic), youre safe. This will just rein in companies selling one thing, but distributing a whole other thing (read: Windows, Oracle...)
.. are you suggesting that different goals require different tools, possibly made by different companies? Don't let the OS market know this, or we will kill the thriving flamebait OS war scene.:(
Actually, there is lots of good information you provide on the capabilities of search engines. I, for one, would love to see more "A is good for this, B is good for this", instead of simply grouping and competing A & B, suggesting that one can only use one.
IMHO, this is where (free) web services really rule - I can't buy 5 different cars for 5 different reasons I use cars, but in the case of these types of services, the cost of using and switching between these services is very next-to-nil. Hopefully, web services will start encouraging companies to share again, as Google and Altavista may very well demonstrate that sharing market segments with other players makes everyone happier in the long run.
You're confused. Open Source != Free as in beer Software (for the millionth time).
If you sell your OS application, you should be liable.
If you dont sell it, you are not liable for its use.
You should not be held liable for a product who's distribution and use is volountary. What you should be worrying about is how companies would probably use free as in beer software less, because they would be unable to hold the creator of that software liable for damages incurred from use.
Which is why 'innovation' is more of a buzzword than a verb. Innovation solves a problem. In the Linux community, if enough people want a new FS, one will get built.
MS 'innovates', and then tells people its what they wanted (or that it improves, no questions asked, what it replaces). Thats not innovation, and the only motivations in those scenarios are: make morey money, planned obselecense, etc.
As for copying, EVERYONE COPIES. EVERY SINGLE GODDAMNED BRILLIANT MUSICIAN/ENGINEER/WHATEVER COULD ONLY INNOVATE BY COPYING PREVIOUS IDEAS. The notion of 'copying' something and improving it is not innovation is A COMPLETE FALSEHOOD. The question is, do the costs (and I'm talking social costs such as training or usability, time costs, not only $$ costs) of deploying a new technology outwiegh the cost of staying with the current one? Thats a question MS will never ask, nor will its consumers care. A scary situation - at least in the Linux world, needs will be met. Innovation for innovations sake is a complete waste of time, unless you're in an economy, where, unfortauntely, its a requirement to keep things going.
Or MS makes an FS with no DRM in it, removing the ability for the technophile to complain bitterly about Big Brother.
But wait.. FS supports hooks A, B, and C, which make it brutally easy to put DRM on top of the FS, and brutally difficult to circumvent. MS can technically claim that there is no DRM in the FS, but if the motivation to develop and relase the FS comes from making it nicer to slap a DRM on, then they've done their bit for the MPAA and RIAA, while avoiding the stigma that would come from FS level DRM.
It's all sematics. Thats the problem with MS.. why they say they do stuff, and why they really do it are two seperate things. As long as they have legit 'alibis' for engineering decisions, there's not much anyone can do, until Joe Sixpack understands what's going on. MS made the game, and it really seems like we're stuck waiting until they fuck it up sufficiently.
1. How many FS types can you use in Linux? vs. Windows?
2. How much you wanna bet that rolling out a new FS is a clever way of putting DRM at the FS layer? Fun fun fun.
MS only innovates if it makes them money. Linux innovates when its useful, practical, or feasible. Don't get confused.. innovation for innovations sake (or to tighen a noose lower in a codebase) isn't innovation at all.
Your points on minimizing the damage are duly noted.
However, passing data from safe languages to unsafe libs (think php -> gtk) can still exploit subsystems which WILL have to be written in unsafe languages.
Then you're stuck saying that someday all these things will be written in safe languages, which is absolutely untrue. You simply do not sacrifice possible performance in core systems if its available.
Just as you say that relying on programmer discipline (I prefer to think of it as responsibility and education), neither will writing everything in 'safe' languages be. There will always be a demand to eek out the last bit of performance possible, and as such, checking for buffer overflows is such a cost.
We may simply disagree that at some point, being safe & higher performance can go hand in hand. I think that they both have their places, but make no mistake, higher performance will always result in less 'safe' development platforms, and thus relying on everyone switching to safe languages is just as faulty as relying on programmers to be perfect.
My point was that since neither are going to happen outright, the case is to pick and choose: those who need the performance (or dont believe your benchmarks, for instance... soley for the sake of argument) will gladly take the less safe platform, but must understand and respect these types of exploits, and those who need to be able to free up having to be responsible about memory, and focusing on appropriate enviornments where speed is non critical: servers, clients, etc.
And just to play devils advocate: at some point, at vm talks to an OS. OSes are pretty big, and lots of people work on them. So saying, 'forget bufferoverflows, they dont have to happen' is untrue. I do c/c++/perl/php/java... every tool for its job. Trying to solve every problem with one magic bullet usually ends in a half-assed solution.
>the progrm may depend on third party code that contains bugs
.. or your 'non insecure language' runtime could contain bugs (as you point out.) At some point, the machine gets instructions, and while safe languages might cut down on the number of 'dumb' overflow bugs, the simple fact remains that overflow bugs will _always_ exist.
Education over technological safegaurds (I could just see the next generation of programmers: 'buffer what?').. otherwise, you rely on something you 'assume' is safe, but isn't neccessarily so.
All of this is notwithstanding the question: is a buffer overflow error in a platform that has 100% deployment better than lots of programs here and there getting their native buffer overflow bugs discovered? Interesting question unto itself...
Also, remember that performance requirements of core services (ftp, dns) have always outstripped performance supply. There will always be a need for languages that are 'closer to the cpu', in order to extract all possible performence to meet demand, and those will always be insecure.
Sure, client side run-once apps benifit greatly from safe languages, but there will always been a need for unsafe languages. To that end, I'd advocate pushing for a higher respect of 'safe' function use in code, by changing a developers' attitudes from 'ah, what the hell, i'm too lazy to use the safe func' to, 'if a safe func exists, use it or die'. Or writing safe wrappers to unsafe funcs, and having a policy saying you simply are not allowed to side-step the safe prototype.
I really can't imagine justifying the additional cost & perfornace hit of safe platforms with the laziness and 'infailability' of coders. If I were the one with my hands on the purse string, I'd understand that bugs will *always* exist (as to avoid putting all my proverbial eggs in one code base, which is probably the biggest problem facing our eceonomy's reliance in software stability and security), and make sure I have developers that understand how to minimize the possibility of producing code with these types of errors.
Also, don't forget.. a problem without a buffer overflow bug is still exploitable through a veritable infinitum of poor design choices, so are the benifits of nearly eliminating the possibility of buffer overflow bugs and memory related exploits truely worth the performance hit for critical systems with high load and a perf demand that almost always outstrips perf supply?
.. which is all a long winded way of saying, sure, your approach works for many cases, but it sounds like yet another case of someone with a hammer trying to make everything look like a nail.:)
Some software packages do this.. purify, etc. They're pretty expensive tho. The problem is that the logic that results in a buffer overflow error can be VERY complicated, and so its extremely difficult to spot sometimes even for the seasoned developer, nevermind a clever regex.
On the flip side, finding lots of memcpy's instead of strncpy might help you find the 'dumb' overflow bugs, but one would hope those arn't the ones we're most concerned about.:P Mostly, when copying and moving and generally playing with memory, if you spot functions without buffer limit or max byte limit arguments, you *might* be openening yourself up for trouble. Unfortunately, as I said, those are the easy ones.:) In reality, buffer overflow errors (and off-by-one bugs generally follow the 'simple errors can result from terribly complicated logic' construct of buffer overflow bugs) can be extremely difficult to spot if your input parsing/copying/moving mechanism is non-trivial.
> Scientists will love the lack of distraction, but casual readers looking for colorful anecdotes about the wacky geniuses in labcoats will need to look elsewhere.
If you want that kind of thing, this book is amazing for presenting both sides (ie, the science & the people) of the stories:
It's called Complexity. It is a kind of answer to 'Chaos', and it has much info on the kind of biological software that the Santa Fe Institute crowd was working on a few years ago. A very highly recommended read.
Slashdot Mirror
Many of the spams I get regularly top 50k (HTML spams, with flash, gifs, etc, etc). On a slow modem (I dont have one, mind you), it take take abit longer than 2 seconds to download.
Aside from that, its not about the money. It's about stopping the act of spamming. Unfortunately, the legal system tends to prioritize fiscal damages over inidivudual non-quantifiable damages, so it's probably wiser and faster to go the 'I'll sue to for time waster' route than the 'Spamming is unethical and against the law, and so I'll see if I can convince the police to lay charges' route.
This is a more effective and faster route to go, and hits spammers where it hurts; their wallets. If they can't make any money from spamming, because the damages people file outweigh the commissions on the referrals and subscriptions they make, whats the point?
Nothing to see except your glib attempt to discredit the time-honoured art of self defense.
He's the one that initiated the litigation, you idiot.
Thus, it isn't time that the offender owes him (or should owe him) for, because he is investing and sp[ending the time at his initiative and discretion to recoup the monetary damages (although we all know that the damages are more of a bonus on top of simply discouraging spammers through the act of instigating litigation when the law permits it.)
By your reasoning, I could prank call you 20 times a day. Then, when you decide to actually spend some time defending yourself, you're suggesting I'd get to make fun of you for taking more time to defend yourself than I'd originally taken by harrassing you.
You're an idiot, because you either dont realize (or are too glib to account for in your reasoning) that it's not about the money or time, it's about the harrassment. It's about getting spam to stop, regardless of the time and money it costs us. Unlike some people, many humans utilize the law to try and limit unscrupulous behaviour because it's unscrupulous, not because we can count pretty numbers that tell us how much money or time we 'lost' as a result of unethical behaviour by companies or individuals.
For whatever reason, in Quake3, having > 200 fps allows you to jump to a height a tiny bit higher than having 200fps (probably because you actually hit the 'peak' of the jump in a frame instead of 'between frames' (ie, the peak of your possible jumpable height happens on a frame instead of a point interpolated between frame, so the physics engine picks up on this and lets you up there.))
.. although this is probably dependant on how one implements their physics engine.
So it may not help the visuals, and aside from using the extra frames for motion blur, etc, it also provides you physics engine with a more 'correct' version of your path
I think what he was saying is that the supposition of modern capitalism, that labour has intrinsic value, is so near a reductionist axiom that it might as well be untrue.
.. I don't know if you remember, but when you learn the basics of schools of thoughts, you tend to have to take the axioms upon which the mathematical models are built on on faith. So sure, while everyone and their mother seems to know what was in Econ 101, the question is, what assumptions were made and taken on faith in order to get through Econ 101, and are those assumptions and underlying models of human behaviour true.
You can see this fairly easily by observing an employees behaviour in an environment they do not like or their effort on projects they cannot choose or have a hand at choosing. The 'value' of labour is heavily dependant on that labourers social environment, so it's a dangerous thing to try and quantify (ie, so and so is costing us 6 dollars per virus spread) with little or no regard to the possible 'cost' of changing their social environment.
What I find frightening is how many people shoot holes in those who question the underlying assumptions of our economic model by pointing out how they learned such and such in Econ 101
> people who see the value of a company as a sum of its physical assets divided by share value
Are you including labour (ie people) in 'physical assets'? While I respect that 'real' capitalists understand that people are required to bring value to a company, I suggest this is only because no work can be done without people, thus physical assets minus labour is no value at all, because nothing gets done to/with those assets. However, if your 'real' capitalists are simply people who factor labour into the value equation of a company, its still a long ways of from being that simple. Salary (supposedly a share of the 'value' one generates by working) generally dictates _who_ you might work for (ie, highest bidder), but rarely do I find it corolates with how much potential labour value is realized from a given person. That is to say, someone's 'value' as realized from their labour is heavily dependant on their social surroudings (coworkers, environment, rules and policies in working environment, culture, etc) rather than their intrinsic value based on their skill or knowledge set. I think this is where alot of 'real capitalists' still get tripped up, stubbornly blaming the worker for not delivering to their full potential rather than owning up to the very scary notion that people will naturally do better or worse in various environments regardless of their ability to self-discipline.
And yet, in Japan, CG superstars have been around for awhile.
>cel animation didn't make actors redundant
.. except that CGI's ultimate goal (or one of them at least) is to look exactly like real actors.
We *need* music. We dont need TV, but we certainly need theatre, in whatever form you choose. In western society, thats movies and TV. Obviously, we can do without TV, but we can't do without culture and art altogether, in whatever form that may be, regardless of quality, and by way of whatever medium delivers it.
It's not a troll, and I'm sorry people always have to focus on the trees instead of the forest. I'm not talking about the black box in your livingroom; I'm talking about the messages contained within it, regardless of the effect of value you place on those ideas and messages.
> But even Lamborghini prices are set by the entire market: by the .01% who are willing to pay the going rate and the 99.99% who aren't.
.. I am attempting to rely on demonstrated human behaviour in the last 2000 years, where everyone argues the aptness of this system using examples of how humans behave within it. To me, thats maddeningly circular .. you cant proove calculus with calculus, y'know?
Well, okay, I get the point - I guess what I'm saying is 'willing' is not 'willing'. It's 'able'. And when you're talking 'able', to me, thats no longer a market. When people are not 'able' to afford something (like, maybe from their total net worth they could, but able as in able to have in addition to the other things they perceive they need), that is no longer a market. To me, thats a potential customer, but you have lost the priviledge of claiming he was part of the price setting decision your market made, because he isn't choosing not to buy your product - he flat out can't. And that was entirely your decision to experiment and exploit the eceonomic demographics of the people who express an interest in gaining access to what you are offering (ie, everyone, regardless of whether or not they are 'choosing' not to buy or 'cant' buy.)
So many people on earth dont want a lamborghini, even at 0$. There is not one person on earth who doesn't want music in some form in some way in their life. The US wouldn't have a [insert extremely frightening number that escapes me right now] consumer dept if people only offered up to 'what they were willing to pay' for going rates. People will often pay more than they feel is fair or can afford if that commodity is seen as something that most people should have reasonable access to in their society. People purchase things on leases, even if they can't afford it. If people offered what they felt they were willing to pay, we wouldn't have consumer debt. People pay more for certain things, because they cannot live with themselves in a world where they feel they are contributing but are not reaping the rewards that are advertised.
> which is precisely why we have antitrust laws
I'm under the impression that anti-trust laws allow monopolies, so long as they are not used to leverage business in different markets. This does not address, in any way, the fact that monoplies can hold markets that offer 'basic' commidities hostage, and cater to the best price/profit ratio, cutting access to said commodity off from many people, or turning them into criminals if a black market is available.
I think the problem is that I'm rejecting such fundamental tenets of free market ideology that I honestly cant argue the specifics without munging the semantics - I'm an astute thinker, but very 'model' oriented. I dont hold much interest in dicussing the ins and outs of a specific model if I believe it's built on a set of flawed axioms or assumptions regarding human purpose and behaviour. Thats porbably why I get so frusterated
Anyhow, if anyone's still reading, apologies to those I flame. =) I just get frusterated that I must learn the specifics of a game with feundamental rules I believe do disservice to large numbers of people playing it.
"Just a note, economies aren't meant to serve the interests of society; they simply evolve under a set of rules/regulations imposed on them by the participants. The exception to this is when economies are designed by Man (in the form of some kind of powerful government) to accomplish some outside goal - equality, Socialism, absolute State power, etc. And historically, these kind of structured economies fail miserably."
.. same thing") fall under this category. You need a centralized power to enforce property rights that a population would naturally consider 'unfair'. (Imagine if the police couldn't protect Bill Gates' house .. how many people do you think honestly believe he deserves the house? Many under neoclassical economics conditioning (that he deserves to have that big house, because if he didn't, people might actually consider not growing in wealth), but fundemantally in a pre-capitalist society, I would say few.) So free market eceonomics are also 'enforced' by the government in so far as to place a higher priority on the need for people to grow in wealth for capitalism to work than the overall social climate of a society. So while the markets are not 'planned', the system still is. I see your point tho. I guess you're saying that this eceonomy grew as a result of the rights we placed on private property, but the 'economy' is left to its own devices instead of centrally planned in communism.
Duly noted. Although its worth noting that state-enforced property rights (contended to be the only purpose of government in a purely capitalist society, although its phrased "protect people from fraud and theft
Okay, I gotcha, but I think these are subjects so intertwined that it is unwise to discuss what are 'rights', and what economy serves and protects those rights 'naturally' as seperate issues.
> It is a sign of a true rational thinker that when you are wrong you lash out with personal attacks.
... give away genuine designer clothes for exactly $0.00 do you think it would hurt the stores?
/a car/, 95% of your society would be wondering why they are working 40 hours a week if they can't even afford (or justify the purchase at current market prices) something that should be within the reach of the majority of the participants of an economic system.
.. music. Music is something that no society has EVER lived without. Music is a very basic need of a human - we need art and culture. If you don't believe that, I challenge you to turn off your TV, radio, stop reading anything fictional, and basically live without any sort of cultural intake. It's destructive on a very fundamental level. If I can't assert that, then CDs are a luxery, in which case I agree with you. Then again, if Napster existed for leather goods, lots of people who wouldn't _mind_ a leather coat probably wouldn't napsterize one, because their desire not be a freeloader would outweigh their 'need' of a leather coat. The vast numbers of people playing the file sharing game really goes to show how basic the need for music and art is (to say nothing of the quality of that art .. just that we must have access to it in some form or other.)
.. nobody is going to go _WITHOUT_ music, ok? Access to music at fair prices is a fairly universally accepted 'right' in an economic system. If only 40% of the people in an economy can justify the price of music, that is not an indication that 'everything is okay', because people are still buying music and the industry can continue to be profitable with that 40%. You might contend that it would be in the monopolies interest to bring prices down to expand their consumer base, but in reality, marketers are taught at a very early age that the majority of your profits come from a very small segment of your consumers (usually 20% of your consumer base is 70% of your profits.) So no, there is no motivation to serve the 'potential' market, because it is usually more profitable to extract higher prices from a heavier user base with the means and salaries to justify the purchase of the commodity.
/know/ how much their needed, and simply extort higher and higher prices until they find that proper balance between scarcity (how much of their potential market still finds the price 'fair' according to how much wealth they have) vs. profits (by serving a wealthier few, you will make more money than charging at a lower price point that a majority can justify.)
...
Sarcasm duly noted. Although I'd prefer to be called 'frusterated' in this case.
>
Here's where people get confused. First off, I'm talking about monopolies. Second, leather goods are a luxury. Lets take a commidity everyone 'needs', where 'need' is not 'need to live' but 'need to have in order to feel like I am reaping the benifits of participating in this socioeceonomic system'. For example: you dont 'need' a car to live, but they are considered a commodity that you should be able to afford if you participate in the job market. If most people could not afford cars tommorow, one might argue, "dont buy until the prices come down". In reality, if only 5% of the population could afford
Okay, so CDs
So, lets say that shoes will replace leather goods in your example. You dont need shoes to live, but you'd probably question your involvement in an economic system if you felt the price was to high. You'd also not want to go without shoes as a means of attempting to force the price down. It's not an option. Fortunately, the shoe industry is not a monopoly, but imagine if it was! Would you really tell your brother to go without shoes if shoes were only available in a very narrow price range that he felt didn't reflect the value he placed on shoes? I mean, because people need shoes, is that a carte blanche to a monopolistic comany to raise their prices as high as they please? When do you order them to lower prices? When everyone in a society goes without shoes, or when people start setting up 'black market' shoe stores? Since we know nobody is going to go _without_ shoes, we have to assume that the existance of a black market is a good indication that shoes are too expensive (and there is no alternative). So understand this
So there you have it. If CDs are leather coats, I wouldn't give a fuck. Humans dont need leather coats. If CDs are coats (and I contend that they are), then I do give a fuck.
By your reasonsing, it would be impossible for bands or theatre companies to hold 'Pay what you can' nights, because nobody would pay anything. The reality is, if given a choice between unreasonable prices and nothing at all, a black market will form. People will not 'go without' just to drive a price down, unless the item is not fundamental to a 'normal' participation in a society. When monopolies exist in markets where the commidity is something humans have enjoyed fair access to for thousands of years, people will fuck the rules. That doesn't make them criminals - it makes the monopoly holder an asshole for forcing people into unethical behaviour, and for causing them to suspend caring about the livelihoods of the people the monopoly holder is supposedly attempting to protect.
I havn't met one single human being who felt music should be free. Not one. Ever. I have, however, met tons who think CDs are too expensive, or who would rather have lower prices than 20 songs and 'extras'. Those people napsterize, because they dont have a choice. The real irony is how many of them bought more CDs while they were napsterizing, because, for once, due to the fact that they could prelisten and evalauate recordings before they purchased them, they could be garaunteed of the value of the CD before they bought it, thus bringing the average price/value ratio of their purchases in line with their demands. However, the thing that got them started was a lack of choice. Not buying is not a choice. Only those who can afford to pay more than they intrisically value things, or who do accept a price most people deem unfair because they place less value 'per dollar' instead of more value on the commodity due to larger earnings on their part, will suggest that voting with your anti-wallet is an acceptable means of expressing displeasure with a monopoly.
On a side note, the reason you're a moron is because your argument completely discounts the 'neccessity' factor of particular commodities and services. The neoclassical economic rheotic in vogue these days absolutely ignores that fundamental needs and monopolies do not go well together. Monopolies
This is why you rarely see monopolies in the luxery markets - because luxuries, by their definition, are things that you can reasonably go without. Is music a luxery? Think carefully, I'm not sure you want to prevent people from hearing music
And yeah, I get upset when people like you throw an Adam Smith or two at a vastly complex non self correcting eceonomic system that was designed to benifit the people participating in it, not make life better for a few people inside it so they could feel good about having access to things other people couldn't justify purchasing. Saying the people who refuse to fall on the 'i cant justify buying that at that price or I cant find a way of giving back in a way that I feel is comesurate with what I'm getting' side of commodity X are just a whiney bunch of criminals is essentially asserting that you don't agree with a democratic economic system - that you agree more with a system that actually encourages producers to limit their distribution to maximize their profits instead of accepting that the whole point of this all, in the first place, was to make basic commodity X at a price point that provides access to said commidity to people participating in the system at a price they deem fair. You miss the fact that most classic economists say that this system eliminates scarcity - when what we actually see is that it creates it where it otherwise wouldn't have to exist.
You the man. Right on.
/entire/ market, instead of those simply willing to pay higher and higher prices. So whether its death or elimination of power, the end result is the same. The industry dies, or is forced to serve the /entire/ market, in which case, they make less money and cant fuck nobody anymore (and also reliquish monopoly control of the distribution of culture and music.)
Part of my point was that the industry becomes weaker (and thus less capable of being evil) should they serve the
I totally agree with you. Those who claim Napster show that people steal if they can tivialize 1900 years of people who didnt steal and kill each other due to the lack of security cameras and network traffic sniffers. On the musician side, the most prolific and famous musicians will ALWAYS come as a result of reasonable control over their creations, not total control.
> If consumers think CD prices are too high, they're free to vote with their wallets
.. this was a large chunk of their non-heavyuse-consumer base saying, "Well, they wern't listening to us, so I guess this is the only alternative."
.. with CDs, you charge the few who can afford and make more than setting a price the entire market will bear.). That's just wrong. Eceonomies are to serve a society - a society should not bend to an economy.
There is no such thing as the anti-vote with a wallet. I can only opt out of participating. This means that 30% of a potential consumer base can 'hide' the interests of a larger amount of people by keeping an industry profitable. Marketers and suits know that only 20% of your consumer base is 70% on your profits, so they are not entirely interested in serving the needs of a market, but rather serving the needs of 20% of their market. When all these people started stealing music, this wasn't people saying, "Hey, now I can get it for free."
I understand the concepts behind market forces - I simply content that they do not find the price the market will bear. They find the price that a small segment of the people who want the product will bear. Since the music industry is a monopoly, there's only one price level, and thus no alternative for the opted-out (or reduced usage) consumer base. So sure, they are stealing, but only because the mechanics of the market are not serving the needs of the market; only those who contribute the most to it. (This makes sense, but an economy fails to meet the needs of a society when there is a monopoly on a commodity, because those who are not contributing (ie voting 'no' with their wallet) are often cast off as worthless of the monopoly holder right off the bat instead of being seen as potential customers.)
Which is to say, in a monopoly, it is usually more profitable to create scarcity than to serve the interests of 100% of your potential consumer base (think about 'Limited Edition' commidities. You increase the value of something by limiting distribution
"Given paying any price and free, people choose free."
"Why do you think there are so many surveillance cameras and plainclothes security in stores?"
You, my dear friend, are a moron. I'm sorry to say that, but this argument is the most moronic argument known to man. What you are telling me is that before surveilance cameras, everyone stole. Nobody paid for anything, because we couldn't keep tabs on people. Idiot. I am truely sorry for your narrow minded view of fundamental human values. The suits have turned you against your common man, and if your rhetoric is any indication, their tactics are working great. (Unless you're a suit, in which case you have a vested interest in beliving your assertions are true, because it gives you an excuse to exercise technological control (ie DCMA, SSSCA) over your consumer base.)
"The music being stolen is NOT your intellectual property and no matter what the owners of the property want to charge for it, that doesn't give you the right to steal it."
If many people in an economy steal it, yes it does. Does anyone remember that economies are to serve the interests of a society? What good does it do to hold a society hostage to the interests of an economy? Your argument is like the Brits saying to their American colony, "No matter how much you dont like this situation, the law says you must adhere to it. And you can always work within the rules to change it." When people realize those rules are not serving the social interestest of a society, you know what they do - they fuck the rules. Those in power always claim that its because the people are just immature and criminal. The people know better - they understand the situation is jury rigged, and that any opportunity to change the game within the rules of the game are futile.
What you simply cannot comprehend is that all these IP laws were passed under the nose of an unknowing public (indeed, who has the time to learn our complicated legal system as it stands today) by a few. Now that those laws are not reflecting the interests of a many, you can't lock up those many. You shouldn't have made those rules in the first place if it ran counter to the actual interests of people within that society.
You have to think bigger. Who made the rules, and why are people forced to abide by them when those rules were asked for and passed by an already wealthy few?
> Doesn't [widespread file trading] crowd out what was formerly a competitive menu of available choices? What if you just can't sell music any more? Nobody's going to go down to [Austin record store] Waterloo, nobody's going to hang out with them afterward. ..."
It says much about the misunderstanding of market principals when people equate circumvention of 'unfair prices' (as determined by the market) as the death of a market. The music industry is a monopoly. People dont feel the value/price ratio is fair. Given paying an unfair price and free, people choose free. What the music industry is trying to convince legislators is that between 0.1 cent per song and 0 cents, most people choose 0 cents. This is so untrue, its not even funny. People pay _fair_ prices, even whenfree alternatives are available. There is a host of research showing that humans dont like being or living with freeloaders, and that humans do expect to give something in exchange for something of value, provided they feel the price they pay is fair. There is no death of an industry here, only (potentially), the death of a monopoly. And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. Millions of napster users have every right to illustrate that an elite few are profiteering the fundamental human need for art and culture. Once the music industry realizes that they are spending too much on packaging and promotion, they will be able to offer things at a fair price. Until then, the music industry situation is like if only one auto maker existed, and they only sold cars with gold rims (which isn't to say that quality is high, but production values are through the roof.) While everyone needs a car, people dont want the gold rims. The monopoly is holding the market hostage by not offering cars without gold rims (ie, the extra production values that people think they want, but can't afford at the end of the day.)
Well, you dont have 40B dollars. However, if you did have 40B dollars, your 'spam filter' is not held to 100% perfection. People can't sue condom manufactures when they get pregnant, because the condom industry isn't so stupid to say, "Hey, these things are 100% effective." Presumably, as a sane individual, you wouldn't be selling a '100% effective spam filter', but a 'spam filter that can cut spamage, possibly up to 100%'.
/they/ would be the ones resonsible for lawsuits, not 'buggy software'. Developers in companies would finally get to say, "Fine. I'll release it. Just understand that you might incurr 40B dollars in damage on our company."
...)
Companies are liable when products do not live up to claims or they release products with known defects that cause damage. The OS community, if anything, would be less susceptable to releasing shoddy code under laibility laws, because there is no 'rush' to release unready code, nor any sales or market driven motivation to make claims about the product that dont stand up in the real world.
So, in closing, you would be on the hook if you distributed your software under the guise of unrealistic claims. Liability would not result in shitloads of lawsuits, it would result in companies having to think twice about their 'claims' about their products. OS developers would benifit, since they dont have sales teams and revenue expectations forcing them into situations where they must lie about the functionality, safety, or power of their solutions. Companies would finally be able to rein in their fucked up management and sales guys, because suddenly,
The problem isn't that software isn't perfect - EVERYONE knows it never will be. The problem is finding an honest to god reason to tell the sales team to go shove it up their ass and stop breathing down the software engineers neck. Because, FINALLY, EVERYONE IN A COMPANY will be resonsible for shipping software that didn't live up to claims, not the developer for not 'inventing' an extra 200 hours a week in order to make the software live up to the brochure that was printed 4 weeks ago by a bunch of suits who didn't know dick all about software.
To reiterate, so long as your product does not undermine your claims (absolutely no problem in the OS world, as you arnt trying to 'sell', so you can be realistic), youre safe. This will just rein in companies selling one thing, but distributing a whole other thing (read: Windows, Oracle
.. are you suggesting that different goals require different tools, possibly made by different companies? Don't let the OS market know this, or we will kill the thriving flamebait OS war scene. :(
Actually, there is lots of good information you provide on the capabilities of search engines. I, for one, would love to see more "A is good for this, B is good for this", instead of simply grouping and competing A & B, suggesting that one can only use one.
IMHO, this is where (free) web services really rule - I can't buy 5 different cars for 5 different reasons I use cars, but in the case of these types of services, the cost of using and switching between these services is very next-to-nil. Hopefully, web services will start encouraging companies to share again, as Google and Altavista may very well demonstrate that sharing market segments with other players makes everyone happier in the long run.
You're confused. Open Source != Free as in beer Software (for the millionth time).
If you sell your OS application, you should be liable.
If you dont sell it, you are not liable for its use.
You should not be held liable for a product who's distribution and use is volountary. What you should be worrying about is how companies would probably use free as in beer software less, because they would be unable to hold the creator of that software liable for damages incurred from use.
Which is why 'innovation' is more of a buzzword than a verb. Innovation solves a problem. In the Linux community, if enough people want a new FS, one will get built.
MS 'innovates', and then tells people its what they wanted (or that it improves, no questions asked, what it replaces). Thats not innovation, and the only motivations in those scenarios are: make morey money, planned obselecense, etc.
As for copying, EVERYONE COPIES. EVERY SINGLE GODDAMNED BRILLIANT MUSICIAN/ENGINEER/WHATEVER COULD ONLY INNOVATE BY COPYING PREVIOUS IDEAS. The notion of 'copying' something and improving it is not innovation is A COMPLETE FALSEHOOD. The question is, do the costs (and I'm talking social costs such as training or usability, time costs, not only $$ costs) of deploying a new technology outwiegh the cost of staying with the current one? Thats a question MS will never ask, nor will its consumers care. A scary situation - at least in the Linux world, needs will be met. Innovation for innovations sake is a complete waste of time, unless you're in an economy, where, unfortauntely, its a requirement to keep things going.
Or MS makes an FS with no DRM in it, removing the ability for the technophile to complain bitterly about Big Brother.
.. FS supports hooks A, B, and C, which make it brutally easy to put DRM on top of the FS, and brutally difficult to circumvent. MS can technically claim that there is no DRM in the FS, but if the motivation to develop and relase the FS comes from making it nicer to slap a DRM on, then they've done their bit for the MPAA and RIAA, while avoiding the stigma that would come from FS level DRM.
.. why they say they do stuff, and why they really do it are two seperate things. As long as they have legit 'alibis' for engineering decisions, there's not much anyone can do, until Joe Sixpack understands what's going on. MS made the game, and it really seems like we're stuck waiting until they fuck it up sufficiently.
But wait
It's all sematics. Thats the problem with MS
>Windows are working new ideas into their OS
.. innovation for innovations sake (or to tighen a noose lower in a codebase) isn't innovation at all.
Two questions:
1. How many FS types can you use in Linux? vs. Windows?
2. How much you wanna bet that rolling out a new FS is a clever way of putting DRM at the FS layer? Fun fun fun.
MS only innovates if it makes them money. Linux innovates when its useful, practical, or feasible. Don't get confused
> That's just golden.
... :)
Werd to you, my man, from a developer who loves proper dns admin.
As for cute names, we use classical composers, although most of them have been 'retired' by now. I'll miss beethoven
Your points on minimizing the damage are duly noted.
... soley for the sake of argument) will gladly take the less safe platform, but must understand and respect these types of exploits, and those who need to be able to free up having to be responsible about memory, and focusing on appropriate enviornments where speed is non critical: servers, clients, etc.
... every tool for its job. Trying to solve every problem with one magic bullet usually ends in a half-assed solution.
However, passing data from safe languages to unsafe libs (think php -> gtk) can still exploit subsystems which WILL have to be written in unsafe languages.
Then you're stuck saying that someday all these things will be written in safe languages, which is absolutely untrue. You simply do not sacrifice possible performance in core systems if its available.
Just as you say that relying on programmer discipline (I prefer to think of it as responsibility and education), neither will writing everything in 'safe' languages be. There will always be a demand to eek out the last bit of performance possible, and as such, checking for buffer overflows is such a cost.
We may simply disagree that at some point, being safe & higher performance can go hand in hand. I think that they both have their places, but make no mistake, higher performance will always result in less 'safe' development platforms, and thus relying on everyone switching to safe languages is just as faulty as relying on programmers to be perfect.
My point was that since neither are going to happen outright, the case is to pick and choose: those who need the performance (or dont believe your benchmarks, for instance
And just to play devils advocate: at some point, at vm talks to an OS. OSes are pretty big, and lots of people work on them. So saying, 'forget bufferoverflows, they dont have to happen' is untrue. I do c/c++/perl/php/java
>the progrm may depend on third party code that contains bugs
.. or your 'non insecure language' runtime could contain bugs (as you point out.) At some point, the machine gets instructions, and while safe languages might cut down on the number of 'dumb' overflow bugs, the simple fact remains that overflow bugs will _always_ exist.
.. otherwise, you rely on something you 'assume' is safe, but isn't neccessarily so.
...
.. a problem without a buffer overflow bug is still exploitable through a veritable infinitum of poor design choices, so are the benifits of nearly eliminating the possibility of buffer overflow bugs and memory related exploits truely worth the performance hit for critical systems with high load and a perf demand that almost always outstrips perf supply?
:)
Education over technological safegaurds (I could just see the next generation of programmers: 'buffer what?')
All of this is notwithstanding the question: is a buffer overflow error in a platform that has 100% deployment better than lots of programs here and there getting their native buffer overflow bugs discovered? Interesting question unto itself
Also, remember that performance requirements of core services (ftp, dns) have always outstripped performance supply. There will always be a need for languages that are 'closer to the cpu', in order to extract all possible performence to meet demand, and those will always be insecure.
Sure, client side run-once apps benifit greatly from safe languages, but there will always been a need for unsafe languages. To that end, I'd advocate pushing for a higher respect of 'safe' function use in code, by changing a developers' attitudes from 'ah, what the hell, i'm too lazy to use the safe func' to, 'if a safe func exists, use it or die'. Or writing safe wrappers to unsafe funcs, and having a policy saying you simply are not allowed to side-step the safe prototype.
I really can't imagine justifying the additional cost & perfornace hit of safe platforms with the laziness and 'infailability' of coders. If I were the one with my hands on the purse string, I'd understand that bugs will *always* exist (as to avoid putting all my proverbial eggs in one code base, which is probably the biggest problem facing our eceonomy's reliance in software stability and security), and make sure I have developers that understand how to minimize the possibility of producing code with these types of errors.
Also, don't forget
.. which is all a long winded way of saying, sure, your approach works for many cases, but it sounds like yet another case of someone with a hammer trying to make everything look like a nail.
Some software packages do this .. purify, etc. They're pretty expensive tho. The problem is that the logic that results in a buffer overflow error can be VERY complicated, and so its extremely difficult to spot sometimes even for the seasoned developer, nevermind a clever regex.
:P Mostly, when copying and moving and generally playing with memory, if you spot functions without buffer limit or max byte limit arguments, you *might* be openening yourself up for trouble. Unfortunately, as I said, those are the easy ones. :) In reality, buffer overflow errors (and off-by-one bugs generally follow the 'simple errors can result from terribly complicated logic' construct of buffer overflow bugs) can be extremely difficult to spot if your input parsing/copying/moving mechanism is non-trivial.
On the flip side, finding lots of memcpy's instead of strncpy might help you find the 'dumb' overflow bugs, but one would hope those arn't the ones we're most concerned about.
> Scientists will love the lack of distraction, but casual readers looking for colorful anecdotes about the wacky geniuses in labcoats will need to look elsewhere.
4 6/ qid=1015865367/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_67_1/103-9949968-63 91849
If you want that kind of thing, this book is amazing for presenting both sides (ie, the science & the people) of the stories:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/06718723
It's called Complexity. It is a kind of answer to 'Chaos', and it has much info on the kind of biological software that the Santa Fe Institute crowd was working on a few years ago. A very highly recommended read.