In the story "Sun expands license deal with SCO", the story says that Sun bought extra IP from SCO - namely, the drivers you cited. Thus I was wrong in saying otherwise (namely, that the license was worthless, which it wasn't).
However, in the same article, Sun is cited as both having an option to buy SCO stock as a part of their deal and as using the SCO suits to advertise themselves as an alternative to Linux. So while buying the driver licences from SCO may have been a strategic move to improve its own offerings, neither the potential stock buy nor the product placement is consistent with that. Sun is openly funding a company whose only current purpose is to impair Linux (and Open Source) by spreading FUD and lawsuits.
If the bottom line for Sun were improving their own offerings, the SCO stock purchase doesn't make sense. In conjunction with their product placement, however, it makes lots of sense - unfortunately, the picture it paints is of a company whose interests are not congruent with those of Open Source in this case.
According to a cnet article, Sun said that they had purchased Unix IP from SCO a long time before and that it was comprehensive (search on Google for Sun and SCO and licensing and it should come up). Sun didn't need the SCOsource license for that - they already had it. So, yes, the SCOsource licensing initiative (for which MS and Sun alone paid) is worthless (you can't sue end users for using IP they obtained in good faith but which was not the seller's to sell).
My initial question (why did Sun pay for an SCOsource licence?) is still valid, because Sun didn't buy the SCOsource license for the drivers.
Sun has obviously done some good for OS - as the other posters have suggested. This still leaves an open question: why back SCO?
Maybe their actions are akin to those of allies - when they have common goals, Sun helps OS. When Sun's best interest and that of OS are disjoint, they act for themselves. Allies aren't bad - they just aren't friends.
Then perhaps someone will explain being why Sun paid SCO $8M for a worthless SCO licence (along with Microsoft, themselves no friend of OS). Paying that money has essentially funded SCO's attempt to discredit and/or destroy OS (Linux) by charging users for "intellectual property" that SCO claims it owns. The money has funded the bottomless FUD/BS machine that is Darl McBride and cronies. Either Sun is a friend of open source and was extraordinarily naive or Sun was behaving as an enemy of OS in helping SCO to poke holes in the tires of Linux in order to preserve its Solaris business. Or somewhere in between.
If Sun's actions in the case of SCO are the behavior of a friend of OS, then either Sun is utterly clueless or their definition of "friend" is nonstandard.
The problem with this is not that we should be exempt from the system we impose on/encourage for others, but that the question "where next" doesn't have a good answer. Buggy whip makers probably spent some time learning to perform their trade, but I'm guessing that it didn't take eight or ten years. The jobs changing hands now are those requiring lots of knowledge, both specific and general. The time spent learning to compete in a specific segment of the knowledge market can't be spent elsewhere. The time that jobs using that knowledge require to be good is time that can't be spent learning skills to get another jobs or a job in another field. The jobs being sent elsewhere now require a lot of investment (financial and time) at them to be be able to do them; the jobs the people left behind are likely to be suited for require large inputs of time and education to learn. People who get laid off are thus likely to have lots less money for a lot longer time than previous jobs lost to other markets.
In the Wired article, the antgonist asked the question, "What comes after knowledge?" While I don't think protectionism is a good idea, I don't have any sort of answer to that question. The market asks a lot of education and training from the people who want jobs, and if those people can see their jobs go elsewhere, the logic in the investment of those people in knowledge goes away. Knowledge as a commodity is interesting, but probably not so much for those producing it.
...gov'ts would have done this earlier - while the Patriot Act presumably made some information easier to get that gov'ts would not have otherwise have gotten, the main impetus driving this collection is the ability to gather personal and financial data using the internet. Once that capability came along, it was only a matter of time. Bush didn't make it possible - the tech did. Once the capacity is there, people want to use to best enhance their power, and bureaucracies (sic) are no different.
Also remember that both Democrats and Republicans gave us the Patriot Act and its spawn - while Ashcroft (and by consequence GWB) can take the blame for some of its misuse, they didn't give themselves this power - our elected representatives did. Something to remember come November.
When I go out in the sun, I wear sunscreen and although I'm fairly pale, I probably won't get burned too badly. If someone goes outside with a T-shirt and shorts for the first time in their life (say a 25-year old), they'll probably get burned fairly badly (unless they wear a lot of sunscreen or aren't out for long).
Linux and other open source OS have had people looking at them for a long time. The people looking at the source of Linux are less likely to be a monoculture than the people at MS who are hired to look over software. In addition (uninformed speculation) more of the Linux people may have been black hats once - the less ordered (as in cubicle order rather than procedure order) system may be more amenable to some who fit a less monolithic background. Linux is thus likely to have been looked at by people who might once have looked to hack it and by people with a wider variety of skill sets. MS knows a lot about software, but their diversity in software knowledge and opinion is likely smaller than that of either their user set or of that of white hat hackers.
The other factor is that having the MS source without a licence is illegal - thus the people who are most likely to take advantage of the availability of the source are people without much respect for the license in the first place - black hats. Linux source can be viewed legally, and so is just as likely to be looked over by white hats as black hats (probably more likely, because of the population ratio of BH and WH).
In one of the Clancy books (I think "Debt of Honor"), he talked about secrecy being good for hiding information that someone doesn't want you to know - but that when it broke, the news would be much worse for that someone, and harder to control. That seems applicable here - only the news is directed almost exclusively to those who would do them harm.
People want things (software, movies, etc.) that they own and and can use when they want to. Putting out lots of bits quickly makes server-run programs more convenient but not much better for the users. Someone else still controls your ability to use the software and applications you paid for - when you can use, it, for what you can use it, and the output of the use. This model benefits content providers (loss in piracy, income by rental could be higher, no outside people hacking your software) but not necessarily individuals. Pricing might make it more attractive, but the lack of control that factors into other media distributed similarly such as music (tangentially or otherwise) is still a major issue.
I think that a "subscription model" of software has been in MS's eyes for quite some time - besides the lack of high-speed connections, I don't think their market has been overly receptive. I don't disagree with your point, but considering the hostility of the market towards this kind of restriction, speed isn't the only factor in its adoption.
Microsoft made insecure software because 1) they could get away with it (because there wasn't an alternative) or 2) because they weren't competent enough to make better (more secure) software.
1) doesn't go away with.net - if they can get away with writing sloppy or insecure software now, they will still be able to do it under.net. If their other ambitions (e.g. trusted computing) come through, they will have a lot more power to do bad or stupid things while having less responsibility for their security flaws (because they control the access to users' computers through TC - where else will you go?). This encourages better design for security exactly how?
2) doesn't go away with.net, etc. Since they can write bad code and do bad security design now, what gives anyone the idea that their design will be better for their new languages? One flaw addressed, maybe, but if the code is designed badly or executed badly, there will be a whole bunch of new flaws. Building a "new, improved" lock is okay, but if you know that the last few didn't work well and had lots of problems because of bad design, it is optimistic to assume that the design will be a lot better now, and that you will be better off as a result.
If 1) and 2) aren't true, there is still potential for problems from managed languages. When the technologies come online, people will begin to use them and find other vulnerabilities to replace those that MS eliminated. There is also the possibility that complexity in the new systems creates makes it easier to make insecure code. (ST: "the more plumbing they put in, the easier it is to stop up the drains."(sic))
Unless MS has improved their design and execution, managed languages don't help. A better hammer employed by an incompetent or indifferent carpenter only means that the carpenter will find novel ways to inflict bad carpentry or injury on himself and others. Meanwhile, other OS are improving systems as well, and starting from better foundations. Arrogance for Linux is uncalled for, but I think it's somewhat premature (and perhaps FUD) to consider MS's victory for security.
1) Pascal's wager doesn't work - lots of religions make countervailing or contrary claims to being correct. The question that most people have to decide is not whether to have faith in anything or not, but whether to believe in Christanity or Hinduism or Judaism or Islam or... Many of these choices are exclusive or contradictory, so believing in something won't necessarily save you - only believing in the right thing will. In addition, believing in something excludes options from the here and now - if you hold a religious belief, you must act consistently with it, excluding some possible actions that might benefit you. Pascal's Wager is not cost-free, and since its benefits are unclear (if all beliefs lead to the same place, Pascal's wager holds; if some beliefs lead to Hell (or some other bad place) then the value of choice may be much smaller and on the order or the cost of choosing and the opportunity costs of actions you cannot do), it isn't really a very good argument for religious belief.
2) Science and religion are not exclusive unless one forces them to be. Science takes a pragmatic view of the world - what effects we can observe or measure are those of consequence to science. The immeasureable is not science's purview. Religious beliefs ask different, perhaps broader questions: What are we doing here? What do we do with our lives? How does everything work? Science can be considered a subset of this. Multiple religious beliefs may be consistent with a physical phenomenon - the things that distinguish them exist in a place science can't get to and thus has no legitimate say in. The problems occur when religious and scientific claims occupy the same ground and are contrary. In this case, science usually wins because it can be tested, whereas religion depends upon claims that cannot be tested (but which can only be trusted).
In my opinion, it is not the "anti-religionists" who have betrayed us, but a subset of religionists. Religion and science have existed side by side for some time and were not considered inconsistent. In the last few hundred years, some religious folk have tried to "prove" their beliefs by misusing logic and science to their ends (creationism/intelligent design/creation science, for example). Trying to prove the unprovable only further hardens the demands of people for proof before they will believe, undercutting the faith; after all, if the people who claim to most strongly believe something require proof to believe in it, how much faith can they really have? There is also the bonus of trying to force people to have a faith whose value derives from chosen belief (thus destroying the object of belief for others). In addition, the likely purpose of the logical legerdemain (to compel others to behave as one would like) only serves to alienate those who would otherwise be quietly accepting of the faith of others. Vehement (and sometimes illogical) people who don't believe in religion probably come at least in part from this.
The analogy can be extended. Like the beautiful woman (or this particular one, for most of us), we can't have the real thing. I find difficult enough to estimate my own variability, let alone simulate that of anyone else. In order to get closer to her, we approximate. Perhaps you get bad black-and-white pron, move up to clearer pictures, maybe find color ones. Maybe she was in a movie, and so you get that. Maybe someday you even meet her, fall in love, marry, have children, etc. Each time we move closer, we gain information about her - what she likes, what she looks like, etc. We make successive approximations, modeling her behavior as we go. We never have her inside, just a model containing things we know and deductions from them. The woman is still alive, and more unpredictable than our model allows. We don't know how she'll behave in circumstances none of us have seen, nor do we know the things she hasn't told us. Everything we know of her helps us to build a model, but the model isn't the object (the person), and never will be.
Because the GR is irrational, we will never have it exactly. Higher precision numbers give us a better picture of what the GR is. While I like the compactness and beauty of your expression of the GR, the fact is that I don't know sqrt(5) exactly and never will. Successive decimal approximations give me a more exact picture of the GR, even at the cost of beauty. Perhaps the added precision is useless, or the error in the expression makes it incorreect, but those are different issues.
I haven't read the whole book (his style is nearly insufferable at times), but the part I have read classified mathematically derived patterns according to their complexity and showed that complex patterns could be derived from fairly simple processes. If this is correct, the connection seems to be that physical laws can be represented by differential equations but the processes that generate them could be discrete recursive processes rather than the continuous ones that are (?) implied by the diff. equations, and that the recursive equations are easier to develop computationally.
Of course, this doesn't seem new - I thought that other people had shown connections between recursive functions and diff. equations. I haven't read far enough to see if his mathematical systems are shown applicable to more general systems (not just that they are analogous to, but that similar processes are actually operating). It might be good if it defines a useful construct to explore these pattern, or if it defines them well enough to understand why some patterns are complex and others derived from similar rules are not, but I haven't read far enough yet.
if the record industry could do math (or anything related to rational thought), they wouldn't be in the pickle they're in.
I guess the positive version of the Golden Rule ("do unto others what you would have them do unto you") really works. Or, in other words, karma's a b*@%h, RIAA.
I think Hatch sponsored the "if you're copying music or movies illegally, we can disable your computer" bill. I think Berman's been on some others, such as the "let's make increase the penalties for copyright infringement (and the threshhold for felony infringement)" bill.
This is a lovely example of bipartisan Congressional action. Bipartisan, of course, means that some larger-than-usual deception is being planned. (George Carlin)
"The words 'Howard Berman' are copyrighted by the Motion Picture and Recording Industry Associations of America, and may not be used without their express written permission."
Yeah, Berman (a Democrat, unfortunately for me) is owned and operated by the MPAA and RIAA. I think it would be much more honest if he replaced the "CA" in his title with "MPAA/RIAA". If I lived there, I'd have to vote against him (of course, no guarantees about who bankrolls their next legislator....)
We import jobs presumably because their cost here is cheaper than their cost to others elsewhere; similarly, GM et al. outsourced their jobs because they could pay someone somewhere else less to do that job. This seems to imply that jobs exchanged in trade are likely lower-paying than the jobs outsourced; in another words, jobs that produce tradeable goods 9rather than services) will be exchanged to yield the lowest cost. Whatever jobs we get back are likely to pay less than those we export.
If labor in tradeable goods is outsourced to the lowest wage (or rather lowest cost) home, where are your customers? The people you laid off were probably the ones buying your goods; the jobs they find will almost certainly pay less than the jobs they had. The new hires elsewhere probably won't make enough money to afford your product (unless the cost drops lower, which seems to imply lower profit). This seems self-destructive to me.
While we understand that forest fires are part of the natural cycle of things, and a good thing in the long run, it's hard to tell the deer (or the firefighter) who gets caught in one that eventually it'll be OK. For them, it will never be OK, because they won't be around to see the brighter future, only to suffer through the smoke and fire. The economy (and our country as a whole) may eventually be better off for the outsourcing in the long term, but for most of the people losing their jobs or under threat of such, the long term is lower wages and benefits until they can afford to retire.
The economy wants people with deep knowledge in a field. That knowledge is costly to acquire (either in money, time, or both) and forces one to choose to be a generalist (and unlikely to be paid so much, but who can switch fields more easily) or a specialized worker (who can make money until the field goes under). In an economy focused on specialization, it is nontrivial for specialists to gain the knowledge of another field needed to get another job (the only kind of "job security" many companies offer). This conundrum is likely to make life hard in the short and medium terms for a lot of people.
The Constitution was written to limit the power of a central gov't. The people who wrote it believed that government with a lot of power could very easily be turned to ends which are bad for the people it governs. Checks and balances and the specific limitations on government (the 9th or 10th Amendment to the US Constitution) are written with this in mind - the power from a government comes from the people, and the government can't do certain things even if the people want it to. The threat of bad and overly powerful government (or a gov't that claims power independent of its people) is independent of whether an individual has "something to hide" or whether he is good or bad. Bad governments start when the people running it decide that their power is independent of the people they serve, and the protections for individuals are designed to prevent this.
WWII had both a unity of purpose and a rationally perceivable threat that the "war on terror" does not; that isn't to say that there is not a threat, but that it is harder for people to determine where a particular threat exists and what is reasonable to do about it. WWII also had threats that could be mitigated; it isn't clear that terror can ever be gotten rid of. The advertisements by Homeland Security reinforce this - they essentially say, "Prepare, because we can't protect against all of the threats that might be out there". While DHS may be effective, there is no freedom that I can give up to be safe from terror (unless I give all of my freedom up). Giving up freedom (usually of others) to get security in this case is a fool's game.
The problem with the war on terror is that we won't ever be perfectly safe; the goals short of that which are acceptable are fuzzy. Giving up lots of freeedoms (or lots of freedoms for unpopular people) sacrifices the things that it claims to preserve - liberty and democracy. A gov't empowered independently of its people is likely to be worse for its people and for others than even the potential threats of terrorism. Ultimately, the stated job of the "War on Terror" is to preserve democracy and freedom; destroying both of those to attempt to preserve safety seems self-defeating. If we want to fight terrorism, we have to be careful that we don't destroy ourselves doing it.
Spammers are employed third- or fourth-hand by companies who are less-than-fastidious about how they market other companies' products; they are employed far enough downstream that their (ultimate) sponsors don't have to get their hands dirty. The people who hire people like this spammer know exactly what they're getting - they don't care, because they'll get their marketing money anyway, while being insulated from the crimes they paid for. The buck is easily passed up the chain, and if caught (!), the spammer will probably walk away, while his sponsors pretend he never existed.
If I employ someone to collect protection money from businesses, I have to know that the person I've employed is a criminal of some sort. While spamming is not the same kind of crime, I know that someone willing to engage in it is likely to participate in other activities that involve the absence of a working conscience.
at some point the spammer will die, and then he won't be able to spam anymore.
if there's some justice in the world, he'll suffer from a stroke whose treatment is hindered when his spam interferes with the paramedics downloading his medical information from a medical database; while he lingers in a long, painful vegetative state, the hospital runs a continous loop of Viagra/Levitra/Cialis advertisements into the ICU.
On the other hand, spammers are like roaches (except roaches don't lie) in that there's always more to replace the ones that stop. Back to reality...
The problem is the association of "fast-growing" with "good". Yes, cancers that are fast-growing could be considered successful, but I don't think one would call them good. They are parasitic, and aggressively self-centered, to the point of destroying the organism within which they reside...just like spammers. "Fast-growing" isn't good if by doing so you kill what you rely on - it is unsustainable and can only end badly.
Of course, this is a spammer here - he has operated in the criminal realm, taking what he did not earn and contributing nothing, kind of like a lamprey (and about as slimy). Forethought isn't a useful concept - in his mind, there will always be one more victim, one more fish to suck the life from. As long as he doesn't need to work, or create value, he's at home. If we're fortunate, that home will be a prison in NY, making license plates.
It's possible that Iraq moved their WMDs - the fact that we haven't found them (or haven't said so) is no guarantee that they did not have them. We did go to war, however, on the pretext that they positively possessed them (with many statements affirming that position). While Iraq could have dumped them, it is also possible that they didn't possess them when we claim they did - thus it is up to those who claimed otherwise to indicate why they believed Iraq had WMDs.
Ultimately, I believe that Pres. Bush intended to go to Iraq at some point - whether his administration actively deceived people about going to Iraq or merely allowed their desires to supercede a rational view of their intelligence, the reasoning was a mistake. Perhaps not the war (history will tell that), but the reasoning. Ultimately, we are (a variant of) a democracy, and the people are supposed to have a role in the decision to go to war; when that decision is made on the basis of bad (or no) evidence and manipulated by the desires of the people they elected, people have reason to be unhappy with their government.
Saddam gone is probably a good outcome for Iraq and the world so long as a more stable and democratic government replaces him. Perhaps he prevented something worse from happening, although considering what Saddam and his government became, that is hard to imagine. Saddam's loss is likely to be his people's gain.
Part of my objection to the war is and was tied to my political feelings without rational justification. Part of them, however, is that the reasons given either applied better to other countries (support for terrorism, despotic ruler = Sudan, previous residence of OBL, or NK) or were patently false (or a small amount of evidence was greatly overstated - WMD claims). This is compounded by GWB's previous opinion on WJC's "nation building" - after previous administrations, it would be nice to hope that one's words mean something.
This is somewhat OT - just that I think most of the left-leaning people here appreciate the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they are trying to do. The soldiers go because it's a job they can do and because they believe the job to be right (else they wouldn't have chosen to join the military). Our job as a nation is to make sure that what we send them to do is right or as close as we can figure out.
...more nukes than you can shake a stick at. For starters.
Repression is a gov't's knowledge that they are not wanted, that the only way that they can maintain power is to force it. Tienamien (sic) Square happened not just because of a few radical students, but because many others within China sympathized with them (see the Tienamien(sic) Papers - 2001). TS came from the knowledge that people didn't choose their gov't and wanted it to change against its will. While the gov't has tried to move China's economic system towards a more capitalistic system (no more "iron rice bowl") it still has a lot of control at local and higher levels (over jobs, housing, etc.). Capitalism asks its people to think for themselves and their own best interests - it is likely to be hard not to question your gov't when you are expected to question everything else. This would seem to make (although IANA China expert) an unstable equilibrium, even with cultural differences. The presence of a large army and lots of nukes means that a match could set off a very big spark.
Add to this that China has antipathies for Russia, India, and Japan in their vicinity, and cooperates with N. Korea (who isn't a paragon of stability themselves). They have needs for resources and territorial spats with various SE Asian countries over oil. A gov't requiring that kind of force to keep the lid and lots of volatility in and around is a matter of concern for a lot of people.
Oh, and their nuclear warheads can probably reach the US. A bonus.
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In the story "Sun expands license deal with SCO", the story says that Sun bought extra IP from SCO - namely, the drivers you cited. Thus I was wrong in saying otherwise (namely, that the license was worthless, which it wasn't).
However, in the same article, Sun is cited as both having an option to buy SCO stock as a part of their deal and as using the SCO suits to advertise themselves as an alternative to Linux. So while buying the driver licences from SCO may have been a strategic move to improve its own offerings, neither the potential stock buy nor the product placement is consistent with that. Sun is openly funding a company whose only current purpose is to impair Linux (and Open Source) by spreading FUD and lawsuits.
If the bottom line for Sun were improving their own offerings, the SCO stock purchase doesn't make sense. In conjunction with their product placement, however, it makes lots of sense - unfortunately, the picture it paints is of a company whose interests are not congruent with those of Open Source in this case.
According to a cnet article, Sun said that they had purchased Unix IP from SCO a long time before and that it was comprehensive (search on Google for Sun and SCO and licensing and it should come up). Sun didn't need the SCOsource license for that - they already had it. So, yes, the SCOsource licensing initiative (for which MS and Sun alone paid) is worthless (you can't sue end users for using IP they obtained in good faith but which was not the seller's to sell).
My initial question (why did Sun pay for an SCOsource licence?) is still valid, because Sun didn't buy the SCOsource license for the drivers.
Sun has obviously done some good for OS - as the other posters have suggested. This still leaves an open question: why back SCO?
Maybe their actions are akin to those of allies - when they have common goals, Sun helps OS. When Sun's best interest and that of OS are disjoint, they act for themselves. Allies aren't bad - they just aren't friends.
Then perhaps someone will explain being why Sun paid SCO $8M for a worthless SCO licence (along with Microsoft, themselves no friend of OS). Paying that money has essentially funded SCO's attempt to discredit and/or destroy OS (Linux) by charging users for "intellectual property" that SCO claims it owns. The money has funded the bottomless FUD/BS machine that is Darl McBride and cronies. Either Sun is a friend of open source and was extraordinarily naive or Sun was behaving as an enemy of OS in helping SCO to poke holes in the tires of Linux in order to preserve its Solaris business. Or somewhere in between.
If Sun's actions in the case of SCO are the behavior of a friend of OS, then either Sun is utterly clueless or their definition of "friend" is nonstandard.
The problem with this is not that we should be exempt from the system we impose on/encourage for others, but that the question "where next" doesn't have a good answer. Buggy whip makers probably spent some time learning to perform their trade, but I'm guessing that it didn't take eight or ten years. The jobs changing hands now are those requiring lots of knowledge, both specific and general. The time spent learning to compete in a specific segment of the knowledge market can't be spent elsewhere. The time that jobs using that knowledge require to be good is time that can't be spent learning skills to get another jobs or a job in another field. The jobs being sent elsewhere now require a lot of investment (financial and time) at them to be be able to do them; the jobs the people left behind are likely to be suited for require large inputs of time and education to learn. People who get laid off are thus likely to have lots less money for a lot longer time than previous jobs lost to other markets.
In the Wired article, the antgonist asked the question, "What comes after knowledge?" While I don't think protectionism is a good idea, I don't have any sort of answer to that question. The market asks a lot of education and training from the people who want jobs, and if those people can see their jobs go elsewhere, the logic in the investment of those people in knowledge goes away. Knowledge as a commodity is interesting, but probably not so much for those producing it.
...gov'ts would have done this earlier - while the Patriot Act presumably made some information easier to get that gov'ts would not have otherwise have gotten, the main impetus driving this collection is the ability to gather personal and financial data using the internet. Once that capability came along, it was only a matter of time. Bush didn't make it possible - the tech did. Once the capacity is there, people want to use to best enhance their power, and bureaucracies (sic) are no different.
Also remember that both Democrats and Republicans gave us the Patriot Act and its spawn - while Ashcroft (and by consequence GWB) can take the blame for some of its misuse, they didn't give themselves this power - our elected representatives did. Something to remember come November.
When I go out in the sun, I wear sunscreen and although I'm fairly pale, I probably won't get burned too badly. If someone goes outside with a T-shirt and shorts for the first time in their life (say a 25-year old), they'll probably get burned fairly badly (unless they wear a lot of sunscreen or aren't out for long).
Linux and other open source OS have had people looking at them for a long time. The people looking at the source of Linux are less likely to be a monoculture than the people at MS who are hired to look over software. In addition (uninformed speculation) more of the Linux people may have been black hats once - the less ordered (as in cubicle order rather than procedure order) system may be more amenable to some who fit a less monolithic background. Linux is thus likely to have been looked at by people who might once have looked to hack it and by people with a wider variety of skill sets. MS knows a lot about software, but their diversity in software knowledge and opinion is likely smaller than that of either their user set or of that of white hat hackers.
The other factor is that having the MS source without a licence is illegal - thus the people who are most likely to take advantage of the availability of the source are people without much respect for the license in the first place - black hats. Linux source can be viewed legally, and so is just as likely to be looked over by white hats as black hats (probably more likely, because of the population ratio of BH and WH).
In one of the Clancy books (I think "Debt of Honor"), he talked about secrecy being good for hiding information that someone doesn't want you to know - but that when it broke, the news would be much worse for that someone, and harder to control. That seems applicable here - only the news is directed almost exclusively to those who would do them harm.
People want things (software, movies, etc.) that they own and and can use when they want to. Putting out lots of bits quickly makes server-run programs more convenient but not much better for the users. Someone else still controls your ability to use the software and applications you paid for - when you can use, it, for what you can use it, and the output of the use. This model benefits content providers (loss in piracy, income by rental could be higher, no outside people hacking your software) but not necessarily individuals. Pricing might make it more attractive, but the lack of control that factors into other media distributed similarly such as music (tangentially or otherwise) is still a major issue.
I think that a "subscription model" of software has been in MS's eyes for quite some time - besides the lack of high-speed connections, I don't think their market has been overly receptive. I don't disagree with your point, but considering the hostility of the market towards this kind of restriction, speed isn't the only factor in its adoption.
Microsoft made insecure software because 1) they could get away with it (because there wasn't an alternative) or 2) because they weren't competent enough to make better (more secure) software.
.net - if they can get away with writing sloppy or insecure software now, they will still be able to do it under .net. If their other ambitions (e.g. trusted computing) come through, they will have a lot more power to do bad or stupid things while having less responsibility for their security flaws (because they control the access to users' computers through TC - where else will you go?). This encourages better design for security exactly how?
.net, etc. Since they can write bad code and do bad security design now, what gives anyone the idea that their design will be better for their new languages? One flaw addressed, maybe, but if the code is designed badly or executed badly, there will be a whole bunch of new flaws. Building a "new, improved" lock is okay, but if you know that the last few didn't work well and had lots of problems because of bad design, it is optimistic to assume that the design will be a lot better now, and that you will be better off as a result.
1) doesn't go away with
2) doesn't go away with
If 1) and 2) aren't true, there is still potential for problems from managed languages. When the technologies come online, people will begin to use them and find other vulnerabilities to replace those that MS eliminated. There is also the possibility that complexity in the new systems creates makes it easier to make insecure code. (ST: "the more plumbing they put in, the easier it is to stop up the drains."(sic))
Unless MS has improved their design and execution, managed languages don't help. A better hammer employed by an incompetent or indifferent carpenter only means that the carpenter will find novel ways to inflict bad carpentry or injury on himself and others. Meanwhile, other OS are improving systems as well, and starting from better foundations. Arrogance for Linux is uncalled for, but I think it's somewhat premature (and perhaps FUD) to consider MS's victory for security.
1) Pascal's wager doesn't work - lots of religions make countervailing or contrary claims to being correct. The question that most people have to decide is not whether to have faith in anything or not, but whether to believe in Christanity or Hinduism or Judaism or Islam or... Many of these choices are exclusive or contradictory, so believing in something won't necessarily save you - only believing in the right thing will. In addition, believing in something excludes options from the here and now - if you hold a religious belief, you must act consistently with it, excluding some possible actions that might benefit you. Pascal's Wager is not cost-free, and since its benefits are unclear (if all beliefs lead to the same place, Pascal's wager holds; if some beliefs lead to Hell (or some other bad place) then the value of choice may be much smaller and on the order or the cost of choosing and the opportunity costs of actions you cannot do), it isn't really a very good argument for religious belief.
2) Science and religion are not exclusive unless one forces them to be. Science takes a pragmatic view of the world - what effects we can observe or measure are those of consequence to science. The immeasureable is not science's purview. Religious beliefs ask different, perhaps broader questions: What are we doing here? What do we do with our lives? How does everything work? Science can be considered a subset of this. Multiple religious beliefs may be consistent with a physical phenomenon - the things that distinguish them exist in a place science can't get to and thus has no legitimate say in. The problems occur when religious and scientific claims occupy the same ground and are contrary. In this case, science usually wins because it can be tested, whereas religion depends upon claims that cannot be tested (but which can only be trusted).
In my opinion, it is not the "anti-religionists" who have betrayed us, but a subset of religionists. Religion and science have existed side by side for some time and were not considered inconsistent. In the last few hundred years, some religious folk have tried to "prove" their beliefs by misusing logic and science to their ends (creationism/intelligent design/creation science, for example). Trying to prove the unprovable only further hardens the demands of people for proof before they will believe, undercutting the faith; after all, if the people who claim to most strongly believe something require proof to believe in it, how much faith can they really have? There is also the bonus of trying to force people to have a faith whose value derives from chosen belief (thus destroying the object of belief for others). In addition, the likely purpose of the logical legerdemain (to compel others to behave as one would like) only serves to alienate those who would otherwise be quietly accepting of the faith of others. Vehement (and sometimes illogical) people who don't believe in religion probably come at least in part from this.
The analogy can be extended. Like the beautiful woman (or this particular one, for most of us), we can't have the real thing. I find difficult enough to estimate my own variability, let alone simulate that of anyone else. In order to get closer to her, we approximate. Perhaps you get bad black-and-white pron, move up to clearer pictures, maybe find color ones. Maybe she was in a movie, and so you get that. Maybe someday you even meet her, fall in love, marry, have children, etc. Each time we move closer, we gain information about her - what she likes, what she looks like, etc. We make successive approximations, modeling her behavior as we go. We never have her inside, just a model containing things we know and deductions from them. The woman is still alive, and more unpredictable than our model allows. We don't know how she'll behave in circumstances none of us have seen, nor do we know the things she hasn't told us. Everything we know of her helps us to build a model, but the model isn't the object (the person), and never will be.
Because the GR is irrational, we will never have it exactly. Higher precision numbers give us a better picture of what the GR is. While I like the compactness and beauty of your expression of the GR, the fact is that I don't know sqrt(5) exactly and never will. Successive decimal approximations give me a more exact picture of the GR, even at the cost of beauty. Perhaps the added precision is useless, or the error in the expression makes it incorreect, but those are different issues.
I haven't read the whole book (his style is nearly insufferable at times), but the part I have read classified mathematically derived patterns according to their complexity and showed that complex patterns could be derived from fairly simple processes. If this is correct, the connection seems to be that physical laws can be represented by differential equations but the processes that generate them could be discrete recursive processes rather than the continuous ones that are (?) implied by the diff. equations, and that the recursive equations are easier to develop computationally.
Of course, this doesn't seem new - I thought that other people had shown connections between recursive functions and diff. equations. I haven't read far enough to see if his mathematical systems are shown applicable to more general systems (not just that they are analogous to, but that similar processes are actually operating). It might be good if it defines a useful construct to explore these pattern, or if it defines them well enough to understand why some patterns are complex and others derived from similar rules are not, but I haven't read far enough yet.
if the record industry could do math (or anything related to rational thought), they wouldn't be in the pickle they're in.
I guess the positive version of the Golden Rule ("do unto others what you would have them do unto you") really works. Or, in other words, karma's a b*@%h, RIAA.
I think Hatch sponsored the "if you're copying music or movies illegally, we can disable your computer" bill. I think Berman's been on some others, such as the "let's make increase the penalties for copyright infringement (and the threshhold for felony infringement)" bill.
This is a lovely example of bipartisan Congressional action. Bipartisan, of course, means that some larger-than-usual deception is being planned. (George Carlin)
"The words 'Howard Berman' are copyrighted by the Motion Picture and Recording Industry Associations of America, and may not be used without their express written permission."
Yeah, Berman (a Democrat, unfortunately for me) is owned and operated by the MPAA and RIAA. I think it would be much more honest if he replaced the "CA" in his title with "MPAA/RIAA". If I lived there, I'd have to vote against him (of course, no guarantees about who bankrolls their next legislator....)
We import jobs presumably because their cost here is cheaper than their cost to others elsewhere; similarly, GM et al. outsourced their jobs because they could pay someone somewhere else less to do that job. This seems to imply that jobs exchanged in trade are likely lower-paying than the jobs outsourced; in another words, jobs that produce tradeable goods 9rather than services) will be exchanged to yield the lowest cost. Whatever jobs we get back are likely to pay less than those we export.
If labor in tradeable goods is outsourced to the lowest wage (or rather lowest cost) home, where are your customers? The people you laid off were probably the ones buying your goods; the jobs they find will almost certainly pay less than the jobs they had. The new hires elsewhere probably won't make enough money to afford your product (unless the cost drops lower, which seems to imply lower profit). This seems self-destructive to me.
While we understand that forest fires are part of the natural cycle of things, and a good thing in the long run, it's hard to tell the deer (or the firefighter) who gets caught in one that eventually it'll be OK. For them, it will never be OK, because they won't be around to see the brighter future, only to suffer through the smoke and fire. The economy (and our country as a whole) may eventually be better off for the outsourcing in the long term, but for most of the people losing their jobs or under threat of such, the long term is lower wages and benefits until they can afford to retire.
The economy wants people with deep knowledge in a field. That knowledge is costly to acquire (either in money, time, or both) and forces one to choose to be a generalist (and unlikely to be paid so much, but who can switch fields more easily) or a specialized worker (who can make money until the field goes under). In an economy focused on specialization, it is nontrivial for specialists to gain the knowledge of another field needed to get another job (the only kind of "job security" many companies offer). This conundrum is likely to make life hard in the short and medium terms for a lot of people.
The Constitution was written to limit the power of a central gov't. The people who wrote it believed that government with a lot of power could very easily be turned to ends which are bad for the people it governs. Checks and balances and the specific limitations on government (the 9th or 10th Amendment to the US Constitution) are written with this in mind - the power from a government comes from the people, and the government can't do certain things even if the people want it to. The threat of bad and overly powerful government (or a gov't that claims power independent of its people) is independent of whether an individual has "something to hide" or whether he is good or bad. Bad governments start when the people running it decide that their power is independent of the people they serve, and the protections for individuals are designed to prevent this.
WWII had both a unity of purpose and a rationally perceivable threat that the "war on terror" does not; that isn't to say that there is not a threat, but that it is harder for people to determine where a particular threat exists and what is reasonable to do about it. WWII also had threats that could be mitigated; it isn't clear that terror can ever be gotten rid of. The advertisements by Homeland Security reinforce this - they essentially say, "Prepare, because we can't protect against all of the threats that might be out there". While DHS may be effective, there is no freedom that I can give up to be safe from terror (unless I give all of my freedom up). Giving up freedom (usually of others) to get security in this case is a fool's game.
The problem with the war on terror is that we won't ever be perfectly safe; the goals short of that which are acceptable are fuzzy. Giving up lots of freeedoms (or lots of freedoms for unpopular people) sacrifices the things that it claims to preserve - liberty and democracy. A gov't empowered independently of its people is likely to be worse for its people and for others than even the potential threats of terrorism. Ultimately, the stated job of the "War on Terror" is to preserve democracy and freedom; destroying both of those to attempt to preserve safety seems self-defeating. If we want to fight terrorism, we have to be careful that we don't destroy ourselves doing it.
Spammers are employed third- or fourth-hand by companies who are less-than-fastidious about how they market other companies' products; they are employed far enough downstream that their (ultimate) sponsors don't have to get their hands dirty. The people who hire people like this spammer know exactly what they're getting - they don't care, because they'll get their marketing money anyway, while being insulated from the crimes they paid for. The buck is easily passed up the chain, and if caught (!), the spammer will probably walk away, while his sponsors pretend he never existed.
If I employ someone to collect protection money from businesses, I have to know that the person I've employed is a criminal of some sort. While spamming is not the same kind of crime, I know that someone willing to engage in it is likely to participate in other activities that involve the absence of a working conscience.
at some point the spammer will die, and then he won't be able to spam anymore.
if there's some justice in the world, he'll suffer from a stroke whose treatment is hindered when his spam interferes with the paramedics downloading his medical information from a medical database; while he lingers in a long, painful vegetative state, the hospital runs a continous loop of Viagra/Levitra/Cialis advertisements into the ICU.
On the other hand, spammers are like roaches (except roaches don't lie) in that there's always more to replace the ones that stop. Back to reality...
The problem is the association of "fast-growing" with "good". Yes, cancers that are fast-growing could be considered successful, but I don't think one would call them good. They are parasitic, and aggressively self-centered, to the point of destroying the organism within which they reside...just like spammers. "Fast-growing" isn't good if by doing so you kill what you rely on - it is unsustainable and can only end badly.
Of course, this is a spammer here - he has operated in the criminal realm, taking what he did not earn and contributing nothing, kind of like a lamprey (and about as slimy). Forethought isn't a useful concept - in his mind, there will always be one more victim, one more fish to suck the life from. As long as he doesn't need to work, or create value, he's at home. If we're fortunate, that home will be a prison in NY, making license plates.
It's possible that Iraq moved their WMDs - the fact that we haven't found them (or haven't said so) is no guarantee that they did not have them. We did go to war, however, on the pretext that they positively possessed them (with many statements affirming that position). While Iraq could have dumped them, it is also possible that they didn't possess them when we claim they did - thus it is up to those who claimed otherwise to indicate why they believed Iraq had WMDs.
Ultimately, I believe that Pres. Bush intended to go to Iraq at some point - whether his administration actively deceived people about going to Iraq or merely allowed their desires to supercede a rational view of their intelligence, the reasoning was a mistake. Perhaps not the war (history will tell that), but the reasoning. Ultimately, we are (a variant of) a democracy, and the people are supposed to have a role in the decision to go to war; when that decision is made on the basis of bad (or no) evidence and manipulated by the desires of the people they elected, people have reason to be unhappy with their government.
they're for p0rn - how else are people going to get their fill of secret under-skirt views and unattractive people having sex in public?
I thought the first role of technology was to give easier access to naked pictures of people. Maybe it just seems that way...
just not the reasons given for their presence.
Saddam gone is probably a good outcome for Iraq and the world so long as a more stable and democratic government replaces him. Perhaps he prevented something worse from happening, although considering what Saddam and his government became, that is hard to imagine. Saddam's loss is likely to be his people's gain.
Part of my objection to the war is and was tied to my political feelings without rational justification. Part of them, however, is that the reasons given either applied better to other countries (support for terrorism, despotic ruler = Sudan, previous residence of OBL, or NK) or were patently false (or a small amount of evidence was greatly overstated - WMD claims). This is compounded by GWB's previous opinion on WJC's "nation building" - after previous administrations, it would be nice to hope that one's words mean something.
This is somewhat OT - just that I think most of the left-leaning people here appreciate the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they are trying to do. The soldiers go because it's a job they can do and because they believe the job to be right (else they wouldn't have chosen to join the military). Our job as a nation is to make sure that what we send them to do is right or as close as we can figure out.
...more nukes than you can shake a stick at. For starters.
Repression is a gov't's knowledge that they are not wanted, that the only way that they can maintain power is to force it. Tienamien (sic) Square happened not just because of a few radical students, but because many others within China sympathized with them (see the Tienamien(sic) Papers - 2001). TS came from the knowledge that people didn't choose their gov't and wanted it to change against its will. While the gov't has tried to move China's economic system towards a more capitalistic system (no more "iron rice bowl") it still has a lot of control at local and higher levels (over jobs, housing, etc.). Capitalism asks its people to think for themselves and their own best interests - it is likely to be hard not to question your gov't when you are expected to question everything else. This would seem to make (although IANA China expert) an unstable equilibrium, even with cultural differences. The presence of a large army and lots of nukes means that a match could set off a very big spark.
Add to this that China has antipathies for Russia, India, and Japan in their vicinity, and cooperates with N. Korea (who isn't a paragon of stability themselves). They have needs for resources and territorial spats with various SE Asian countries over oil. A gov't requiring that kind of force to keep the lid and lots of volatility in and around is a matter of concern for a lot of people.
Oh, and their nuclear warheads can probably reach the US. A bonus.