There are ODF readers and writers for every major office suite already. I'm sure eventually there will be OOXML readers and writers too. That isn't the issue. This is nothing to do with MS Office or any other office suite. This is nothing to do with open source software versus proprietary software.
This is to do with open *standards* for *information*. The beef is about control over your information, for reasons of interoperability, automation, preservation and a having a vibrant, free-market, competitive software industry that benefits everyone. Standards, standards, standards.
If people on/. can't keep this basic distinction clear, we are definitely doomed.
I would say that things that are *necessarily* part of an operating system (like booting the machine), have a greater claim on being part of the operating system than document viewers used by the human users of it. Same thing goes for the command-line tool set - if they aren't *needed* to run (not administrate) the machine, they aren't part of the O/S, even if they form part of a standard distribution of it.
I'm not claiming the line isn't arbitrary - but equally, I do think there is a useful distinction to be made, if only to promote modularity and flexibility.
I'm probably just an aging geek, but an *operating system* should not depend on an *application* that runs on it being available.
Users do expect a fully featured environment, and a browser is definitely required these days. Bundling useful apps certainly isn't any kind of crime.
As a user or system integrator, you do expect to be able to unbundle any app you don't want, and replace it with one that you do. You can't unbundle IE from windows.
That is also a distinct possibility! I have no real experience of fighting, so maybe I was just normal and he was slow. My perception at the time was that things went into slow-motion - I don't deny it could have been some kind of perceptual illusion. Like I say, more research needed...
You aren't talking about the flow of time, you're talking about entropy.
The events you describe may be statistically highly unusual, but the events still possess an order in time relative to one another. The products of the "time going backward" reaction don't appear before the reaction started. Time is still going forward.
I agree that some kind of life-or-death situation needs to be involved. I have experienced time-slowdown (or rather, perceptual speed-up) twice in my life, both in very threatening situations. Both times the feeling was coupled with a deep sense of calmness.
The first time, I was attacked by a soccer hooligan, who smashed a bottle on my head with no warning, from behind. I remember turning round and seeing the thug waving the broken bottle - but everything had gone into slow motion. I could literally read every move he was going to make and counter it, with no apparent effort on my part, matrix-style. After I'd disposed of his bottle, I threw him around, then I played with him a bit without hurting him (much). I had the sense that I was far back, watching it all.
Afterwards, I was quite shocked at what had happened - I am not a fighter, I am really quite a wimp. Thinking about it later, it made sense to me, that some kind of fight-or-flight instinct had kicked in, allowing me to react instinctually much faster than normal, with my normal consciousness somewhat suspended.
The second time it happened, I was in a car that went into a 360 spin down a hill, eventually crashing into a lamp-post, totalling the car. Again, I felt calm, I could see everything that was happening as if in slow motion, but there wasn't anything I could do, so unlike the fight situation, I can't judge whether this perception had any practical effect.
I find it interesting that you can't count numbers any faster in threatening situations - but I would wager that only certain, survival oriented abilities are accelerated in threatening situations. I wouldn't have been surprised if the ability to read numbers was actually worse in those situations! More research is clearly needed...
Yeah, all those people fed up with Windows, thinking "I'd sure like to give Linux a try, but I just can't get my head around that KDE/Gnome choice". Come on...
The point the GP was making wasn't really a question of whether you are guilty or not after you have served your sentence. It was more about the effects of continuing punishment after the sentence is served.
It's not about pretending they didn't do something after the event. It's about their address being published, causing them to live in fear for the rest of their life. You might think that this person deserves that fate - I don't have much sympathy for them either - but I do consider that a cruel and unusual punishment.
Evolution is simply change - there is no purpose or progress to it. If more people survive to reproduce, there will be more genetic diversity, not less. In that sense, there will be more "evolution". By removing certain natural selection pressures through technology, it is true that the resulting changes will stop being directed towards fitness in a non-technological environment.
Yes, I remember the days most programs just lived in their own folders. INI files weren't that great, but the registry made installing and managing software ten times more complicated. Every client needed its own configuration, you couldn't share bits of configuration and software easily across the network.
It seems to be manageable now, with a lot of extra tools to deal with the complexity... but it could be a lot easier. I wonder how much of this complexity is motivated by the desire to lock software down to each client?
Fair point - I haven't tried any other distros in a year or two. My comments just show my unfamiliarity with them;)
I had a lot of fun with Gentoo too - loved watching everything build, but it was a passing fascination. I ended up with Ubuntu - great ease of use, and it doesn't get in my way if I want to tweak things for some reason. I still use Windows at work, and develop against it, but at home it's Linux and OS/X - they're both more fun and less fuss.
This always cracks me up. You don't install software like that in Linux because there are *better* and easier ways of doing it! Check the box, hit apply, job done. All software kept up-to-date automatically, not just the OS. You want to uninstall? Untick the box. Files and unneeded dependencies automatically removed, completely.
Although you can install software the Windows way - hunt for files on manufacturer web site, resolve any dependencies yourself (e.g. missing runtime DLLs), keep it all up to date yourself. You can try to uninstall software, but it often leaves traces of itself around the system.
The idea that something is hard just because it's not done the Windows way is laughable.
(c) click install when firefox prompts you to install flash (d) automatic updates for all software on the system, not just the OS.
No having to find those downloads buried somewhere on every manufacturers site, occasionally having to locate the right version of additional runtime DLLs, and keep them all up to date yourself.
Windows isn't quite as easy as Linux, eh? When you can do that in Windows, it'll be ready for novices!
Btw, I have been a DOS / Windows user since forever, and I'm now a very happy Linux user too. Some things are better in Windows, some are better in Linux. Your comments just show that you're not really familiar with anything except Windows.
I'm surprised you specify one-time-pads for encrypting communications. They are completely unbreakable with good random pads that are only used once, but they must be unique for each machine and the station it communicates with. Key management is really hard.
I would hazard a guess that they would use other forms of encryption. If the communication is two way, then a key exchange protocol used to derive symmetric session keys would seem more useful, to my non-military eyes. If the communication is only one way, I'm still not sure why you need to bother with unbreakable communications. Aside from anything else, its communication probably doesn't have to be secure from an enemy forever - I assume there is only a limited window in which the information from a single vehicle is useful on a battlefield.
Personally, I never liked actually using the iPod touch wheel, but I was captivated by the concept. No more nubbly little buttons to stab at - just sweep your hand over it. It breaks the mold.
I had a play with the new iPod last night, proudly demonstrated by my best friend, who can't stand iTunes and has never owned an iPod before. In his words - "it's an object of desire". He is a hard-core geek - he just doesn't care about design. At least, not until now. It is an amazing thing. The touch interface works amazingly, the UI is incredibly sleek and easy to use. It just feels like something completely new - it blows every other gadget I've ever used out of the water. I want one too.
It's not just "hype". IMHO, iPods marry sleek, stylish design with innovative user interfaces. They dare to be different, and do it with style. Pepple don't buy them by comparing their functionality, tech specs and price with their "competitors" - they are in an entirely different class of product. They are iconic pieces of industrial design.
I agree we should not set a precedent that the use of encryption equates with data of dubious legality, or more likely, incriminating information. That's not what I was getting at wrt circumstantial evidence - it was more that the software present on the machine might be used as circumstantial evidence as to the nature of a random-looking file - is it encrypted or not?
RIPA itself does not make this equation. It doesn't allow the prosecution to state that encrypted data to which you have not/cannot provide the key must necessarily contain incriminating material. But the law itself is still quite awful, IMHO.
The 2 years penalty for not disclosing a key they allege you have is clearly an incentive for people to not simply say in all cases that they've forgotten/lost the key. But this doesn't really do much good - if the file does not contain incriminating information, you have no motive not to hand it over. If it does contain incriminating information, the only thing you'll wonder is "is 2 years maximum less than what I can get by revealing this incriminating information".
So it's only ever worth handing over the key if the information it contains is totally irrelevant or not very incriminating. But you can't hand over the key either if you have lost the key, you never had it, or it really isn't an encrypted file. Unless there is significant other evidence, no jury is going to convict in those circumstances. So the very best this law can do provide minimal additional evidence in a non-serious trial, and almost no evidence at all in a serious trial (but they get to charge you with another offence).
Not quite, although it's not far off. They have to show that you were in possession of a key first, which is then taken as proof you still have the key, unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you don't anymore. Which will be a hard thing to do, but showing you had the key first is also a hard thing to do. It's certainly on the slippery slope towards guilty until proven innocent. Section 53 of RIPA states:
"(2) In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.
(3) For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if--
(a) sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and (b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt."
It seems to be a bit of a grey area in the law. In the interpretation to section III, RIPA states that:
"protected information" means any electronic data which, without the key to the data-- (a) cannot, or cannot readily, be accessed, or (b) cannot, or cannot readily, be put into an intelligible form;"
It says nothing about proving that there is really information present. They might point to circumstantial evidence, such as the presence of encryption software on the computer. Alternatively, you could ensure that you always have a good cryto random file shredder installed - that may provide "evidence" that there is no real information present. I bet there will be some interesting court cases in future over these issues.
I also have a flickr account, but I don't really use it anymore. The procedure for resetting my password on my yahoo id was so extreme that I very nearly gave up - took me nearly an hour of constantly going through the same steps, being rejected by insanely hard captchas, form filling that kept prompting me for more information, and other annoyances.
I have designed security systems dealing with classified government records, and I know it really doesn't need to be as difficult as that. I appreciate it when companies take security seriously, but it has to be balanced by usability. For that reason alone, even though flickr itself is great, I don't really use it anymore, as I don't want to deal with talking friends and family through setting up a yahoo account and maintaining it. Before flickr were bought by yahoo, it was a no-brainer - a fabulous service.
They did not want anyone to know how successful we were at decryption. Remember, the Colussus wasn't really a general purpose computer - it was good at cryptanlaysis.
A few of the staff went on to do further interesting things with computers (e.g. at Manchester) but many never got the recognition they deserved, and died before anyone even knew of the things they had done. Husbands and wives didn't tell each other.
It's so hard to tell if somone's joking or not sometimes:) We don't really wonder about the religious affiliation of most of our politicians too much (although if religions at all, most of those are probably Christian). Your politics seems big, bad and wierd to me, but maybe we're just less open about these things...
I doubt it - politically we are very secular in Europe - much more so than in the US. A couple of thousand years of religious nutters in charge does that to you. Christianity is still the biggest religion by a long way - they just aren't as politically vocal as minority religions, as they have learned it doesn't get them anywhere. Religious freedom combined with a secular state are the way over here.
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There are ODF readers and writers for every major office suite already. I'm sure eventually there will be OOXML readers and writers too. That isn't the issue. This is nothing to do with MS Office or any other office suite. This is nothing to do with open source software versus proprietary software.
/. can't keep this basic distinction clear, we are definitely doomed.
This is to do with open *standards* for *information*. The beef is about control over your information, for reasons of interoperability, automation, preservation and a having a vibrant, free-market, competitive software industry that benefits everyone. Standards, standards, standards.
If people on
That's a fair point.
I would say that things that are *necessarily* part of an operating system (like booting the machine), have a greater claim on being part of the operating system than document viewers used by the human users of it. Same thing goes for the command-line tool set - if they aren't *needed* to run (not administrate) the machine, they aren't part of the O/S, even if they form part of a standard distribution of it.
I'm not claiming the line isn't arbitrary - but equally, I do think there is a useful distinction to be made, if only to promote modularity and flexibility.
I'm probably just an aging geek, but an *operating system* should not depend on an *application* that runs on it being available.
Users do expect a fully featured environment, and a browser is definitely required these days. Bundling useful apps certainly isn't any kind of crime.
As a user or system integrator, you do expect to be able to unbundle any app you don't want, and replace it with one that you do. You can't unbundle IE from windows.
That is also a distinct possibility! I have no real experience of fighting, so maybe I was just normal and he was slow. My perception at the time was that things went into slow-motion - I don't deny it could have been some kind of perceptual illusion. Like I say, more research needed...
You aren't talking about the flow of time, you're talking about entropy.
The events you describe may be statistically highly unusual, but the events still possess an order in time relative to one another. The products of the "time going backward" reaction don't appear before the reaction started. Time is still going forward.
I agree that some kind of life-or-death situation needs to be involved. I have experienced time-slowdown (or rather, perceptual speed-up) twice in my life, both in very threatening situations. Both times the feeling was coupled with a deep sense of calmness.
The first time, I was attacked by a soccer hooligan, who smashed a bottle on my head with no warning, from behind. I remember turning round and seeing the thug waving the broken bottle - but everything had gone into slow motion. I could literally read every move he was going to make and counter it, with no apparent effort on my part, matrix-style. After I'd disposed of his bottle, I threw him around, then I played with him a bit without hurting him (much). I had the sense that I was far back, watching it all.
Afterwards, I was quite shocked at what had happened - I am not a fighter, I am really quite a wimp. Thinking about it later, it made sense to me, that some kind of fight-or-flight instinct had kicked in, allowing me to react instinctually much faster than normal, with my normal consciousness somewhat suspended.
The second time it happened, I was in a car that went into a 360 spin down a hill, eventually crashing into a lamp-post, totalling the car. Again, I felt calm, I could see everything that was happening as if in slow motion, but there wasn't anything I could do, so unlike the fight situation, I can't judge whether this perception had any practical effect.
I find it interesting that you can't count numbers any faster in threatening situations - but I would wager that only certain, survival oriented abilities are accelerated in threatening situations. I wouldn't have been surprised if the ability to read numbers was actually worse in those situations! More research is clearly needed...
Yeah, all those people fed up with Windows, thinking "I'd sure like to give Linux a try, but I just can't get my head around that KDE/Gnome choice". Come on...
The point the GP was making wasn't really a question of whether you are guilty or not after you have served your sentence. It was more about the effects of continuing punishment after the sentence is served.
It's not about pretending they didn't do something after the event. It's about their address being published, causing them to live in fear for the rest of their life. You might think that this person deserves that fate - I don't have much sympathy for them either - but I do consider that a cruel and unusual punishment.
Evolution is simply change - there is no purpose or progress to it. If more people survive to reproduce, there will be more genetic diversity, not less. In that sense, there will be more "evolution". By removing certain natural selection pressures through technology, it is true that the resulting changes will stop being directed towards fitness in a non-technological environment.
Organisms don't evolve - they are rather fixed by the DNA they have. Species evolve over time, not individuals.
Yes, I remember the days most programs just lived in their own folders. INI files weren't that great, but the registry made installing and managing software ten times more complicated. Every client needed its own configuration, you couldn't share bits of configuration and software easily across the network.
It seems to be manageable now, with a lot of extra tools to deal with the complexity... but it could be a lot easier. I wonder how much of this complexity is motivated by the desire to lock software down to each client?
Fair point - I haven't tried any other distros in a year or two. My comments just show my unfamiliarity with them ;)
I had a lot of fun with Gentoo too - loved watching everything build, but it was a passing fascination. I ended up with Ubuntu - great ease of use, and it doesn't get in my way if I want to tweak things for some reason. I still use Windows at work, and develop against it, but at home it's Linux and OS/X - they're both more fun and less fuss.
This always cracks me up. You don't install software like that in Linux because there are *better* and easier ways of doing it! Check the box, hit apply, job done. All software kept up-to-date automatically, not just the OS. You want to uninstall? Untick the box. Files and unneeded dependencies automatically removed, completely.
Although you can install software the Windows way - hunt for files on manufacturer web site, resolve any dependencies yourself (e.g. missing runtime DLLs), keep it all up to date yourself. You can try to uninstall software, but it often leaves traces of itself around the system.
The idea that something is hard just because it's not done the Windows way is laughable.
You missed out (in Ubuntu):
(c) click install when firefox prompts you to install flash
(d) automatic updates for all software on the system, not just the OS.
No having to find those downloads buried somewhere on every manufacturers site, occasionally having to locate the right version of additional runtime DLLs, and keep them all up to date yourself.
Windows isn't quite as easy as Linux, eh? When you can do that in Windows, it'll be ready for novices!
Btw, I have been a DOS / Windows user since forever, and I'm now a very happy Linux user too. Some things are better in Windows, some are better in Linux. Your comments just show that you're not really familiar with anything except Windows.
I'm surprised you specify one-time-pads for encrypting communications. They are completely unbreakable with good random pads that are only used once, but they must be unique for each machine and the station it communicates with. Key management is really hard.
I would hazard a guess that they would use other forms of encryption. If the communication is two way, then a key exchange protocol used to derive symmetric session keys would seem more useful, to my non-military eyes. If the communication is only one way, I'm still not sure why you need to bother with unbreakable communications. Aside from anything else, its communication probably doesn't have to be secure from an enemy forever - I assume there is only a limited window in which the information from a single vehicle is useful on a battlefield.
I think it was the Millennium Challenge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
Personally, I never liked actually using the iPod touch wheel, but I was captivated by the concept. No more nubbly little buttons to stab at - just sweep your hand over it. It breaks the mold.
I had a play with the new iPod last night, proudly demonstrated by my best friend, who can't stand iTunes and has never owned an iPod before. In his words - "it's an object of desire". He is a hard-core geek - he just doesn't care about design. At least, not until now. It is an amazing thing. The touch interface works amazingly, the UI is incredibly sleek and easy to use. It just feels like something completely new - it blows every other gadget I've ever used out of the water. I want one too.
It's not just "hype". IMHO, iPods marry sleek, stylish design with innovative user interfaces. They dare to be different, and do it with style. Pepple don't buy them by comparing their functionality, tech specs and price with their "competitors" - they are in an entirely different class of product. They are iconic pieces of industrial design.
I agree we should not set a precedent that the use of encryption equates with data of dubious legality, or more likely, incriminating information. That's not what I was getting at wrt circumstantial evidence - it was more that the software present on the machine might be used as circumstantial evidence as to the nature of a random-looking file - is it encrypted or not?
RIPA itself does not make this equation. It doesn't allow the prosecution to state that encrypted data to which you have not/cannot provide the key must necessarily contain incriminating material. But the law itself is still quite awful, IMHO.
The 2 years penalty for not disclosing a key they allege you have is clearly an incentive for people to not simply say in all cases that they've forgotten/lost the key. But this doesn't really do much good - if the file does not contain incriminating information, you have no motive not to hand it over. If it does contain incriminating information, the only thing you'll wonder is "is 2 years maximum less than what I can get by revealing this incriminating information".
So it's only ever worth handing over the key if the information it contains is totally irrelevant or not very incriminating. But you can't hand over the key either if you have lost the key, you never had it, or it really isn't an encrypted file. Unless there is significant other evidence, no jury is going to convict in those circumstances. So the very best this law can do provide minimal additional evidence in a non-serious trial, and almost no evidence at all in a serious trial (but they get to charge you with another offence).
Not quite, although it's not far off. They have to show that you were in possession of a key first, which is then taken as proof you still have the key, unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you don't anymore. Which will be a hard thing to do, but showing you had the key first is also a hard thing to do. It's certainly on the slippery slope towards guilty until proven innocent. Section 53 of RIPA states:
"(2) In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.
(3) For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if--
(a) sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt."
It seems to be a bit of a grey area in the law. In the interpretation to section III, RIPA states that:
"protected information" means any electronic data which, without the key to the data--
(a) cannot, or cannot readily, be accessed, or
(b) cannot, or cannot readily, be put into an intelligible form;"
It says nothing about proving that there is really information present. They might point to circumstantial evidence, such as the presence of encryption software on the computer. Alternatively, you could ensure that you always have a good cryto random file shredder installed - that may provide "evidence" that there is no real information present. I bet there will be some interesting court cases in future over these issues.
I also have a flickr account, but I don't really use it anymore. The procedure for resetting my password on my yahoo id was so extreme that I very nearly gave up - took me nearly an hour of constantly going through the same steps, being rejected by insanely hard captchas, form filling that kept prompting me for more information, and other annoyances.
I have designed security systems dealing with classified government records, and I know it really doesn't need to be as difficult as that. I appreciate it when companies take security seriously, but it has to be balanced by usability. For that reason alone, even though flickr itself is great, I don't really use it anymore, as I don't want to deal with talking friends and family through setting up a yahoo account and maintaining it. Before flickr were bought by yahoo, it was a no-brainer - a fabulous service.
They did not want anyone to know how successful we were at decryption. Remember, the Colussus wasn't really a general purpose computer - it was good at cryptanlaysis.
A few of the staff went on to do further interesting things with computers (e.g. at Manchester) but many never got the recognition they deserved, and died before anyone even knew of the things they had done. Husbands and wives didn't tell each other.
It's so hard to tell if somone's joking or not sometimes :) We don't really wonder about the religious affiliation of most of our politicians too much (although if religions at all, most of those are probably Christian). Your politics seems big, bad and wierd to me, but maybe we're just less open about these things...
You have a brilliant political system, that will only work if everyone, or the vast majority of people in the world supports it? So do I, so do I...
I doubt it - politically we are very secular in Europe - much more so than in the US. A couple of thousand years of religious nutters in charge does that to you. Christianity is still the biggest religion by a long way - they just aren't as politically vocal as minority religions, as they have learned it doesn't get them anywhere. Religious freedom combined with a secular state are the way over here.