Thanks for a well-written, highly informed discussion:)
Apologies for the redneck comment, I was using it as synonymous with the somewhat parochial mindset present in large areas of the US (and most other countries) - the sort of people who, for example, call you a traitor when you claim you're not too keen on any wars your country may be engaged in... What's a better word for that? Does the phrase good ol' boy fit or is that overkill?
Maybe I am somewhat paranoid about the damage that commercial interests can do to the technical minority. I'm from Europe, where an alliance of pretty much every techie on the entire continent only just managed to prevent software patents being passed into law by a bunch of undemocratic bureaucrats. I understand that software patents are all over the place in the US so, to rehash my earlier comments:
Don't like operating systems with DRM in? Use one like Linux, that doesn't have DRM. Whoops, you've just been sued for infringement of some ridiculously obvious software patent. Game over, insert coin.
I would be quite impressed if you built your own - it was my understanding that getting small enough components was a pain in the ass unless you're buying in bulk. I could be wrong - if so, kudos:)
My general point still stands, that a large DRM universe will tend to grow to the limits of its capacity (cos there's a lot of dollars riding on spreading the restrictions as far as possible), and will tend to cause pain unless you're willing to go to quite ridiculous lengths to avoid it where possible. Even if you manage that, it can still manage to messupyourlife fairly thoroughly (that last link is particularly bothersome).
I say again: avoiding buying into things like this isn't a solution. If everyone else buys into them then you're going to very quickly find yourself between a rock and a hard place, cos the minority group always gets stamped on. I can provide more examples of similar issues if you so wish. A short list of comparable situations would look like:
You're showing your age. Saying that you remember a time when patents were useful is worse than saying you followed the Grateful Dead round America! It's only slightly better than saying you remember a time when copyright wasn't designed for the sole purpose of keeping Steamboat Willie out of the public domain...
:)
My argument is basically that the two halves of the sentence behave as weakly-linked clauses, rather than the second being a subclause of the first. I could very well be wrong, my brain is completely mashed at the moment.
We're into fairly fine-grained linguistic territory here. I understand what you're getting at, and if you'd said "Lifewish says that the moon is made of cheese", you'd be right.
However, in the specific case I mentioned ("I just heard from Lifewish: the moon is made of cheese"), my comment is being repackaged and distributed as a statement, not an opinion. In this case, you're making two statements, and implying a link between them with the colon (if the punctuation had been a full-stop rather than a colon, the link would be even weaker).
So the statement is an accurate representation of what I said, but the second half of it is false and the presence of the first half does not equate to "Lifewish says that...", due to the comparative weakness of the colon. The statement can be legitimately viewed as either a representation or a couple of statements - in the first case, it's accurate, but, in the second case, it's a lie.
That's my interpretation anyway. I'm aware that it is rather tenuously dependent on the exact linking strength that you assign to the colon. Of course, this is all fairly irrelevant to the article in question, which was a lot less fuzzy about which bits were quotes. So I was wrong (or at least not sufficiently pedantic) to say "It's a quote, hence (if I understand correctly) it's not required of Slashdot that it be true, only that it be an accurate representation of what that person said." However, the great-grandparent's response was probably also incorrect, so let's call it quits.
Apologies for subjecting you to that outburst of obscure logic. I've been reading Logic And Set Theory textbooks all afternoon and it's starting to show:(
My experience is that avoiding buying into things like this isn't a solution. Don't like Microsoft's lack of standards compliance? Don't buy Windows. Whoops, a decent chunk of the Web is now unuseable due to shoddy frontpage-based design (less of an issue now than it used to be, but only due to sterling work by the Mozilla Foundation et al).
Don't like software DRM? Don't buy from companies that use it in their software. Whoops, you've just been sent an important document in MS's latest AllYourRightsAreBelongToUs Office format. Sorry, you'd better get saving up for that Windows box you promised you'd never buy.
The problem is that, when a decent proportion of the population is willing to accept whatever crap is thrown at them, said crap will tend to overflow into everyone else's life - a new tyrrany of the apathetic majority. Good luck avoiding DRM in the future without actually ditching your computer.
The point they were trying to make was that Apple *could* do whatever the hell they liked, which was aptly demonstrated by the modification they mentioned. Discussing whether the particular change was good or bad for consumers wasn't the issue; the fact that Apple could make the change was.
How can something be both a lie and an accurate representation at the same time?
If I say "The moon is made of cheese" and you say "I've just heard from Lifewish: the moon is made of cheese", then your statement is a lie (the moon is not made of cheese) but is an accurate representation of what I said.
I suppose I shouldn't expect much from a guy who admits he's an idiot on his own website, but really.
Hey, I figure that if I get it out in the open now it'll save time later...
It's a quote, hence (if I understand correctly) it's not required of Slashdot that it be true, only that it be an accurate representation of what that person said.
The best "alternative viewpoint" I've come across was from a (fairly well-educated) Christian who honestly believed that the human race tended towards Christianity.
Half the stuff these guys do would probably not be legal for a policeperson to deal with. This is just another case of outsourcing breaches of rights to the private sector.
It might help you learn a few more languages. My experience is that the best way to get relatively fluent in a language is to get a copy of Harry Potter in said language and sit down with a cup of hot choccy and a dictionary.
But really, I haven't found a reason to use Linux, niether have alot of my buddys, because most of the problems with Windows can be "Fixed"
I switched to Linux on the desktop a couple of years ago. Since then, I've occasionally been called upon to use Windows (for example in my current job) and one thing that I've noticed is that I've come to expect problems to be fixable.
For example, MS Excel is consistently generating an "Error 13" popup message every time I load it, which otherwise appears to have no effect whatsoever on performance. If this, or something similar, was happening on my Linux box, I would be digging into the system trying to figure out what was going wrong, even down to source code level if necessary. In Windows, that's a habit that's impossible to get into, cos all the programs are designed as little gated enclosures that you can't see into.
My experience is that most of the problems on Windows can't be fixed unless you're a master of reverse-engineering. You either get used to them or reinstall Windows. Neither is necessary on Linux as figuring out what the actual problem is, as opposed to turning a blind eye, is so much easier.
I'm guessing that he was thinking more along the line of the HR droid who asks the rest of the office "anyone know how to use this Linux thingy?" and concludes from the negative responses that Linux support is terrible.
It's the case with most of the commercial Linux distributions that the code itself is Free, but the trademarks aren't. Linux is still free as anyone who wants to can fork the entire codebase, just as long as they use a different name.
Now this one I can answer, cos I've just fought my way through a term of quantum dynamics. The electron isn't in any one place, it's splurged out. It gets fluffier and fluffier until something "detects" it, at which point it coalesces. Or doesn't. That's what the "detection" process does - it decides (on a probabilistic basis) whether the electron is currently in that area of space. Of course, once it's been detected and "decayed" to a point particle, it starts getting fuzzy again.
That's the classical version anyway. The problem with it is that it's not time-independent, which messes up all those nice Einsteinian symmetries (i.e. you'd probably never be able to mesh the two theories). The more confusing version, Quantum Electrodynamics, uses a rather weird "sum over paths" approach which, by a roundabout route, suggests that our universe is predestined, but we don't know which of many many similar universes we're in (the whole "Many Worlds" thing).
Oh, and your "idea of relativity" is fluffy to the point that a real physicist would probably lose his lunch. The fact that the phrase "everything is relative" strikes a chord with you does not mean that that's what Einsteinian relativity is all about.
1) When DES came out, academia were demonstrably at least 20 years behind the NSA in terms of cryptographic skills.
2) I'm impressed that you know what they use for top secret data - do you have any references for that? I'd note that, if USA top-secret data were encrypted by a different system, the NSA might well decide it was worth the risk of AES being cracked to be able to read their enemies' data.
3) If the authors, on their own, were capable of finding a break then their work would most likely have been independently duplicated by the academic community by now. If, however, one of the biggest employers of mathematicians worldwide, with more past experience of cryptoanalysis than anyone but GCHQ, were to find a break, they could probably expect that it wouldn't be duplicated any time soon.
Having said that, I'm not a cryptographer yet so I could be completely wrong.
I'd wager that every hormone-fuelled teenager ever to own a car has, at some point or another, felt a strong urge to break the speed limit, smash into that car that is refusing to let him/her overtake or otherwise drive in a horrendously dangerous fashion. When my friends and I get those urges, we fire up Flat Out and take our frustrations out on innocent computer-generated imitation cars. Works wonders - it defuses the tension completely. As an added bonus, the messy pileups help bring home the message that we shouldn't try this in a real car.
In the same way, Quake II is still helping me resist the urge to strangle my kid sister, with the added bonus that I'm less likely to deliberately start an interstellar war.
Actually, you might not. According to the patent, one of the major features of the software is the ability to remove the highlighting.
OK, so what if I enclose all numbers in DIV tags, setting the class on each to "number"? That's something that you might well want to do (i.e. fairly bloody obvious), and then it's possible to toggle borders using one line of CSS. Come on, we have an entire style system devoted to handling this sort of change!
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for a well-written, highly informed discussion :)
Apologies for the redneck comment, I was using it as synonymous with the somewhat parochial mindset present in large areas of the US (and most other countries) - the sort of people who, for example, call you a traitor when you claim you're not too keen on any wars your country may be engaged in... What's a better word for that? Does the phrase good ol' boy fit or is that overkill?
Maybe I am somewhat paranoid about the damage that commercial interests can do to the technical minority. I'm from Europe, where an alliance of pretty much every techie on the entire continent only just managed to prevent software patents being passed into law by a bunch of undemocratic bureaucrats. I understand that software patents are all over the place in the US so, to rehash my earlier comments:
Don't like operating systems with DRM in? Use one like Linux, that doesn't have DRM. Whoops, you've just been sued for infringement of some ridiculously obvious software patent. Game over, insert coin.
My general point still stands, that a large DRM universe will tend to grow to the limits of its capacity (cos there's a lot of dollars riding on spreading the restrictions as far as possible), and will tend to cause pain unless you're willing to go to quite ridiculous lengths to avoid it where possible. Even if you manage that, it can still manage to mess up your life fairly thoroughly (that last link is particularly bothersome).
I say again: avoiding buying into things like this isn't a solution. If everyone else buys into them then you're going to very quickly find yourself between a rock and a hard place, cos the minority group always gets stamped on. I can provide more examples of similar issues if you so wish. A short list of comparable situations would look like:
- The difficulty of preregistering copyright if you use Linux
- The inability to travel by air in the US if you're not willing to obey laws you're not even allowed to see
- The trouble you can get into if you behave counterculturally in redneck America
Many more examples are, sadly, available on demand.You're showing your age. Saying that you remember a time when patents were useful is worse than saying you followed the Grateful Dead round America! It's only slightly better than saying you remember a time when copyright wasn't designed for the sole purpose of keeping Steamboat Willie out of the public domain...
:) My argument is basically that the two halves of the sentence behave as weakly-linked clauses, rather than the second being a subclause of the first. I could very well be wrong, my brain is completely mashed at the moment.
We're into fairly fine-grained linguistic territory here. I understand what you're getting at, and if you'd said "Lifewish says that the moon is made of cheese", you'd be right.
:(
However, in the specific case I mentioned ("I just heard from Lifewish: the moon is made of cheese"), my comment is being repackaged and distributed as a statement, not an opinion. In this case, you're making two statements, and implying a link between them with the colon (if the punctuation had been a full-stop rather than a colon, the link would be even weaker).
So the statement is an accurate representation of what I said, but the second half of it is false and the presence of the first half does not equate to "Lifewish says that...", due to the comparative weakness of the colon. The statement can be legitimately viewed as either a representation or a couple of statements - in the first case, it's accurate, but, in the second case, it's a lie.
That's my interpretation anyway. I'm aware that it is rather tenuously dependent on the exact linking strength that you assign to the colon. Of course, this is all fairly irrelevant to the article in question, which was a lot less fuzzy about which bits were quotes. So I was wrong (or at least not sufficiently pedantic) to say "It's a quote, hence (if I understand correctly) it's not required of Slashdot that it be true, only that it be an accurate representation of what that person said." However, the great-grandparent's response was probably also incorrect, so let's call it quits.
Apologies for subjecting you to that outburst of obscure logic. I've been reading Logic And Set Theory textbooks all afternoon and it's starting to show
My experience is that avoiding buying into things like this isn't a solution. Don't like Microsoft's lack of standards compliance? Don't buy Windows. Whoops, a decent chunk of the Web is now unuseable due to shoddy frontpage-based design (less of an issue now than it used to be, but only due to sterling work by the Mozilla Foundation et al).
Don't like software DRM? Don't buy from companies that use it in their software. Whoops, you've just been sent an important document in MS's latest AllYourRightsAreBelongToUs Office format. Sorry, you'd better get saving up for that Windows box you promised you'd never buy.
Don't like music DRM? Don't buy from labels that use it. Whoops, sorry, didn't we tell you that your new music player won't play unprotected formats like MP3 any more? Oh, and since the major labels have a nice little cartel set up, you're going to find that you're getting somewhat out of touch with mainstream culture. But you can live with that, right?
The problem is that, when a decent proportion of the population is willing to accept whatever crap is thrown at them, said crap will tend to overflow into everyone else's life - a new tyrrany of the apathetic majority. Good luck avoiding DRM in the future without actually ditching your computer.
The point they were trying to make was that Apple *could* do whatever the hell they liked, which was aptly demonstrated by the modification they mentioned. Discussing whether the particular change was good or bad for consumers wasn't the issue; the fact that Apple could make the change was.
How can something be both a lie and an accurate representation at the same time?
If I say "The moon is made of cheese" and you say "I've just heard from Lifewish: the moon is made of cheese", then your statement is a lie (the moon is not made of cheese) but is an accurate representation of what I said.
I suppose I shouldn't expect much from a guy who admits he's an idiot on his own website, but really.
Hey, I figure that if I get it out in the open now it'll save time later...
It's a quote, hence (if I understand correctly) it's not required of Slashdot that it be true, only that it be an accurate representation of what that person said.
However, the company were most definitely complete assholes and deserved what they got.
The best "alternative viewpoint" I've come across was from a (fairly well-educated) Christian who honestly believed that the human race tended towards Christianity.
Um... Holy Roman Empire --> Dark Ages, anyone?
Half the stuff these guys do would probably not be legal for a policeperson to deal with. This is just another case of outsourcing breaches of rights to the private sector.
Oh ho ho... that rumbunctious wizard boy... is there anything his adventures are not the perfect solution for?
Degreasing engines. I've tried but believe me, it just doesn't work. It's got the killing braincells part down pat tho.
It might help you learn a few more languages. My experience is that the best way to get relatively fluent in a language is to get a copy of Harry Potter in said language and sit down with a cup of hot choccy and a dictionary.
The message I'd take home with me would be "Screw you, school". Authoritarian bullying isn't exactly conducive to a learning environment.
They should be going after browsers that don't comply with standards, right?
Now hold on just a second...
But really, I haven't found a reason to use Linux, niether have alot of my buddys, because most of the problems with Windows can be "Fixed"
I switched to Linux on the desktop a couple of years ago. Since then, I've occasionally been called upon to use Windows (for example in my current job) and one thing that I've noticed is that I've come to expect problems to be fixable.
For example, MS Excel is consistently generating an "Error 13" popup message every time I load it, which otherwise appears to have no effect whatsoever on performance. If this, or something similar, was happening on my Linux box, I would be digging into the system trying to figure out what was going wrong, even down to source code level if necessary. In Windows, that's a habit that's impossible to get into, cos all the programs are designed as little gated enclosures that you can't see into.
My experience is that most of the problems on Windows can't be fixed unless you're a master of reverse-engineering. You either get used to them or reinstall Windows. Neither is necessary on Linux as figuring out what the actual problem is, as opposed to turning a blind eye, is so much easier.
I'm guessing that he was thinking more along the line of the HR droid who asks the rest of the office "anyone know how to use this Linux thingy?" and concludes from the negative responses that Linux support is terrible.
It's the case with most of the commercial Linux distributions that the code itself is Free, but the trademarks aren't. Linux is still free as anyone who wants to can fork the entire codebase, just as long as they use a different name.
Now this one I can answer, cos I've just fought my way through a term of quantum dynamics. The electron isn't in any one place, it's splurged out. It gets fluffier and fluffier until something "detects" it, at which point it coalesces. Or doesn't. That's what the "detection" process does - it decides (on a probabilistic basis) whether the electron is currently in that area of space. Of course, once it's been detected and "decayed" to a point particle, it starts getting fuzzy again.
That's the classical version anyway. The problem with it is that it's not time-independent, which messes up all those nice Einsteinian symmetries (i.e. you'd probably never be able to mesh the two theories). The more confusing version, Quantum Electrodynamics, uses a rather weird "sum over paths" approach which, by a roundabout route, suggests that our universe is predestined, but we don't know which of many many similar universes we're in (the whole "Many Worlds" thing).
Oh, and your "idea of relativity" is fluffy to the point that a real physicist would probably lose his lunch. The fact that the phrase "everything is relative" strikes a chord with you does not mean that that's what Einsteinian relativity is all about.
1) When DES came out, academia were demonstrably at least 20 years behind the NSA in terms of cryptographic skills.
2) I'm impressed that you know what they use for top secret data - do you have any references for that? I'd note that, if USA top-secret data were encrypted by a different system, the NSA might well decide it was worth the risk of AES being cracked to be able to read their enemies' data.
3) If the authors, on their own, were capable of finding a break then their work would most likely have been independently duplicated by the academic community by now. If, however, one of the biggest employers of mathematicians worldwide, with more past experience of cryptoanalysis than anyone but GCHQ, were to find a break, they could probably expect that it wouldn't be duplicated any time soon.
Having said that, I'm not a cryptographer yet so I could be completely wrong.
The worrying thing is that the discussion in the patent office is apparently even less enlightened than that on slashdot...
I'd wager that every hormone-fuelled teenager ever to own a car has, at some point or another, felt a strong urge to break the speed limit, smash into that car that is refusing to let him/her overtake or otherwise drive in a horrendously dangerous fashion. When my friends and I get those urges, we fire up Flat Out and take our frustrations out on innocent computer-generated imitation cars. Works wonders - it defuses the tension completely. As an added bonus, the messy pileups help bring home the message that we shouldn't try this in a real car.
In the same way, Quake II is still helping me resist the urge to strangle my kid sister, with the added bonus that I'm less likely to deliberately start an interstellar war.
And yet the fact that you can do it so easily with a system far simpler than DLLs suggests that it's too damn obvious to be patentworthy.
Actually, you might not. According to the patent, one of the major features of the software is the ability to remove the highlighting.
OK, so what if I enclose all numbers in DIV tags, setting the class on each to "number"? That's something that you might well want to do (i.e. fairly bloody obvious), and then it's possible to toggle borders using one line of CSS. Come on, we have an entire style system devoted to handling this sort of change!