given there was a story on Wired a while back detailing how the synthetic brigade could make large gem-quality diamonds for under $100 each. Whether it's de Beers taking the other $5100 or the synthetic diamond companies taking the other $3900, I'll wait for a few competitors to emerge; then diamonds may become the intrinsically worthless arragements of atoms they are. There are far prettier things than gems.
Or, better, get someone who can read C(++?) but can't write it to describe the functions that are implemented, what arguments they take etc. and then get the main team of coders to implement it. I'm pretty sure descriptions of code have been found to be protected speech.
I don't usually reply to sigs, but (asking as a non-USian, not a troll) what's wrong with Kerry following the party line? After all, he is hoping to represent that party...
Just adding to my point: you had it the wrong way around. It isn't the case that if you discover a former trade secret you have to sign an agreement that prevents you using that knowledge. Rather, if you work for certain companies you will have to sign an agreement saying you won't divulge trade secrets to third parties.
But once someone has divulged the 'secret' it isn't secret anymore. Anyone who hasn't signed the "I won't tell anyone" agreement has no obligation not to distribute it further.
If you agree to be privy to trade secrets you can be strung up by the bollocks if you disclose those trade secrets to a third party. The person who leaked this code could be crushed, if caught.
However, once it's out it isn't a secret any more. If you haven't signed the trade secret agreement you aren't bound by it (that's why Coca-Cola goes to such great lengths to ensure that nobody discovers the secret recipe for Coke, etc.)
They could only get the original leaker for trade secret violation: once the secret is out it isn't a secret anymore. Patents might give them legal recourse (I'm sure they have many), but if you're infringing a patent they hold it doesn't matter whether you've seen the code or not, they can get you anyway. MS presumably have a very great many patents but whatever else they do that's bad they don't generally use their patent portfolio to hound their rivals.
Whereas SCO were stupid to mess with IBM, for Microsoft to mess with China would be utter lunacy, especially given China has the source code. Regardless of what political ticking-off MS can ask for China to receive, China has the source. It has a regime where it can require (literally) millions of people to work their way through the code, write as many utterly hideous virii as they can and release them all. Make no mistake, while China might get a slap on the wrist it's nothing worse than they continually get for their human rights record: on the other hand, they seriously have the resources to destroy MS if they're pissed off enough. I think MS made a stupid deal when they gave the source code to an insecure OS to a government like China's.
Rubbish. Definitely look - there's a lot of stuff you can learn from seeing the source that can't be traced back to your having seen it. Take wine, for example[0]: they're trying to implement a largely undocumented ABI. At the moment it's hard even to know what they have to code. If they look at the source they could see what functions they need to implement, how they need to work etc. Make basic notes, never look at the code again, go on holiday for a month, come back and write the missing bits semi-cleanly. They wouldn't need to copy any of the implementation (doing so would violate MS's copyright) but it would sure help to know what functions they needed to write (and I guess that would count as nothing more than utilising the widespread leaking of a former trade secret[1], which has no protection under law). The key point is, don't under any circumstances copy the code. And, if you do choose to look at the source, I suggest you get rid of it afterwards and don't tell anyone.
[0] I'm not suggesting for a second that the wine devs would look at the code, you understand: it's an example.
[1] If the leak is genuine, MS need have no doubt that this will be all over every p2p network in existence within an hour or so.
Wouldn't help you against a C compiler hack in the style of Ken Thompson's classic. That's a pretty paranoid example but it does show that to be perfectly secure in your system you do need to know everything about it, from the ground up. Compiling from a known-good source isn't always enough.
We've heard this propaganda for the last X years (where X is a large number). It's never been proven correct (in fact the reverse has been adequately proven to anyone with a clue) and there's no reason to suppose it will be. Face it, linux and other unices for which source was available were considered good enough to warrant research by the NSA (an organisation renowned for its dependence on security of information).
You rock. Hopefully my father will be switching from Windows Me to Linux soon, but I expect he'll still want MS Office so I'll suggest he bungs some cash your way.
I love their reasons...
on
SCOoby Snacks
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· Score: 1
Particularly this one: We have a clear roadmap for the future. They go on to explain how they have a clearly laid-out plan to support exciting new technologies - such as USB. Huh!??? What, you mean the same USB that every other OS I can think of has supported for years and years? Other exciting features: NIC support. Oh... my... god.... They think this is somehow a reason to use SCO? Because of course all those other OSes are really struggling to implement NIC support, obviously.
Now obviously I realised SCO had been smoking plenty of the bad weed on the legal front, but I didn't realise just how out-of-touch and crack-happy they were on the technical front. Their "roadmap" is pathetic - completing it would just about bring SCO up to where competitor OSes were a year or so ago.
As regards the heatsink, you're probably right. I was more worried about the motherboard (a lug on the heatsink clip snapped and I damn nearly skewered the mobo on the end of my screwdriver!). As for the Athlons, like I said, I've never/had/ to deal with it: I'm not saying they're better or worse than anything else, but they've worked fine for me. Sounds like your mileage varied:-)
I've never had a reliability issue with AMD, either on my laptop (Athlon XP 1600+ with barely-adequate cooling) or on my desktop (Athlon XP 2400+ where the heatsink has been changed twice, surely physically stressing the chip quite a bit). Having said that, I never had an issue with the dual P2 I had beforehand. Maybe I'm just lucky - or maybe I don't think it's some kind of god-given right to overclock my chips. Run them within spec and they'll be fine. Overclock them and, well, don't be surprised if they let you down.
Hmm. Element 115 is called ununpentium. Does this mean we're waiting for ununceleron, ununathlon, and finally ununG5, each of which will be heavier, contain more components, require more power (to make) and, just possibly, be more stable?
A few years ago they gave away beanie babies with Happy Meals: I just had to get the penguin one:-) (Actually, I got two as I had a SMP box at the time!)
This is a result of a clashing symbol in both the flash plugin and the XFree86 libGLU (OpenGL utility lib). Upon closing an embedded flash view, the wrong function is called which heavily corrupts memory and leads to either immediately or delayed crashes, lockups and worse. The only solution that is currently known is either to install Qt without OpenGL support or to not use the Flash plugin. You can't combine both until this symbol clash is somehow solved. Unfortunately we cannot do much about this issue, unless Macromedia is willing to help. Another reason for Konqueror to crash on every page using a Netscape plugin is the use of gcc3. Plugins can't work with gcc3 because they are linked to gcc2's libstdc++, which is incompatible with gcc3's libstdc++.
-- end snip --
This looks recent: no gcc3 in 1999. Perhaps you have Qt compiled without OpenGL support: either way, it's definitely not working for everyone until either Qt or Macromedia renames their symbol. Personally, I'm betting that'll be about the time that hell freezes over.
And, to be honest, if they're so pretentious that they think their site requires some Javascript trick while at the same time they're incompetent to code it I'm pretty sure they have nothing to say that I'd be interested in reading. While it may cause a problem for some, in this regard Firefox is fine for me. Arrogant? Not really, I just have a good idea of the kind of people whose opinions I'd be interested in reading.
Slashdot Mirror
given there was a story on Wired a while back detailing how the synthetic brigade could make large gem-quality diamonds for under $100 each. Whether it's de Beers taking the other $5100 or the synthetic diamond companies taking the other $3900, I'll wait for a few competitors to emerge; then diamonds may become the intrinsically worthless arragements of atoms they are. There are far prettier things than gems.
Who said anything about douing it openly? China isn't Kansas, Dorothy.
Or, better, get someone who can read C(++?) but can't write it to describe the functions that are implemented, what arguments they take etc. and then get the main team of coders to implement it. I'm pretty sure descriptions of code have been found to be protected speech.
I don't usually reply to sigs, but (asking as a non-USian, not a troll) what's wrong with Kerry following the party line? After all, he is hoping to represent that party...
Just adding to my point: you had it the wrong way around. It isn't the case that if you discover a former trade secret you have to sign an agreement that prevents you using that knowledge. Rather, if you work for certain companies you will have to sign an agreement saying you won't divulge trade secrets to third parties.
But once someone has divulged the 'secret' it isn't secret anymore. Anyone who hasn't signed the "I won't tell anyone" agreement has no obligation not to distribute it further.
If you agree to be privy to trade secrets you can be strung up by the bollocks if you disclose those trade secrets to a third party. The person who leaked this code could be crushed, if caught.
However, once it's out it isn't a secret any more. If you haven't signed the trade secret agreement you aren't bound by it (that's why Coca-Cola goes to such great lengths to ensure that nobody discovers the secret recipe for Coke, etc.)
They could only get the original leaker for trade secret violation: once the secret is out it isn't a secret anymore. Patents might give them legal recourse (I'm sure they have many), but if you're infringing a patent they hold it doesn't matter whether you've seen the code or not, they can get you anyway. MS presumably have a very great many patents but whatever else they do that's bad they don't generally use their patent portfolio to hound their rivals.
That's just for XP. For all the 9x releases they were still using COBOL ;-)
Whereas SCO were stupid to mess with IBM, for Microsoft to mess with China would be utter lunacy, especially given China has the source code. Regardless of what political ticking-off MS can ask for China to receive, China has the source. It has a regime where it can require (literally) millions of people to work their way through the code, write as many utterly hideous virii as they can and release them all. Make no mistake, while China might get a slap on the wrist it's nothing worse than they continually get for their human rights record: on the other hand, they seriously have the resources to destroy MS if they're pissed off enough. I think MS made a stupid deal when they gave the source code to an insecure OS to a government like China's.
It's not morals, it's pride. It's not as l33t if you need the code to write a virus, I guess.
Rubbish. Definitely look - there's a lot of stuff you can learn from seeing the source that can't be traced back to your having seen it. Take wine, for example[0]: they're trying to implement a largely undocumented ABI. At the moment it's hard even to know what they have to code. If they look at the source they could see what functions they need to implement, how they need to work etc. Make basic notes, never look at the code again, go on holiday for a month, come back and write the missing bits semi-cleanly. They wouldn't need to copy any of the implementation (doing so would violate MS's copyright) but it would sure help to know what functions they needed to write (and I guess that would count as nothing more than utilising the widespread leaking of a former trade secret[1], which has no protection under law). The key point is, don't under any circumstances copy the code. And, if you do choose to look at the source, I suggest you get rid of it afterwards and don't tell anyone.
[0] I'm not suggesting for a second that the wine devs would look at the code, you understand: it's an example.
[1] If the leak is genuine, MS need have no doubt that this will be all over every p2p network in existence within an hour or so.
In days gone by the term would just be "usenet poster"
Wouldn't help you against a C compiler hack in the style of Ken Thompson's classic. That's a pretty paranoid example but it does show that to be perfectly secure in your system you do need to know everything about it, from the ground up. Compiling from a known-good source isn't always enough.
We've heard this propaganda for the last X years (where X is a large number). It's never been proven correct (in fact the reverse has been adequately proven to anyone with a clue) and there's no reason to suppose it will be. Face it, linux and other unices for which source was available were considered good enough to warrant research by the NSA (an organisation renowned for its dependence on security of information).
It's called "freshmeat". Pity slashdot's editors have never heard of it.
You rock. Hopefully my father will be switching from Windows Me to Linux soon, but I expect he'll still want MS Office so I'll suggest he bungs some cash your way.
Particularly this one: We have a clear roadmap for the future. They go on to explain how they have a clearly laid-out plan to support exciting new technologies - such as USB. Huh!??? What, you mean the same USB that every other OS I can think of has supported for years and years? Other exciting features: NIC support. Oh... my... god.... They think this is somehow a reason to use SCO? Because of course all those other OSes are really struggling to implement NIC support, obviously.
Now obviously I realised SCO had been smoking plenty of the bad weed on the legal front, but I didn't realise just how out-of-touch and crack-happy they were on the technical front. Their "roadmap" is pathetic - completing it would just about bring SCO up to where competitor OSes were a year or so ago.
the electricity blacks you out... :~)
Great! Where do I download it? Oh, wait. I don't own a massive pieve of electricity distribution infrastructure; never mind.
As regards the heatsink, you're probably right. I was more worried about the motherboard (a lug on the heatsink clip snapped and I damn nearly skewered the mobo on the end of my screwdriver!). As for the Athlons, like I said, I've never /had/ to deal with it: I'm not saying they're better or worse than anything else, but they've worked fine for me. Sounds like your mileage varied :-)
I've never had a reliability issue with AMD, either on my laptop (Athlon XP 1600+ with barely-adequate cooling) or on my desktop (Athlon XP 2400+ where the heatsink has been changed twice, surely physically stressing the chip quite a bit). Having said that, I never had an issue with the dual P2 I had beforehand. Maybe I'm just lucky - or maybe I don't think it's some kind of god-given right to overclock my chips. Run them within spec and they'll be fine. Overclock them and, well, don't be surprised if they let you down.
Hmm. Element 115 is called ununpentium. Does this mean we're waiting for ununceleron, ununathlon, and finally ununG5, each of which will be heavier, contain more components, require more power (to make) and, just possibly, be more stable?
A few years ago they gave away beanie babies with Happy Meals: I just had to get the penguin one :-) (Actually, I got two as I had a SMP box at the time!)
From the FAQ on konqueror.org:
-- snip --
Why does ever page with flash crash konqueror?
This is a result of a clashing symbol in both the flash plugin and the XFree86 libGLU (OpenGL utility lib). Upon closing an embedded flash view, the wrong function is called which heavily corrupts memory and leads to either immediately or delayed crashes, lockups and worse.
The only solution that is currently known is either to install Qt without OpenGL support or to not use the Flash plugin. You can't combine both until this symbol clash is somehow solved. Unfortunately we cannot do much about this issue, unless Macromedia is willing to help.
Another reason for Konqueror to crash on every page using a Netscape plugin is the use of gcc3. Plugins can't work with gcc3 because they are linked to gcc2's libstdc++, which is incompatible with gcc3's libstdc++.
-- end snip --
This looks recent: no gcc3 in 1999. Perhaps you have Qt compiled without OpenGL support: either way, it's definitely not working for everyone until either Qt or Macromedia renames their symbol. Personally, I'm betting that'll be about the time that hell freezes over.
And, to be honest, if they're so pretentious that they think their site requires some Javascript trick while at the same time they're incompetent to code it I'm pretty sure they have nothing to say that I'd be interested in reading. While it may cause a problem for some, in this regard Firefox is fine for me. Arrogant? Not really, I just have a good idea of the kind of people whose opinions I'd be interested in reading.