Gamergate isn't at all upset about "diversity". Quite the contrary - there are prominent gamergaters who hail from visible minority groups.
What they're really upset about is two different things: a) a lack of integrity in the gaming press (insufficient disclosure of conflicts of interest, collusion, etc.) b) a hard-line form of liberal-left politics that has become thoroughly entrenched in the press business that isn't necessarily in alignment with the readers, a situation to the press declaring video games (and the people who play them) are a deleterious force on culture. All sorts of nuanced argumentation can be made here, but to say the least the press used inflammatory language (sexist, racist, harassers, reactionary, and so on) that quickly shaped outside public opinion of the people making the arguments, leaving them unanswered. Sure, like always happens in controversies like this the thoughtless assholes emerged from the woodwork to send nasty, threatening messages to people, but it's happened to *everyone* involved, on both sides.
Moral of the story: Friends don't let friends read Gawker. They were the epicenter of a lot of this mess.
An update pipeline, backed by a company with a good development methodology, is the best insurance against long-standing unplugged security holes. Look at all of the terrible, abandoned consumer routers full of security holes, for instance.
That said, before many folks are willing to such companies and their products into our homes, they need to earn our trust.
You *do* have ultimate control. You can elect to not buy the product, go with a competitor, or use an entirely different class of product entirely.
This is why proper privacy and property rights must properly legally extend to data hosted in cloud services.
The private companies that offer cloud-based services are not what worry me. There are a lot of sound economic reasons (see: the devops movement) for why this kind of product architecture (where a physical product, coupled with always-on connectivity and a remote cloud-hosted service) makes a whole lot of sense. There are a lot of market incentives for these companies to clearly delineate what they will and will not use the data (and sensors) for. Moreover, there can be a large degree of diversity between the various single-function cloud services one uses (even if Nest was recently acquired by Google). People care about their privacy, but they also balance it against the utility these kinds of products offer. I have a Nest Protect, and I'm comfortable trusting it a lot more than a regular standalone. Thus, they *consent* to the introduction of such technology into their lives, with the entirely reasonable expectation of benefit.
Another great example is the Tesla Model S, which is so dependent on cloud-services that it comes with a bundled 3G modem and data plan.
However, governments see the concentrated user data in data-centers on their soil as entirely too delicious to ignore. Not only does the immediately visible claim of increased security ("we could have caught the terrorists!") tend to outweigh the more general argument for individual property and privacy rights in the political sphere, but institutional incentives on the part of powerful government agencies and their contractors to grow their mandate mean that they'll heavily lobby for such intrusions.
I think most of us geeks grew up terrified of the very idea of the Orwellian Telescreen. However, it's not the technology that's evil (many of us have plenty of devices with a camera integrated with a display), but the threat of its use without consent.
Of course, if government is declared as responsible for nutrition, then then naturally it must also be responsible for the effects thereof.
This is a significant reason why state control must always beget more state control: regulators must make an at least ostensible attempt to correct unintended effects that are the result of a given intervention. The domain of responsibility becomes effectively unbounded.
While devising a complex system by means of patches in ad infinitum can work (see, Linux kernel), but only if that system's usage is constrained by voluntary choice.
Sadly, this means that folks with a given expertise (say, medical), will say things like they do in TFA: the sort-sighted view that governments should generally increase or at least maintain spending in order to avoid the expected bad effects of backing out on a responsibility.
There can be no substitute for individual responsibility.
How would you guys feel if the EU suddenly demanded that Debian include or not include certain packages in the main repository, regardless of what Debian's contributors and policies (say, the DFSG) said?
That's the thing about freedom. If you are to have it, then so must the other guy.
The modems are layer 2 and below devices. They don't know or care.
Routers are the real problem as far as customer premise equipment goes; however, the relevant functionality is typically in software on most consumer routers. Ostensibly this means that manufacturers can release a firmware upgrade.
I find that the turnover on those router boxes is rather high, so I suspect that newer routers will ship with it and the problem will slowly go away.
I am actually quite happy that someone like CodeWeavers can work on an important Free Software project like wine, and is able to get funding to do so by having real customers!
How can threats from untrusted code (or vulnerabilities in trusted code) be able to exploit a JTAG header on the board of the device?
Unless, of course, you think that the owner of the device is somehow a "security threat"? I keep meeting people who think this, and I really don't understand it at all...
(actually, Krstic's Bitfrost system is *does* implement some local physical security, but that is to address a very specific threat: theft)
I spent about half a day a few weeks ago Googling and pouring through various news aggregation sites trying to find your program again. I had seen it somewhere this summer and promptly forgot the name. It took me forever to find it because I hadn't seen it in an article, but rather your sig instead (probably).
And yes, I was rather amused when I figured it out.:)
... source code for your drivers (or indeed any other software you run) is very useful on several counts:
They permit upstream to merge the code. Proprietary drivers aside, installing Ubuntu on a modern machine is far easier than installing Windows, simply because you don't have to fetch (and keep up to date) a host of drivers and applications from third party sources.
Merged code (for instance, Free Software drivers in upstream Xorg) can be kept consistent and up to date with API changes in the common infrastructure code. Common code between multiple drivers can be factored out. As it turns out, Windows and Linux have both had three different USB stacks. The only difference? Windows still keeps the first two around to support so-called "legacy drivers", whereas all the drivers in Linux have simply been updated
Maintainership of the driver beyond the product life cycle. As Greg KH himself has said, even if your hardware is only used by ONE person in the world, it is welcome in the kernel so long as it is in good condition and someone (not necessarily anyone with any special privilege; all that is required is someone able with available time) is willing to help maintain it. This is very good, because generally proprietary drivers (for proprietary systems) become useless as kernel evolves.
The transparent and flatter development process for Free code is very useful: you can actually speak to the person who wrote the code, and retrieve their work as it gets done. Public version control, mailing lists, bug trackers, and IRC channels for the win.
Real computer professionals actually know how to program. Despite your remarks to the contrary, myself and many people I know do contribute to upstream Free Software projects. Even for quick hacks to make things work right now, the source code is immensely useful. Again, I and many others have made small fixes to drivers to get things to work in a pinch.
Free code usually is subjected to rather rigorous quality standards before inclusion in upstream. Linux is a fine example; in fact, they are notorious nitpicks.
In summary, not only does Free Software promote a non-tiered development model, but it also simplifies things for the user and technicians who simply want to make the computer work without silly restrictions confounding the process.
I should have clarified that their technology is entirely different from Microsoft's. It can detect varying degrees of force, and by most accounts has superior accuracy.
Had you at least looked at the bill, you'd see that imprisonment is only involved when copyright infringement/counterfeiting cause serious bodily harm or death.
The punishment in that instance seems reasonable to me.
Dillo does not support i18n at all. It can only render ISO 8859, afaik. Anything that doesn't use the latin character set is completely out.
Besides, as the other replies note, Dillo can't render most content properly at all.
XBox live is merely a directory service. When you start up an Xbox live match with Halo 2, one of the participating Xboxes is arbitrarily chosen to be the "server". This is because Halo 2 (and indeed, most Xbox live-enabled games) are implemented with the "LAN Party" threat model, a classic example of the "walled garden". This obviously requires all parties to trust each other because (depending on implementation details) some or all of the group members will have the capability to modify any aspect of the system.
This threat model makes total sense when you're playing together in a LAN party, because you are in a trusted (and local) group. However, once one is on the public Internet playing against anonymous gamers, this is simply no longer the case.
So why, oh, why did Microsoft and Bungie (and countless other ISVs) elect to use this obviously inappropriate model for Internet-based multiplayer games?
Simple. Cost. The expense of hosting a simple directory service is an order of magnitude smaller than actually serving as the trusted third party and hosting the application/game. That's why XBox live is $50 per annum rather than $50 a month.
(I apologise for the bad line breaks in my last comment.)
Slashdot Mirror
"Daesh" is a pejorative term for ISIS. Referring to it by that name is hardly "praise".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Gamergate isn't at all upset about "diversity". Quite the contrary - there are prominent gamergaters who hail from visible minority groups.
What they're really upset about is two different things: a) a lack of integrity in the gaming press (insufficient disclosure of conflicts of interest, collusion, etc.) b) a hard-line form of liberal-left politics that has become thoroughly entrenched in the press business that isn't necessarily in alignment with the readers, a situation to the press declaring video games (and the people who play them) are a deleterious force on culture. All sorts of nuanced argumentation can be made here, but to say the least the press used inflammatory language (sexist, racist, harassers, reactionary, and so on) that quickly shaped outside public opinion of the people making the arguments, leaving them unanswered. Sure, like always happens in controversies like this the thoughtless assholes emerged from the woodwork to send nasty, threatening messages to people, but it's happened to *everyone* involved, on both sides.
Moral of the story: Friends don't let friends read Gawker. They were the epicenter of a lot of this mess.
An update pipeline, backed by a company with a good development methodology, is the best insurance against long-standing unplugged security holes. Look at all of the terrible, abandoned consumer routers full of security holes, for instance.
That said, before many folks are willing to such companies and their products into our homes, they need to earn our trust.
You *do* have ultimate control. You can elect to not buy the product, go with a competitor, or use an entirely different class of product entirely.
This is why proper privacy and property rights must properly legally extend to data hosted in cloud services.
The private companies that offer cloud-based services are not what worry me. There are a lot of sound economic reasons (see: the devops movement) for why this kind of product architecture (where a physical product, coupled with always-on connectivity and a remote cloud-hosted service) makes a whole lot of sense. There are a lot of market incentives for these companies to clearly delineate what they will and will not use the data (and sensors) for. Moreover, there can be a large degree of diversity between the various single-function cloud services one uses (even if Nest was recently acquired by Google). People care about their privacy, but they also balance it against the utility these kinds of products offer. I have a Nest Protect, and I'm comfortable trusting it a lot more than a regular standalone. Thus, they *consent* to the introduction of such technology into their lives, with the entirely reasonable expectation of benefit.
Another great example is the Tesla Model S, which is so dependent on cloud-services that it comes with a bundled 3G modem and data plan.
However, governments see the concentrated user data in data-centers on their soil as entirely too delicious to ignore. Not only does the immediately visible claim of increased security ("we could have caught the terrorists!") tend to outweigh the more general argument for individual property and privacy rights in the political sphere, but institutional incentives on the part of powerful government agencies and their contractors to grow their mandate mean that they'll heavily lobby for such intrusions.
I think most of us geeks grew up terrified of the very idea of the Orwellian Telescreen. However, it's not the technology that's evil (many of us have plenty of devices with a camera integrated with a display), but the threat of its use without consent.
Of course, if government is declared as responsible for nutrition, then then naturally it must also be responsible for the effects thereof.
This is a significant reason why state control must always beget more state control: regulators must make an at least ostensible attempt to correct unintended effects that are the result of a given intervention. The domain of responsibility becomes effectively unbounded.
While devising a complex system by means of patches in ad infinitum can work (see, Linux kernel), but only if that system's usage is constrained by voluntary choice.
Sadly, this means that folks with a given expertise (say, medical), will say things like they do in TFA: the sort-sighted view that governments should generally increase or at least maintain spending in order to avoid the expected bad effects of backing out on a responsibility.
There can be no substitute for individual responsibility.
How would you guys feel if the EU suddenly demanded that Debian include or not include certain packages in the main repository, regardless of what Debian's contributors and policies (say, the DFSG) said?
That's the thing about freedom. If you are to have it, then so must the other guy.
Yeah, that seems to be the case.
The customer of the mobile phone manufacturer is the carrier, not the end user who actually ends up "buying" the device.
The modems are layer 2 and below devices. They don't know or care.
Routers are the real problem as far as customer premise equipment goes; however, the relevant functionality is typically in software on most consumer routers. Ostensibly this means that manufacturers can release a firmware upgrade.
I find that the turnover on those router boxes is rather high, so I suspect that newer routers will ship with it and the problem will slowly go away.
I am actually quite happy that someone like CodeWeavers can work on an important Free Software project like wine, and is able to get funding to do so by having real customers!
And yes, wine is pretty amazing these days.
Keep up the good work!
How can threats from untrusted code (or vulnerabilities in trusted code) be able to exploit a JTAG header on the board of the device?
Unless, of course, you think that the owner of the device is somehow a "security threat"? I keep meeting people who think this, and I really don't understand it at all...
(actually, Krstic's Bitfrost system is *does* implement some local physical security, but that is to address a very specific threat: theft)
Actually, it may not have been quite as sophisticated as this new one is. Still pretty cool though.
I hope VICE gets a port of this new code. :)
(hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to implement the loud VIC buzz you'd hear on the audio from a VIC-20 or C64...)
What about the Apple ][ screensaver?
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/screenshots/
I think it did something very similar.
(hey, first post!)
This phenomenon sounds very similar to Pogo Oscillations, which incidentally caused the engine 5 shutdown on the Apollo 13 Saturn V.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_oscillations
You do know that Zener Diodes exist, right? :P
Actually...
:)
I spent about half a day a few weeks ago Googling and pouring through various news aggregation sites trying to find your program again. I had seen it somewhere this summer and promptly forgot the name. It took me forever to find it because I hadn't seen it in an article, but rather your sig instead (probably).
And yes, I was rather amused when I figured it out.
... source code for your drivers (or indeed any other software you run) is very useful on several counts:
I should have clarified that their technology is entirely different from Microsoft's. It can detect varying degrees of force, and by most accounts has superior accuracy.
Jeff Han lead project at NYU to produce multi-touch display technology and some demo applications.
Take a look at the original work at NYU: http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
And the spin-off company by the same guys to develop the technology: http://www.perspectivepixel.com/
Very cool stuff. If you look closely, you can tell that they're running it on GNU/Linux.
Hopefully, they'll chose to collaborate with the X and kernel guys to create proper generic interfaces for multi-touch pointing device input.
Had you at least looked at the bill, you'd see that imprisonment is only involved when copyright infringement/counterfeiting cause serious bodily harm or death.
The punishment in that instance seems reasonable to me.
You've totally gotta check out TamTam, the PyGTK C-sound based music tracker included with OLPC.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/TamTam
It's not done yet, but will be very soon due to necessity.
Dillo does not support i18n at all. It can only render ISO 8859, afaik. Anything that doesn't use the latin character set is completely out. Besides, as the other replies note, Dillo can't render most content properly at all.
... when you press the XO's "View Source" key?
Read the wiki (wiki.laptop.org), not the web site.
Actually, in TFA, he asked his mom if he could build a hyperbolic chamber first.
Not quite the same thing as the "Dragonball Z" variety, but...
Case Study: Halo 2.
XBox live is merely a directory service. When you start up an Xbox live match with Halo 2, one of the participating Xboxes is arbitrarily chosen to be the "server". This is because Halo 2 (and indeed, most Xbox live-enabled games) are implemented with the "LAN Party" threat model, a classic example of the "walled garden". This obviously requires all parties to trust each other because (depending on implementation details) some or all of the group members will have the capability to modify any aspect of the system.
This threat model makes total sense when you're playing together in a LAN party, because you are in a trusted (and local) group. However, once one is on the public Internet playing against anonymous gamers, this is simply no longer the case.
So why, oh, why did Microsoft and Bungie (and countless other ISVs) elect to use this obviously inappropriate model for Internet-based multiplayer games?
Simple. Cost. The expense of hosting a simple directory service is an order of magnitude smaller than actually serving as the trusted third party and hosting the application/game. That's why XBox live is $50 per annum rather than $50 a month.
(I apologise for the bad line breaks in my last comment.)