I understand that, I just don't think that pre-loading the popular search engines constitutes "advertising." That search feature was what turned my folks on to Firefox (they are relatively computer-illiterate) and they probably wouldn't have found it if they had had to load everything themselves.
I think you're correct about the overblown value of material things, but also consider that material things must have some value for some short period of time, right? As short-lived as these values are on a geologic time scale, they are still the primary motivator for progress. Don't be so pessimistic!:)
in fact firefox's search box contains links to ebay, amazon, google etc that are sponsored and help to sustain the mofo (mozilla foundation)
Ok...but then again if the search box didn't come with those pre-loaded, don't you think everyone would probably add them in anyway? They are some of the most-used sites on the web.
Right, because the authorities would totally not blow them off or anything.
And we can be sure of that because they went to the authorities first and...oh, wait, they didn't.
Let's not bullshit here...they weren't performing a general pen test...they were trying to crack the system and got CAUGHT. This exposes their defense as a lie. Nice try, fellas!
Assuming evolution works the way we think it does, I don't think you can derive moral statements from the facts of species change (that is to say, your "should" statement is invalid).
I've never been hunting but according to most hunters with whom I have spoken, the "sport" aspect has to do with using your advantages (adaptability, cleverness) to overcome the animals' advantages (speed, heightened senses, knowledge of local terrain).
Not to be pedantic, but "philosophy" is not a pseudo-science. Science, by which I assume you mean empiricist investigation, descends from philosophy, not the other way around.
What the creationists want is recognition that empiricism is a cult in and of itself. It is rational and logical and does a really good job of explaining the world--but only if you accept its basic tenets, which are also logical and rational, but in the end, NOT provable by empiricism alone. A leap of faith is still required as with any belief system. The religious types want people to understand that about their chosen belief system, and people who hold that view (example, secularists) are completely unwilling to question it.
This is sad because rationalism and religion are not mutually exclusive. Anyone who tells you different is probably selling something.
And "stealing" only applies to physical items, not when dealing with all-digital content. Use "copyright infringment", "illegal copying" or "unauthorized distribution" instead. You don't 'own' an image, you may own some rights to decide who is allowed to copy that image, and under what conditions. These rights may vary from country to country, and aren't absolute either (see: fair use).
You are correct insofar as this is an issue of violating an access control. However, theft is not about the taking, but about the having: if I sneak into a competitor's research labs and photocopy the plans to the new product they are going to bring out, then even though they still have them, I have still stolen something. Before, I didn't have it, and then I did.
The defense should not be centered around trying to make pirating music legal. It is clearly theft. However, you can make a case that the current model of the music industry is unjust to the artists, that their model of controlling access to their product (relying on licensing, physical media, etc.) is antiquated, and so forth. This does not make pirating music "right," but pirating does provide a good if it forces the industry to wake up and start innovating, I think. Making money off the music itself is like making money off of advertising, and not the product you're selling.
Likewise, that the RIAA and MPAA are profiteering gluttons who exploit artists does not make stealing from them somehow right. Nor do their gestapo tactics or intense lobbying justify stealing from them. In the end, they legally own the rights to control access to the music, and people are violating that.
If you want to make a case that the RIAA/MPAA having that control is unjust, fine. But at the same time, I wonder how many people using that argument have done anything towards increasing the rights of the artists (educating themselves, signing petitions, etc.), or if all they see is "Wow, free music!"...Probably pretty few, and in that sense, their motivations are the same as the RIAA/MPAA. Hard to want to take a side when everyone's being a bastard, what?
If access to "rights" like privacy is predicated upon good behavior, then it's not an inalienable right and a lot of slashdot's membership is very wrong about privacy issues!
This sounds like a really slick solution...kudos! If you have got any writeups on your setup, lessons learned (costs of implementation etc.), and the like, I'd love to read them.
For all I know, the latest WMV DRM has not been cracked yet... and if Palladium were as good as that we might be in for quite a bit of trouble...
No such thing as an "uncrackable" system unless you power it off and seal it in a vault. The problem with M$ is that there are always the same flaws in their products, the same buffer overruns, the same shitty security models...they don't even do the most rudimentary analysis of their finished work to see how vulnerable it is...
Mr. Hewitt doesn't seem to have performed any kind of statistical analysis...therefore while his "findings" are interesting (and worthy of further investigation), they don't conclude anything whatsoever.
Off the top of my head I would say some kind of ranked-sum test (Mann-Whitney, perhaps) to determine if the distribution for either search engine differed significantly from the other would be appropriate in this case. But it's been a while since I took stats.
Good to see someone else concerned with this. If you buy an entire album off iTunes it will still cost you around the same as buying the album from Best Buy...except that the sound quality will be absolute shite. It's hard to tell on my crappy comp speakers, but on my home or car stereo it's painfully obvious.
I'd be more willing to buy MP3s if the cost reflected the audio quality.
All we're talking about is raising the bar a little bit. A user can install free tools (AVG Antivirus, spybot s&d/ad-aware, and zone alarm) and be protected from the VAST majority of crap heading their way.
Once you get those, you then need to deal with the end-user ignorance/laziness issues.
I think assessments of accuracy (vice precision) are made after taking on faith certain philosophical pillars of empirical science...assuming you accept how science is done, then you can perform an analysis of your experiment and its results to determine how likely you are to have made some humongous error, or if in fact it is "sound" (meaning it plays by the rules we already all agree upon).
It seemed like the customers are being ganked not because there was way too much "legitimate" traffic to handle, but because it was becoming a nuisance. The legitimacy of p2p applications is arguable so long as they have legal uses; the legitimacy of gaobot is not arguable as it has no legal uses on a public network.
Any amount of taxpayer money for violence. None for peace.
Quick question, what qualifies as money for peace?
I ask because someone repeated your exact words to me the other day and none of the things of which I could think on which we do spend money (other than making weapons or moving them and their operators around the globe) qualified as "peace."
Environmentalism, education, health care, foreign aid, etc. Whatever your take on how the current administration is shortchanging these areas for allocation of funds, we still do it--but they don't seem to count for "peace" so I'm wondering what does, exactly?
Ok, look, it takes you three back-and-forths before you answer the original question: Is DHS doing too little or not enough?
As for whether or not "the US economy" would grind to a halt without DNS...you really have no clue, have you? For it is obvious to anyone with any experience that very little--VERY little--of the infrastructure required to keep the country going requires the internet. Sorry, that's just the way it is, and if you knew anything about our industries you'd know that.
Likewise, you obviously have no clue how DHS is working, or trying to work, nor what the responsibilities of those government agencies (DHS, NSA, DOD) are. I'm not going to do your research for you; there's a reason why they have things like public libraries where you can read up on these things.
Finally... I reiterate: maintenance and security of the DNS system is the responsibility of its users (e.g. those who own name servers and those who use their services...such as yourself)...not some government agency. The government mismanages EVERYTHING it touches, and you want them to control MORE? You're letting your politics get ahead of you--one second you slam DHS for being jackbooted thugs, the next second you're saying they need more authority? Please. Sort yourself out.
Ok, point of information--you are saying DHS isn't doing enough? I'm confused because that doens't jibe with what you're saying about them restricting your freedoms.
As for "inert policies," let me ask you--have you any idea, really, what DHS's policies are? Or what they are doing?
It's not apparent to me that the DNS system is actually integral to our infrastructure. Just because you can't access your bank's website doesn't mean that they can't conduct business--or, more importantly, that vital services will be interrupted, nor that the military will be unable to conduct operations, nor the federal or state and local governments will be completely paralyzed. When it comes down to it, DNS is not all that essential to putting warheads on foreheads, sending out welfare checks, monitoring the power grid, or tabulating the vote on the Senate floor.
In the long run, of course, I will accept that repeated and widespread tampering with internet-accessible banking systems could decrease consumer confidence and lead to...what? It's not like they're crashing the stock market or something.
In the end, responsibility for not getting schwacked by the evildoers who populate the internet rests on the end user...not some government agency with a highly questionable justification for existence.
So are you complaining that they're not doing enough, or are you complaining that they're doing too much, or...?
I mean, exactly which liberties of yours which you believe have been suspended do you believe were done to enable DHS to micromanage civilian entities, so that you could slack off on your own responsibilities?
DHS does in fact promote practices for critical infrastructure to follow (e.g. the energy grid). They're not really concerned with Google, and your bank account is probably not an issue for National Defense/Security to deal with. Sorry.
All the companies with which I have worked which used open source software could have spent on proprietary software...but instead were able to devote that money to hiring talented developers and operators. Where did the FOSS creators benefit? Well, someone had to support the implementation!
The cost of the software itself is a small fraction of the overall cost of developing and implementing a solution. If you're only trying to make money off your software, well, you might be a good programmer...but that's all you are. Chances are you wouldn't find a niche developing proprietary code for anyone, either, if you lack the skills to manage a large project.
Are there any studies that link games to real life violence, discrimination, or any altered behavior at all?
Yes. See On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman (USA, ret.) for possible links between video games and altered behavior.
Essentially, in order to get over the human being's natural aversion to killing other human beings (witness low firing rates among the infantry until Vietnam) the military and police forces in the US utilize a sort of knee-jerk conditioning technique (think Hogan's Alley). This kind of training took us from extremely low (~10%) to extremely high (~90%) firing rates in the space of time between Korea and Vietnam. Firing rates are even higher now, which the Army and Marines attribute to the desensitization provided by violent video games (neither is complaining).
Most of us don't act out the fantasies in real life which we experience while playing GTA. But the way video games are these days, it seems likely that they could encourage certain personality types to express themselves violently.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that, I just don't think that pre-loading the popular search engines constitutes "advertising." That search feature was what turned my folks on to Firefox (they are relatively computer-illiterate) and they probably wouldn't have found it if they had had to load everything themselves.
I think you're correct about the overblown value of material things, but also consider that material things must have some value for some short period of time, right? As short-lived as these values are on a geologic time scale, they are still the primary motivator for progress. Don't be so pessimistic! :)
in fact firefox's search box contains links to ebay, amazon, google etc that are sponsored and help to sustain the mofo (mozilla foundation)
Ok...but then again if the search box didn't come with those pre-loaded, don't you think everyone would probably add them in anyway? They are some of the most-used sites on the web.
Right, because the authorities would totally not blow them off or anything.
And we can be sure of that because they went to the authorities first and...oh, wait, they didn't.
Let's not bullshit here...they weren't performing a general pen test...they were trying to crack the system and got CAUGHT. This exposes their defense as a lie. Nice try, fellas!
Assuming evolution works the way we think it does, I don't think you can derive moral statements from the facts of species change (that is to say, your "should" statement is invalid).
I've never been hunting but according to most hunters with whom I have spoken, the "sport" aspect has to do with using your advantages (adaptability, cleverness) to overcome the animals' advantages (speed, heightened senses, knowledge of local terrain).
Not to be pedantic, but "philosophy" is not a pseudo-science. Science, by which I assume you mean empiricist investigation, descends from philosophy, not the other way around.
What the creationists want is recognition that empiricism is a cult in and of itself. It is rational and logical and does a really good job of explaining the world--but only if you accept its basic tenets, which are also logical and rational, but in the end, NOT provable by empiricism alone. A leap of faith is still required as with any belief system. The religious types want people to understand that about their chosen belief system, and people who hold that view (example, secularists) are completely unwilling to question it.
This is sad because rationalism and religion are not mutually exclusive. Anyone who tells you different is probably selling something.
And "stealing" only applies to physical items, not when dealing with all-digital content. Use "copyright infringment", "illegal copying" or "unauthorized distribution" instead. You don't 'own' an image, you may own some rights to decide who is allowed to copy that image, and under what conditions. These rights may vary from country to country, and aren't absolute either (see: fair use).
...Probably pretty few, and in that sense, their motivations are the same as the RIAA/MPAA. Hard to want to take a side when everyone's being a bastard, what?
You are correct insofar as this is an issue of violating an access control. However, theft is not about the taking, but about the having: if I sneak into a competitor's research labs and photocopy the plans to the new product they are going to bring out, then even though they still have them, I have still stolen something. Before, I didn't have it, and then I did.
The defense should not be centered around trying to make pirating music legal. It is clearly theft. However, you can make a case that the current model of the music industry is unjust to the artists, that their model of controlling access to their product (relying on licensing, physical media, etc.) is antiquated, and so forth. This does not make pirating music "right," but pirating does provide a good if it forces the industry to wake up and start innovating, I think. Making money off the music itself is like making money off of advertising, and not the product you're selling.
Likewise, that the RIAA and MPAA are profiteering gluttons who exploit artists does not make stealing from them somehow right. Nor do their gestapo tactics or intense lobbying justify stealing from them. In the end, they legally own the rights to control access to the music, and people are violating that.
If you want to make a case that the RIAA/MPAA having that control is unjust, fine. But at the same time, I wonder how many people using that argument have done anything towards increasing the rights of the artists (educating themselves, signing petitions, etc.), or if all they see is "Wow, free music!"
Sex offenders have no right to privacy.
Why?
If access to "rights" like privacy is predicated upon good behavior, then it's not an inalienable right and a lot of slashdot's membership is very wrong about privacy issues!
This sounds like a really slick solution...kudos! If you have got any writeups on your setup, lessons learned (costs of implementation etc.), and the like, I'd love to read them.
For all I know, the latest WMV DRM has not been cracked yet... and if Palladium were as good as that we might be in for quite a bit of trouble...
No such thing as an "uncrackable" system unless you power it off and seal it in a vault. The problem with M$ is that there are always the same flaws in their products, the same buffer overruns, the same shitty security models...they don't even do the most rudimentary analysis of their finished work to see how vulnerable it is...
Mr. Hewitt doesn't seem to have performed any kind of statistical analysis...therefore while his "findings" are interesting (and worthy of further investigation), they don't conclude anything whatsoever.
Off the top of my head I would say some kind of ranked-sum test (Mann-Whitney, perhaps) to determine if the distribution for either search engine differed significantly from the other would be appropriate in this case. But it's been a while since I took stats.
The data suggest that the universe was a superfluid. Not suggests.
:)
If they had one datum, the sentence would have been correct; however, I would then doubt the validity of conclusions drawn from one data point
It was a PCMCIA joke. Like TWAIN (Tool Without An Interesting Name).
:)
You hear that wooshing sound? That was...ah, nevermind, go and get your coffee
Good to see someone else concerned with this. If you buy an entire album off iTunes it will still cost you around the same as buying the album from Best Buy...except that the sound quality will be absolute shite. It's hard to tell on my crappy comp speakers, but on my home or car stereo it's painfully obvious.
I'd be more willing to buy MP3s if the cost reflected the audio quality.
All we're talking about is raising the bar a little bit. A user can install free tools (AVG Antivirus, spybot s&d/ad-aware, and zone alarm) and be protected from the VAST majority of crap heading their way. Once you get those, you then need to deal with the end-user ignorance/laziness issues.
I think assessments of accuracy (vice precision) are made after taking on faith certain philosophical pillars of empirical science...assuming you accept how science is done, then you can perform an analysis of your experiment and its results to determine how likely you are to have made some humongous error, or if in fact it is "sound" (meaning it plays by the rules we already all agree upon).
It seemed like the customers are being ganked not because there was way too much "legitimate" traffic to handle, but because it was becoming a nuisance. The legitimacy of p2p applications is arguable so long as they have legal uses; the legitimacy of gaobot is not arguable as it has no legal uses on a public network.
What kind of education?
Any amount of taxpayer money for violence. None for peace.
Quick question, what qualifies as money for peace?
I ask because someone repeated your exact words to me the other day and none of the things of which I could think on which we do spend money (other than making weapons or moving them and their operators around the globe) qualified as "peace."
Environmentalism, education, health care, foreign aid, etc. Whatever your take on how the current administration is shortchanging these areas for allocation of funds, we still do it--but they don't seem to count for "peace" so I'm wondering what does, exactly?
Ok, look, it takes you three back-and-forths before you answer the original question: Is DHS doing too little or not enough?
As for whether or not "the US economy" would grind to a halt without DNS...you really have no clue, have you? For it is obvious to anyone with any experience that very little--VERY little--of the infrastructure required to keep the country going requires the internet. Sorry, that's just the way it is, and if you knew anything about our industries you'd know that.
Likewise, you obviously have no clue how DHS is working, or trying to work, nor what the responsibilities of those government agencies (DHS, NSA, DOD) are. I'm not going to do your research for you; there's a reason why they have things like public libraries where you can read up on these things.
Finally...
I reiterate: maintenance and security of the DNS system is the responsibility of its users (e.g. those who own name servers and those who use their services...such as yourself)...not some government agency. The government mismanages EVERYTHING it touches, and you want them to control MORE? You're letting your politics get ahead of you--one second you slam DHS for being jackbooted thugs, the next second you're saying they need more authority? Please. Sort yourself out.
Ok, point of information--you are saying DHS isn't doing enough? I'm confused because that doens't jibe with what you're saying about them restricting your freedoms.
As for "inert policies," let me ask you--have you any idea, really, what DHS's policies are? Or what they are doing?
It's not apparent to me that the DNS system is actually integral to our infrastructure. Just because you can't access your bank's website doesn't mean that they can't conduct business--or, more importantly, that vital services will be interrupted, nor that the military will be unable to conduct operations, nor the federal or state and local governments will be completely paralyzed. When it comes down to it, DNS is not all that essential to putting warheads on foreheads, sending out welfare checks, monitoring the power grid, or tabulating the vote on the Senate floor.
In the long run, of course, I will accept that repeated and widespread tampering with internet-accessible banking systems could decrease consumer confidence and lead to...what? It's not like they're crashing the stock market or something.
In the end, responsibility for not getting schwacked by the evildoers who populate the internet rests on the end user...not some government agency with a highly questionable justification for existence.
Er...
So are you complaining that they're not doing enough, or are you complaining that they're doing too much, or...?
I mean, exactly which liberties of yours which you believe have been suspended do you believe were done to enable DHS to micromanage civilian entities, so that you could slack off on your own responsibilities?
DHS does in fact promote practices for critical infrastructure to follow (e.g. the energy grid). They're not really concerned with Google, and your bank account is probably not an issue for National Defense/Security to deal with. Sorry.
All the companies with which I have worked which used open source software could have spent on proprietary software...but instead were able to devote that money to hiring talented developers and operators. Where did the FOSS creators benefit? Well, someone had to support the implementation!
The cost of the software itself is a small fraction of the overall cost of developing and implementing a solution. If you're only trying to make money off your software, well, you might be a good programmer...but that's all you are. Chances are you wouldn't find a niche developing proprietary code for anyone, either, if you lack the skills to manage a large project.
From TFA:
...including the author of the article, it seems.
:rolls eyes:
Yet, only 39% knew what a "Trojan" was when asked.
A Trojan is a malicious piece of software which installs itself on a person's computer without their knowledge.
Are there any studies that link games to real life violence, discrimination, or any altered behavior at all?
Yes. See On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman (USA, ret.) for possible links between video games and altered behavior.
Essentially, in order to get over the human being's natural aversion to killing other human beings (witness low firing rates among the infantry until Vietnam) the military and police forces in the US utilize a sort of knee-jerk conditioning technique (think Hogan's Alley). This kind of training took us from extremely low (~10%) to extremely high (~90%) firing rates in the space of time between Korea and Vietnam. Firing rates are even higher now, which the Army and Marines attribute to the desensitization provided by violent video games (neither is complaining).
Most of us don't act out the fantasies in real life which we experience while playing GTA. But the way video games are these days, it seems likely that they could encourage certain personality types to express themselves violently.