Also, Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction is all about the extent to which omniscient narrators are not omniscient, and furthermore, how they are often are deserving only a limited degree of trust.
Actually, the GPL also states that if you distribute a GPLed work in violation of the license, your license to redistribute is revoked. So there's still something there -- if the netfilter/iptables guys want to pursue it.
I hope they do.
You should write a FAQ and make a webpage on this. It sounds fascinating -- since you've done the research already, why not share?
(P.S.: Do you have an Xtracycle for carrying all that gear around in?
Coppola's young and has obvious talent. She's almost guaranteed to do something spectacular in the future. So perhaps they'll hold off on awarding her this time, because Jackson will never make another LoTR.
What Debian really needs is a program which can back up a Debian system by noting which packages are installed and then just saving/home,/usr/local,/etc,/var,/opt and so on. It would make backups a lot more sane and sensible.
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 1
Because nobody knew that the ghost horde was coming. (At least, in the book, they arrive just barely in the nick of time, after all hope was lost that they'd make it. I haven't seen the movie. Yet.)
Ha. I'm sure bureaucrats have no desire to know everything about everyone. Who really has a desire to learn everything about everyone is marketing executives.
Why aren't people as paranoid about credit reporting agencies and direct-marketing database providers as they are about the government?
Aladdin software has been releasing ghostscript and ghostview under the GPL for years now. The newest version is available under a proprietary license, while all the previous ones are GPL. The FSF describes this as an acceptable, if not ideal way of making money off of GPL software.
[You shall not] Monitor or copy any Content by using any manual process, or any robot, spider, or other automatic device, without first obtaining American Airlines' prior written consent.
Forget the part about robots, spiders, or other automatic devices. You shall not Monitor or copy and Content by using any manual process. Yes, that means that you can't even click on a damn link without prior written consent from a lawyer.
One reason is that you never know when your site might be interesting to a blind person. Just look at one of your well-thought-out examples: bird watching. I have a friend who's an avid birder, and from listening to him I'd guess he gets 30% to 50% of his birds by ear. He buys CDs with birdsongs on them to practice. So, your example is poorly-chosen -- but you didn't know that, did you? If your website were accessible it wouldn't matter.
The fact of the matter is that from a pure dollar-value point of view, it will almost never make sense to make your website accessible, because blind people are such a small proportion of the population. That's the beauty of government. It gives that small minority bargaining power against the invisible hand. Essentially, when Congress passes a website accessibility law, it's the People of the United States telling you that it's important to serve the disadvantaged. (I realize that Congress is increasingly more subservient to corporate interests, but it hardly seems that the Americans with Disabilities Act is in the interest of our corporate masters, which is why I feel confident attributing it to the People of the United States for once).
In principle your position is reasonable, but if I were a photographer, I would charge you an arm, a leg, and an ear for the "service". The reason is simple: under the old model, my profit margin is distributed among you, your guests, and your relatives, which means that my cost to you can be much lower. If I'm going to hand the negatives, a high-quality Photo CD, and the copyrights over to you to do as you please, I'm going to price that much higher and make all my money up front (and good luck to you recouping from your family!)-- which is what the photographer in the article wanted to do. The "price" of the IP is all the profits I'd lose when I couldn't convert it to extra sales, contest winnings, or gallery shows.
[H]ere's 1,000 CD copies of MS Foobar Pro, each worth $5,000 !! So we just made a donation of $5,000,000 and it's tax deductible (not that we pay taxes)
Open Source can beat this, using the same bullshit accounting. Just donate 1,000 CD copies of Mandrake Peruvian Gold Edition -- market price, whatever you want it to be.
I realize you were being slightly facetious, but look at the difference in what you get between the winner and the Dutch kid. Sure, $850 buys you a description of the problem and what to do to protect yourself, and that's great. But the winner went a huge distance beyond that -- his answers to the "bonus questions" are particularly insightful.
It seems to me, by the way, that the winner did all of his analysis without ever once running the program -- it was all clever reverse-engineering and decompilation. His tactics for reconstructing the symbol table were especially enlightening to me, but it seems to me that the entire description of his method of analysis is a great read and a good walkthrough if you wanted to start learning how to reverse-engineer a program via decompilation.
I read the article which the DB is trying to have pulled (it's in German, and too long to translate -- and I bet the babelfish will choke on the technical railway terms). It's a technical explanation of how to disable the axel-counting sensors which are located at intervals on stretches of track. The sensors let the central signal controlling computer know whether there is a train on a specific track section or not.
The basic mechanism is: when a train is allowed to proceed, via a green signal, onto a section of track, the axel-counter tallies the number of axels and the central computer switches the signal to red. As the train leaves the section of track a corresponding axel-counter tallies the axels and if axels-in == axels-out, the central controller knows the track is free again.
Now, here's the rub (and this is pointed out in the article as well): if the axel-counters are offline, the signal defaults to red. Trains may still proceed along the track section, but only if they radio ahead and move at walking pace.
So the situation is nothing like teaching someone how to hijack a plane and fly it into a building. Using the detailed technical information in the article, the only thing you can do is really inconvenience trains by forcing them to slow to a crawl along track sections you've damaged the axel-counters to. Sure, if you go out and take a battle-axe to random pieces of railroad equipment, you may damage something that causes a crash; or you may stick the axe in a high-voltage transformer and electrocute yourself. But, in a certain sense, the article is teacheing responsible sabotage -- what to disable which has no chance of causing loss of life -- not to you, and not to train passengers.
Just so people remember correctly, it wasn't either deregulation or regulation that got California into so much trouble with the rolling blackouts, etc. It was the combination of half-assed deregulation AND half- assed regulation combined that caused their self-imposed troubles. The state decided to deregulate most aspects of the power industry, but didn't feel like taking the consequences, so it capped what power companies could charge for the power.
First let me say I think your heart is mostly in the right place on this post. But the way I understand it, the California consumers didn't ask for deregulation -- the power companies wanted it, and in fact got to write the legislation. They promised that the magic of competition would bring lower prices to the California market. Consumer advocate groups, not trusting the power companies, said they wanted that written into the law -- thus the price caps, as a way of holding PG&E and SoCal Edison to their free-market promises. Of course, the power companies were fine with that because they believed their own propaganda. They figured their cost of electricity would drop but they could still charge the price cap, making even more money.
So whenever I hear that it's the half-assed combination of regulation and deregulation that caused California's consumers' problems, I think to myself that they would have been better off never deregulating at all. Los Angeles has a municipal power company and never once had a brown-out.
On the other hand, BSD protects IP for companies as well. Large standard numerical libraries such as LAPACK are released under BSD-style licenses because it is good for the community if SGI and Sun and IBM tune the hell out of them and release only the binaries. The important things are that the library calls be *fast* and that the APIs be standard. If we can get a highly optimized closed-source vendor library that was based on the reference standard, we're guaranteed quality, speed, and consistency -- which makes our results repeatable, our code portable, and our research funding agencies happy.
Finally a subject on which I have a decent contribution to make. I wrote a technical report on the technologies behind the current fastest supercomputers and on up-and-coming innovations. This gives a high-level overview of ASCI Red, IBM's Blue Gene, and the HTMT (superconducting technology based) project. Follow this link to the LaTeX2HTML version or download the Postscript version.
Top 12 things likely to be overheard if you worked with a Klingon Programmer:
"Specifications are for the weak and timid!"
"This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual 600MHz Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!"
"You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon."
"Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!"
"What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes,' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake."
"Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM."
"Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak."
"I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again."
"A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!"
"By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. PREPARE TO DIE!"
"You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!"
"Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
The USPS is not a full-fledged government agency in the sense that it is self-supporting. Your tax dollars do not support mail service; in fact, the government appropriates USPS profits above a certain amount. This is the reason ultimately that the USPS doesn't simply concentrate on delivering mail fast -- it engages in a lot of this other stuff because it makes them money, covering their losses on services like first-class mail delivery.
Slashdot Mirror
Luckily it will also immensely speed up encryption times. So, on the whole, probably a gain for the white hats rather than the black hats.
Also, Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction is all about the extent to which omniscient narrators are not omniscient, and furthermore, how they are often are deserving only a limited degree of trust.
Actually, the GPL also states that if you distribute a GPLed work in violation of the license, your license to redistribute is revoked. So there's still something there -- if the netfilter/iptables guys want to pursue it. I hope they do.
American Union Jeans -- union made in the USA, and only $34.99. How much do those Levis cost ... ?
You should write a FAQ and make a webpage on this. It sounds fascinating -- since you've done the research already, why not share? (P.S.: Do you have an Xtracycle for carrying all that gear around in?
Receipts which exit pollsters can use to verify a vote could also be used by vote-buyers. We need a cryptographically secure receipt system.
I agree that this is disturbing, but you're living three miles from a coal plant. That will kill you long before electrical emissions will.
Coppola's young and has obvious talent. She's almost guaranteed to do something spectacular in the future. So perhaps they'll hold off on awarding her this time, because Jackson will never make another LoTR.
What Debian really needs is a program which can back up a Debian system by noting which packages are installed and then just saving /home, /usr/local, /etc, /var, /opt and so on. It would make backups a lot more sane and sensible.
Because nobody knew that the ghost horde was coming. (At least, in the book, they arrive just barely in the nick of time, after all hope was lost that they'd make it. I haven't seen the movie. Yet.)
Ha. I'm sure bureaucrats have no desire to know everything about everyone. Who really has a desire to learn everything about everyone is marketing executives. Why aren't people as paranoid about credit reporting agencies and direct-marketing database providers as they are about the government?
Aladdin software has been releasing ghostscript and ghostview under the GPL for years now. The newest version is available under a proprietary license, while all the previous ones are GPL. The FSF describes this as an acceptable, if not ideal way of making money off of GPL software.
[You shall not] Monitor or copy any Content by using any manual process, or any robot, spider, or other automatic device, without first obtaining American Airlines' prior written consent. Forget the part about robots, spiders, or other automatic devices. You shall not Monitor or copy and Content by using any manual process. Yes, that means that you can't even click on a damn link without prior written consent from a lawyer.
One reason is that you never know when your site might be interesting to a blind person. Just look at one of your well-thought-out examples: bird watching. I have a friend who's an avid birder, and from listening to him I'd guess he gets 30% to 50% of his birds by ear. He buys CDs with birdsongs on them to practice. So, your example is poorly-chosen -- but you didn't know that, did you? If your website were accessible it wouldn't matter.
The fact of the matter is that from a pure dollar-value point of view, it will almost never make sense to make your website accessible, because blind people are such a small proportion of the population. That's the beauty of government. It gives that small minority bargaining power against the invisible hand. Essentially, when Congress passes a website accessibility law, it's the People of the United States telling you that it's important to serve the disadvantaged. (I realize that Congress is increasingly more subservient to corporate interests, but it hardly seems that the Americans with Disabilities Act is in the interest of our corporate masters, which is why I feel confident attributing it to the People of the United States for once).
In principle your position is reasonable, but if I were a photographer, I would charge you an arm, a leg, and an ear for the "service". The reason is simple: under the old model, my profit margin is distributed among you, your guests, and your relatives, which means that my cost to you can be much lower. If I'm going to hand the negatives, a high-quality Photo CD, and the copyrights over to you to do as you please, I'm going to price that much higher and make all my money up front (and good luck to you recouping from your family!)-- which is what the photographer in the article wanted to do. The "price" of the IP is all the profits I'd lose when I couldn't convert it to extra sales, contest winnings, or gallery shows.
It seems to me, by the way, that the winner did all of his analysis without ever once running the program -- it was all clever reverse-engineering and decompilation. His tactics for reconstructing the symbol table were especially enlightening to me, but it seems to me that the entire description of his method of analysis is a great read and a good walkthrough if you wanted to start learning how to reverse-engineer a program via decompilation.
I read the article which the DB is trying to have pulled (it's in German, and too long to translate -- and I bet the babelfish will choke on the technical railway terms). It's a technical explanation of how to disable the axel-counting sensors which are located at intervals on stretches of track. The sensors let the central signal controlling computer know whether there is a train on a specific track section or not.
The basic mechanism is: when a train is allowed to proceed, via a green signal, onto a section of track, the axel-counter tallies the number of axels and the central computer switches the signal to red. As the train leaves the section of track a corresponding axel-counter tallies the axels and if axels-in == axels-out, the central controller knows the track is free again.
Now, here's the rub (and this is pointed out in the article as well): if the axel-counters are offline, the signal defaults to red. Trains may still proceed along the track section, but only if they radio ahead and move at walking pace.
So the situation is nothing like teaching someone how to hijack a plane and fly it into a building. Using the detailed technical information in the article, the only thing you can do is really inconvenience trains by forcing them to slow to a crawl along track sections you've damaged the axel-counters to. Sure, if you go out and take a battle-axe to random pieces of railroad equipment, you may damage something that causes a crash; or you may stick the axe in a high-voltage transformer and electrocute yourself. But, in a certain sense, the article is teacheing responsible sabotage -- what to disable which has no chance of causing loss of life -- not to you, and not to train passengers.
So whenever I hear that it's the half-assed combination of regulation and deregulation that caused California's consumers' problems, I think to myself that they would have been better off never deregulating at all. Los Angeles has a municipal power company and never once had a brown-out.
On the other hand, BSD protects IP for companies as well. Large standard numerical libraries such as LAPACK are released under BSD-style licenses because it is good for the community if SGI and Sun and IBM tune the hell out of them and release only the binaries. The important things are that the library calls be *fast* and that the APIs be standard. If we can get a highly optimized closed-source vendor library that was based on the reference standard, we're guaranteed quality, speed, and consistency -- which makes our results repeatable, our code portable, and our research funding agencies happy.
Finally a subject on which I have a decent contribution to make. I wrote a technical report on the technologies behind the current fastest supercomputers and on up-and-coming innovations. This gives a high-level overview of ASCI Red, IBM's Blue Gene, and the HTMT (superconducting technology based) project. Follow this link to the LaTeX2HTML version or download the Postscript version.
Top 12 things likely to be overheard if you worked with a Klingon Programmer:
This is a job for ... Ludwig Plutonium!
The USPS is not a full-fledged government agency in the sense that it is self-supporting. Your tax dollars do not support mail service; in fact, the government appropriates USPS profits above a certain amount. This is the reason ultimately that the USPS doesn't simply concentrate on delivering mail fast -- it engages in a lot of this other stuff because it makes them money, covering their losses on services like first-class mail delivery.