>>Companies should be legally required to disclose vulnerabilities to government
> Uhh that's what security lists are for.
That's what they're for, but the majority of exploits are found first by people *outside* of companies. And Microsoft really wants it that you tell them first, give them 30 days to work on it, then finally tell everyone else about it. While I can understand the want to "minimize damages", the truth is the fastest way to minimize damages is to *stop* using vulnerable software. Waiting 30 days or more to tell people there's a problem isn't helping anyone.
>Why have Americans taken to calling themselves Consumers? Your real power lies in Law, that law is written by CITIZENS. If your preceding citizens hadnt written some pretty keen laws, you current "Consumers" would be out $13.xx.
Well, some of us citizens have never bought a CD or tape from the RIAA, so what amounts to a civil settlement (which is BS to me, as a citizen) only only effects the consumers involved. As a citizen, I'd rather that members of the RIAA be held responsible for their *criminal* acts, given that they were fucking with the free market. $13.xx is nothing, in comparison.
What would you expect in a portable Windowing system? The fact is, the concept of defining a 2D area defining a program's visible space as a window isn't something at all unique to MS Windows. Nor is MFC an original idea. It's just an extension of procedural into the OO world. Do you think X Window System should change its name too? Should Apple make sure all their docs do not use the word "window(s)" just in case? Should Open Office stop being made because there's MS Office?
Microsoft, probably as a result of marketing, decided to use the most colloquial name association it could fine for its products for the most part. The fact that they were a late comer to such markets only worsens their claim. If Microsoft wants to use a generic term to describe a product, they should be only able to trademark "Microsoft ". This all reminds me of an episode of Freakazoid where "Lord Bravery" tried to get a ton of people to rename their businesses because each had to chose a different name because of such widespread trademarks. "Lord Bravery" vs "Lord Bravery Bakery"...cause people are too stupid to tell one rescues people and the other makes muffins, so we should ban similar naming? Let's not even begin with the whole *Win* *Zip*. Double whammy there.
>I have yet to hear a good argument equating files or collections of files to FREE SPEECH.... >P2P and Freenet do not facilitate communication between users like a blog or a chat room or e-mail does. They only facilitate the transfer of files.
Well, what sort of argument do you need? A flyer announcing the place of an election can be stored in a file. A song I wrote and want to give to people over the internet is almost certainly a file. The same is true for software I write. A file is just a digital object or objects (for things like archives/collections). The file itself is just a container like a piece of paper. Streaming a file is like speaking into the air.
Freedom of speech clearly includes works of art and scientific publications. In that, copyright is a limited exception to freedom of speech. So, to claim that freedom of speech does not apply to files would be paramount to saying copyright does not either, which would let one copy any file as much as they please.
> PS: I troll sometimes, but this issue of including filesharing (especially commercial software and copyrighted music) into our First Amendment right really burns me up. Every time I hear it, it just sounds like the person is trying to justify/legitimize behavior they know is wrong.
You need to realize that copyright is something that we, the people, grant for a limited time to copryighted work creators. Ignoring how much lifetime + 90 years isn't a "limited time", copyright infringement isn't innately amoral. It is, however, clearly civilly illegal for which authors have the right to sue people. When their lifetime + 90 years passes (or whatever the new limit expands to be), their works will fall back into the public domain where they can be copied without fear of a civil suit.
In the mean time, you and I can feel guilty for all those wonderful works of art or science were the creator isn't well paid for their work. If you want, you and I can directly pay the author large sums of money. The true worth, after all, in terms of works required to make most copyrighted works is clearly over the $10 or $50. It's only through a combination of selfish market valuation and the fact more than one person generally buys a copyrighted work (this ignores contract work, which is generally seen as work-for-hire where the contract specifies the cost and the hirer gains the copyright).
Though you might be a troll, I feel like it'll be fun to respond anyways.
The funny thing about copyright law is that it's a limited exception made for people who create works of art or science. The government itself has no basis for incarcerating individuals over the subject while companies or people can persecute others however much they want thanks to the magic of civil lawsuits, regardless of any basis.
Shutting down freenet or any other p2p network could be seen as unconstitutionally removing a forum of free speech. Any forum that exists can't legally be blocked from existing. Freenet just hightens the burden needed by companies, people, or the government to prove if/when an actually illegal act occurs.
To do so is comparable to saying that while it's okay to think whatever you like, the government can remove your mind because of thoughts they don't like. And since everyone eventually has thoughts the government doesn't like, it'd be okay to remove everyone's mind.
> I don't see the big deal, myself -- if you want to use their code, you use their license
It's not a big deal, really. It's just important to let people know (like gtk+, qt, and anything else compiling against xlib) that they need to either not use Xfree86 4.4 or if they do to use their license. Since the majority of things I mentioned are GPLed and unlikely to become un-GPLed, that really just means not migrating to XFree86 4.4. No big deal, just news people want to know about.
I'd assume it's EU's way of over compensating for the whole Netscape/IE affair. The problem fundamental with MS's whole position about a web browser or a media player or whatever being a part of the operating system is what the anonymous coward responding has pointed out: if MS put out an API spec for the dlls involved then *anyone* could build a replacement. You do realize that if Windows needs *a* web browser, it shouldn't necessarily be Internet Explorer.
Microsoft took it upon themselves to write a spec for features needed in the OS then proceed to fill in the job without releasing the spec. Why though, don't they release a spec? The obvious answer is because people were becoming dependent on Netscape (for example). There were pages that actually required Netscape to function. Microsoft got scared that someone would come along and bundle Netscape with a cheap OS and their whole Windows financial base would just disappear when they finally realized that the internet wasn't a fad.
How, though, can you motivate everyone to start using your web browser over others? The simple answer is to put the web browser as an integral component of the OS. Windows 98 was made over so that just about everything help related was done in IE-ized HTML (at this date, there are at least four different help system protocols which IE knows..apparently the standard http wasn't sufficient or something).
Now, while Real might suck now compared to Windows Media Player (it only took up to v6..and I'd say v7+ are going down hill, but that's the UI, not the underlying system) it was the most decent at the same time as Netscape was most decent. Microsoft has admittedly being working on the whole video for windows system for years, so that part of the equation isn't a big deal. But the DRM system is quite new and really doesn't need to be tied to Windows Media Player (or Windows, for that matter). Microsoft though is trying to tie it to both regardless. I wish the EU just forced Microsoft to open their DRM spec(s) and interoperability with Windows Media Player such that the reality of the system where standard codecs (it's not like WMP is the only one that can use them..or Windows for that matter (mplayer/xine)) and a standard DRM is used.
So, I agree with your assertion that the EU is going about the situation in the wrong way. The EU (and the US DoJ) are(/were) so out of date with where Microsoft is now compared to when they started all this comungling that their response is completely out of whack. Maybe would be a good time for your EU members to mail the one's in charge to do something about it.
>They fail to realize that people actually do like to play games online.
What he says is the current subscription model won't fly. With that, I have to very much agree. Games like Quake are played a hell of a lot more than any XBox online games. Not requiring to pay money monthly, hassle with connecting with a fixed service, etc is one reason why p2p instead of master/server subscription models work out better. And as it stands most cheats are blocked pretty well on PCs even without some voodoo hardware encryption scheme.
I guess if you've not already got a PC, aren't willing to hassle with installing a PC game, and aren't willing to deal with finding a "good" server, then a subscription service is right for you, but all the above seem to fit the hardcore gamer which I would think are the core audience to buy into a subscription service. And if you did have a choice, wouldn't you play as much or more on a game system if you could play online for free instead (assuming, of course, that the game you wanted was on the system)?
> They also fail to realize that people are going to buy the latest and greatest system, so the Big N can't just close their eyes to the fact that better and better hardware will sell.
They didn't say they weren't going to have the best hardware in their next console or DS. But, look at the GBA. It's job is to be a portable. That means not sucking up batteries like candy which also means not having massive processor speed. So, while the GBA doesn't have the fastest CPU, it is arguably the best portable. I'm under the impression that instead of wasting money trying to manufacturer the fastest system, Nintendo is trying to work *smart* with the hardware to maximize the fun in the game. Eye candy does not a fun game make.
Nintendo has, after all, been providing all sorts of 2D sprite hardware that make game production easier. I don't know enough about their 3D hardware to state the same, but I'd assume it's true there too. I can only begin to imagine where Nintendo will lead next, since I think the fundamental rendering for current consoles is at near peak (ie, we're into the Quake2/Quake3 rendering realm of realism). Given that, I don't thinking throwing processing power at the problem is where to begin.
> Other companies who are less capable try and build enthusiasm by pre-announcing products to say, "Hey, look how cool we are".
MS does have that tendency to announce end-all software that ends up having a lot less than promised (look at how WinFS is only now showing up in Longhorn). I think it hurts companies that aren't in a position of market dominance who can't be guaranteed some level of people waiting to pay for a product. Not only this, but it can mean not paying for another product that's on the shelf now. That's far from a MS-centric feature (the term FUD came about to describe IBM). Like has been stated many times, MS has one hell of a marketing department.
Like I said, you talk to your peers, your superiors, and your students. You don't go to them whining about being picked on. If you aren't what is depicted in the review and you convey that to the people who are important, then the review will be ignored. Not only that, but people other than you (like your past students) will post positive reviews about you. If after reading both reviews, students are unwilling to actually talk to you, then it's their loss. You can't force people to believe anything. The best you can do is try to be open and talk with them.
As for your last comment, Universities are in a business. Students don't want to go to Universities which will release their marks openly. They might even dislike Professors criticising students, which encourages Universities to fire such people. So long as students are in this position, there's likely little that will change. There's nothing, however, preventing a professor from making a "StudentReview" site which allows anonymous posting. Would that likely cause a student to not be accepted into a University or not be hired for a job afterwards? That's questionable. However, making a big deal out of it before knowing is likely to be more of a problem. I think the professor involved should have thought of that before threatening to sue.
The same can be said about *any* opinions expressed about anyone from anyone. The fact is, you just like most other people care what people say about you because you fear others will believe it's true. While I can sympathize with you, I think the best thing to say is to just deal with it.
Students badger other students. Professors have been known to badget other professors. And how many stories are there of professors who badger students? It's not surprising that there are students who do the same to professors. I'm not saying of the above is warranted or real (ie, it might just be paranoia). Of course, your case seems to prove that it's at least real.
The fact is, freedom of speech has been known to do a lot worse than ruin careers. Just think of the number of minorities or woman who have been physically assaulted or worse because of unfounded allegations. The simple fact is, there's very little that can be done about the speech itself because even removing this one site won't stop the word of mouth or a newsletter someone writes or the next blog someone starts. The only people you should really worry about is those in power to ruin your career or those around you who can do personal damage. The way of resolving that is to talk to them. While you're at it, maybe you can try a little harder to gain the respect of your students. You can't force people to think one way about you, but you can try your best to personally impress upon those people you think matter what you're really like so that you can alleviate your fears. There's no way elsewise to begin to solve the problem.
> On the other hand a true deomcracy tends to collapse under its own weight after a few hundred people are a part of it, simply because large groups have problems with coming up with definite decisions.
Explain again to me how the US Congress tends to pass laws so readily? Oh, that's right. People form parties. And then a small group in a party makes up a bill while the rest of the party just goes along with it unless it's too utterly blatantly against the party. With Democrats and Republicans both being nearly identical in most issues and avoiding most of the "hot button" issues that differentiate the two, it's not surprising things like the DMCA can pass off through the right kind of smoozing of a few members of each party. It seems to me that a true democracy hypothetically could do a better job. A simpler approach, I think, is having parties which would create more hot button issues and might make more people in parties to stop and read laws and deeply consider their effects on the *voters*.
Yes and no. The sequence number at the very start of a knock may be completely unpredictable, but it's not unreasonable to make sure each sequence numbers in the series of knocks is increasing. The actual server machine, then, would be reasonably expected to collect about 5 secs worth of port knocking and make an assessment of whether the group of knocks, when sorted (assuming it starts the range of numbers, figuring out the lowest seq number of the span is 32K or smaller away from the highest), is a valid knock sequence. Because of this, trying to flood a connection to find a proper knock sequence would invariably not work (though DoS is always available).
Heck, with this implementation, one could intentional disorder the knocks in transport but order them properly in sequence number, and the numbers themselves would just be increasingly less random the longer the knock sequence.
> You perceive this problem from an all-technology point of view, while he's also considering something nifty called "ethics".
No, I consider it a technological/consumer problem which the person/consumer can fix directly (using a different technology) or can wait for the market to fix for him (isps doing caching).
> Your solution is to not want to think of any implications of your doings: Hey, if he doesn't use BitTorent, it's his own freakin' problem and as a good capitalist I do whatever I want.
That's more the free market, then capitalism.
> If you require someone to use Bittorent/Kazaa/whatever you're also raising the barrier to accessing this website. You start to lock out users. Very uncapitalistic thing: You want to have every consumer you can get.
No, the capitalistic thing is to charge people money to get in or differentiate one consumer from another. If locking in users gets you more money, you'll follow that route over doing some standard.
Hosting free content for everyone to read isn't at all a capitalistic ideal. It's very charitable. But, charities have to watch their spending too, if they want to continue to exist. The "ethical" thing for users might be to sponser the web site or give the owner money. Others, like me, realize that part of the problem is not chosing a web service provider that would regulate connections.
> Traffic Shaping and Proxying are nice things but won't just magically make the/.-effect disappear (hint: Traffic Shaping doesn't make traffic disappear and i doubt if it is possible to create a list with all ISPs in the world and their respective proxy settings, which you would need to do)
I said *policing*, not proxying. Policing limits the influx of traffic by dumping packets when they go over a certain rate. Because of TCP's design, this causes a cutback in the flow rate to stay very close to the target bandwidth. Shaping, on the other hand, prevents serving out data at too fast of a rate (and my understanding is that most host providers charge the servers, not the clients, so shaping is likely the solution). Fixing the rate of output and dropping connections while under heavy load are the right things to do to prevent a complete denial of service. Now, if someone was sending udp or tcp packets enmass without regard to success replies, negating traffic policing (but not traffic shaping) and causing a DoS, I could very much see how ethics starts to play into the picture.
That's quite simple. For TCP there's something called a sequence number. For something like a 5 second window, you'll use x numbers in a sequence, which leaves at least 16K possible "knocks" to form a successful knock sequence (technically, a seq number is 16-bit leaving 64K, but you might have to factor in all the other packets coming out of the machine, which might be using one seq counter throughout the tcp/ip stack).
Sorry, but you're wrong. There's two major problems with what everyone has stated up to this point (include you).
For starters, the web uses a protocol that's inherently master/slave based. Because of this, anyone who hosts a website has an inherent ability to offer traffic policing to customers to prevent costing exhorbants amount of money. Offering/not-offering this feature is a part of the free market system upon which capitalism is likely to gain customers. Even those companies who don't offer such a feature might begin offering a p2p solution to http (a mix of http and bittorrent, possibly).
The second point is that you, yourself, use an isp of some kind. When you can't access a web site because of of a/.ing or a "google-ing", you're not getting everything out of the internet. Not only that, but the 20 or 40 requests an ISP gets to get a website is 20-40x more bandwidth than if the isp cached requests. So, in effect, there's an obvious market for isps who provide caching, not only because of the direct bandwidth savings for themselves but also through the marketing about being able to see/.ed sites (though I'm sure marketers can create a better buzz phrase). There's also traffic shaping/policing to encourage the use of their squid or other web proxy.
So, in effect, there is an economic solution to the problem at hand. There's also the fault of the people who put up web pages that get/.ed, as they bitch and moan instead of trying to find a technological solution to the problem.
A web server can be made into a p2p distribution system to handle the load instead of crapping out when it runs out of connections. And ISPs can benefit by marketing their caching technology (fact is, HD space + CPU power are still growing massively faster than bandwidth rates, so caching conceivably is to be the fastest for some time to come).
>>The value of an OS is letting you do what you want to do. That may or may not involve running specific software
>Unless what you want to do is heating the room, or such, it does involve running software. Even if all you do with your computer is compiling the kernel and running a proxy for your home network, you're already depending on some very specific software: gcc, make, squid, etc.
You misread what the parent was trying to say. His point was that users really want to get something done. Using gimp is only a means to that end. For that, any good substitute for what one does with gimp works. So, the claim that users want/need to use *specific* Windows software is often misplaced.
The larger truth is most people are willing to put up with the insecurity, the crashes (win 9x users as well as people stuck with crappy drivers), and the whole package of paying more into the system because either the cost to do such is less than it is to find and relearn what they want (and possibly replace that winmodem with a hardware modem) or they don't realize the cost to do all the above is less than switching to another system (a Mac, or Linux, or FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, or John's Custom OS). At least currently, not everything is doable in Linux that is doable in Windows (the basic definition of Windows having more software). The process of this happening was years of people writing custom Windows software.
Making Linux able to do anything Windows software can is a matter of either rewriting or porting existing software or switching to a new solution.
For businesses, this might just never be done (businesses still use COBOL because it works well enough, so why rewrite the whole thing?).
For desktop users, it's really only a question of having commercial software companies and do-dad (sp?) houses producing software. The former is needed for the trust factor, and that latter is needed for the home user who likes little toys. Given how things are, maybe the commercial Linux companies will be the commercial software companies and things like karamba will be the little toys.
But, I digress. I think more people would be better off switching to Linux than realize it. The biggest problem, to me, is not being an arogant marketer who pushes people into Linux. So, the next time you think of pushing Linux, do it for the person, not for yourself.
You're confusing open source with free software. Free software is the philosophical push to use free software and only free software with all other software was amoral (either because it is itself restrictive or allows for others to make it restrictive). Open source is a much more pragmatic approach to the idea of free software willing to use propretiary software if necessary.
But, as Linux has stated (and I rather agree), there's at least three good reasons not to freeze the kernel apis or try to encourage binary release drivers.
The first is because freezing the kernel api any more than necessary causes a lot of headache tried to maintain backwards compatibility no matter how backwards it is.
The second part is by allowing in binary drivers, hardware makers aren't helping to improve Linux. You might believe that people using Linux is an improvement, but it isn't. Linux improves because the community improves it. Encouraging outsiders to join in without being part of the community only helps consumers, not people, the software, or the community.
The third part is binary drivers can't be debugged or tweaked to fit the new api. Instead, binary drivers are a black box where no one can be sure what went wrong (as if that weren't bad enough with hardware). And when a new kernel release is to come out, everyone has to wait and pray that a manufacturer updates to the new release. Or the only other recourse is to leave in backwards things as a hack stop-gap. That just makes more unmanageable code and helps no one.
For companies like Nvidia who can't release their source because they don't have rights to all the patents/code involved, maybe for the next card they'll use patents they hold so they can make an open source driver. And then everyone advantages from the patent instead of being encased by it. Just because we use the nvidia binary driver now doesn't mean we in open source shouldn't try our hardest to push for more open source programs. We can encourage and promote manufacturers to make their drivers open.
If OS/2 is at all a good example, it shows how a stop gap solution isn't the approach to go to motivative people to use their OS. Why would Linux behave any differently from a consumer standpoint?
No, I wasn't meaning the Apple record label. I was just generically stating that a word could be reused (not that MikeRoweSoft == Microsoft) validly anyways. Btw, I doubt that a company named Apple would be allowed to make pies trademarked "Apple(TM) pies", mostly because there would be the issue of having "Such and Such's(TM) Apple pie" vs "Apple(TM) pie". It'd just be too confusing.
Now, "Grandma Thornbury's(TM) Apple pie" vs "Grandpa Thornberry's(TM) Apple Pie" would probably cause some issue, but even there I doubt any sane judge would disallow one. Trademarks are designed to protect *products*, so I don't see how ICANN (I believe they're the one responsible for management of domain names) can claim something like microsoft.com is a trademark. microsoft-word.com, sure. And someone other than Microsoft owning microsoft.com and trying to selling that's related to Microsoft's field of sale, sure. But the name itself? That's crazy.
You and others keep bugging with the idea that it was a trademark violation. Guess what? It was neither. Trademark corresponds to a very limited set of things, almost always a company name associated with a product if a field. That's why there can be two companies named Apple, one who makes pies and the other computers.
Now, MikeRoweSoft is a company name, but not even a copy of the Microsoft name. Nor is it associated with any products. The fact is, at best MikeRoweSoft could be claimed to be a derivative work of the name Microsoft (same pronunciation, different spelling). Of course, it's ludicrous to believe one can copyright a single word. Why do you and others think it's any less ludicrious to trademark a single word? Or do we never see knock-off G-ello on the store shelves?
That's what Platonic Chain basically is, a huge database of data and people using tools to grep through it to do interesting things (like building profiles based on security camera data, then weeding down candidates). Platonic Chain is a really light hearted view of what would happen if just about all publicly viewable information was accessible. It's also fun. You might want to check out an episode.
Since we're on the subject of ringtones, it seems fitting to make a reference to Platonic Chain. There's a funny scene in it about a girl, in an attempt to pick up guys, has Platonic Chain setup so that whenever a guy that meets her profile gets within ear reach, her phone goes off with his ring tone. The reason being that it makes the guy stop to answer his phone, and when he notices it's her phone ringing, it's a conversation starter they both have the same ringtone. So, at least in anime, that cacophony of sound has some use.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Companies should be legally required to disclose vulnerabilities to government
> Uhh that's what security lists are for.
That's what they're for, but the majority of exploits are found first by people *outside* of companies. And Microsoft really wants it that you tell them first, give them 30 days to work on it, then finally tell everyone else about it. While I can understand the want to "minimize damages", the truth is the fastest way to minimize damages is to *stop* using vulnerable software. Waiting 30 days or more to tell people there's a problem isn't helping anyone.
>>Score 1 for the consumer!
>Why have Americans taken to calling themselves Consumers? Your real power lies in Law, that law is written by CITIZENS. If your preceding citizens hadnt written some pretty keen laws, you current "Consumers" would be out $13.xx.
Well, some of us citizens have never bought a CD or tape from the RIAA, so what amounts to a civil settlement (which is BS to me, as a citizen) only only effects the consumers involved. As a citizen, I'd rather that members of the RIAA be held responsible for their *criminal* acts, given that they were fucking with the free market. $13.xx is nothing, in comparison.
What would you expect in a portable Windowing system? The fact is, the concept of defining a 2D area defining a program's visible space as a window isn't something at all unique to MS Windows. Nor is MFC an original idea. It's just an extension of procedural into the OO world. Do you think X Window System should change its name too? Should Apple make sure all their docs do not use the word "window(s)" just in case? Should Open Office stop being made because there's MS Office?
Microsoft, probably as a result of marketing, decided to use the most colloquial name association it could fine for its products for the most part. The fact that they were a late comer to such markets only worsens their claim. If Microsoft wants to use a generic term to describe a product, they should be only able to trademark "Microsoft ". This all reminds me of an episode of Freakazoid where "Lord Bravery" tried to get a ton of people to rename their businesses because each had to chose a different name because of such widespread trademarks. "Lord Bravery" vs "Lord Bravery Bakery"...cause people are too stupid to tell one rescues people and the other makes muffins, so we should ban similar naming? Let's not even begin with the whole *Win* *Zip*. Double whammy there.
>I have yet to hear a good argument equating files or collections of files to FREE SPEECH. ...
>P2P and Freenet do not facilitate communication between users like a blog or a chat room or e-mail does. They only facilitate the transfer of files.
Well, what sort of argument do you need? A flyer announcing the place of an election can be stored in a file. A song I wrote and want to give to people over the internet is almost certainly a file. The same is true for software I write. A file is just a digital object or objects (for things like archives/collections). The file itself is just a container like a piece of paper. Streaming a file is like speaking into the air.
Freedom of speech clearly includes works of art and scientific publications. In that, copyright is a limited exception to freedom of speech. So, to claim that freedom of speech does not apply to files would be paramount to saying copyright does not either, which would let one copy any file as much as they please.
> PS: I troll sometimes, but this issue of including filesharing (especially commercial software and copyrighted music) into our First Amendment right really burns me up. Every time I hear it, it just sounds like the person is trying to justify/legitimize behavior they know is wrong.
You need to realize that copyright is something that we, the people, grant for a limited time to copryighted work creators. Ignoring how much lifetime + 90 years isn't a "limited time", copyright infringement isn't innately amoral. It is, however, clearly civilly illegal for which authors have the right to sue people. When their lifetime + 90 years passes (or whatever the new limit expands to be), their works will fall back into the public domain where they can be copied without fear of a civil suit.
In the mean time, you and I can feel guilty for all those wonderful works of art or science were the creator isn't well paid for their work. If you want, you and I can directly pay the author large sums of money. The true worth, after all, in terms of works required to make most copyrighted works is clearly over the $10 or $50. It's only through a combination of selfish market valuation and the fact more than one person generally buys a copyrighted work (this ignores contract work, which is generally seen as work-for-hire where the contract specifies the cost and the hirer gains the copyright).
Maybe you mean "ISO 8859-1"? There's always writing it out in binary and hoping people use the right code sheet.
,ls)))
(define define (lambda ls `(define .
Though you might be a troll, I feel like it'll be fun to respond anyways.
The funny thing about copyright law is that it's a limited exception made for people who create works of art or science. The government itself has no basis for incarcerating individuals over the subject while companies or people can persecute others however much they want thanks to the magic of civil lawsuits, regardless of any basis.
Shutting down freenet or any other p2p network could be seen as unconstitutionally removing a forum of free speech. Any forum that exists can't legally be blocked from existing. Freenet just hightens the burden needed by companies, people, or the government to prove if/when an actually illegal act occurs.
To do so is comparable to saying that while it's okay to think whatever you like, the government can remove your mind because of thoughts they don't like. And since everyone eventually has thoughts the government doesn't like, it'd be okay to remove everyone's mind.
> I don't see the big deal, myself -- if you want to use their code, you use their license
It's not a big deal, really. It's just important to let people know (like gtk+, qt, and anything else compiling against xlib) that they need to either not use Xfree86 4.4 or if they do to use their license. Since the majority of things I mentioned are GPLed and unlikely to become un-GPLed, that really just means not migrating to XFree86 4.4. No big deal, just news people want to know about.
I'd assume it's EU's way of over compensating for the whole Netscape/IE affair. The problem fundamental with MS's whole position about a web browser or a media player or whatever being a part of the operating system is what the anonymous coward responding has pointed out: if MS put out an API spec for the dlls involved then *anyone* could build a replacement. You do realize that if Windows needs *a* web browser, it shouldn't necessarily be Internet Explorer.
Microsoft took it upon themselves to write a spec for features needed in the OS then proceed to fill in the job without releasing the spec. Why though, don't they release a spec? The obvious answer is because people were becoming dependent on Netscape (for example). There were pages that actually required Netscape to function. Microsoft got scared that someone would come along and bundle Netscape with a cheap OS and their whole Windows financial base would just disappear when they finally realized that the internet wasn't a fad.
How, though, can you motivate everyone to start using your web browser over others? The simple answer is to put the web browser as an integral component of the OS. Windows 98 was made over so that just about everything help related was done in IE-ized HTML (at this date, there are at least four different help system protocols which IE knows..apparently the standard http wasn't sufficient or something).
Now, while Real might suck now compared to Windows Media Player (it only took up to v6..and I'd say v7+ are going down hill, but that's the UI, not the underlying system) it was the most decent at the same time as Netscape was most decent. Microsoft has admittedly being working on the whole video for windows system for years, so that part of the equation isn't a big deal. But the DRM system is quite new and really doesn't need to be tied to Windows Media Player (or Windows, for that matter). Microsoft though is trying to tie it to both regardless. I wish the EU just forced Microsoft to open their DRM spec(s) and interoperability with Windows Media Player such that the reality of the system where standard codecs (it's not like WMP is the only one that can use them..or Windows for that matter (mplayer/xine)) and a standard DRM is used.
So, I agree with your assertion that the EU is going about the situation in the wrong way. The EU (and the US DoJ) are(/were) so out of date with where Microsoft is now compared to when they started all this comungling that their response is completely out of whack. Maybe would be a good time for your EU members to mail the one's in charge to do something about it.
>They fail to realize that people actually do like to play games online.
What he says is the current subscription model won't fly. With that, I have to very much agree. Games like Quake are played a hell of a lot more than any XBox online games. Not requiring to pay money monthly, hassle with connecting with a fixed service, etc is one reason why p2p instead of master/server subscription models work out better. And as it stands most cheats are blocked pretty well on PCs even without some voodoo hardware encryption scheme.
I guess if you've not already got a PC, aren't willing to hassle with installing a PC game, and aren't willing to deal with finding a "good" server, then a subscription service is right for you, but all the above seem to fit the hardcore gamer which I would think are the core audience to buy into a subscription service. And if you did have a choice, wouldn't you play as much or more on a game system if you could play online for free instead (assuming, of course, that the game you wanted was on the system)?
> They also fail to realize that people are going to buy the latest and greatest system, so the Big N can't just close their eyes to the fact that better and better hardware will sell.
They didn't say they weren't going to have the best hardware in their next console or DS. But, look at the GBA. It's job is to be a portable. That means not sucking up batteries like candy which also means not having massive processor speed. So, while the GBA doesn't have the fastest CPU, it is arguably the best portable. I'm under the impression that instead of wasting money trying to manufacturer the fastest system, Nintendo is trying to work *smart* with the hardware to maximize the fun in the game. Eye candy does not a fun game make.
Nintendo has, after all, been providing all sorts of 2D sprite hardware that make game production easier. I don't know enough about their 3D hardware to state the same, but I'd assume it's true there too. I can only begin to imagine where Nintendo will lead next, since I think the fundamental rendering for current consoles is at near peak (ie, we're into the Quake2/Quake3 rendering realm of realism). Given that, I don't thinking throwing processing power at the problem is where to begin.
> Look, delays hurt *all* kinds of businesses.
That seems true except for MS. However...
> Other companies who are less capable try and build enthusiasm by pre-announcing products to say, "Hey, look how cool we are".
MS does have that tendency to announce end-all software that ends up having a lot less than promised (look at how WinFS is only now showing up in Longhorn). I think it hurts companies that aren't in a position of market dominance who can't be guaranteed some level of people waiting to pay for a product. Not only this, but it can mean not paying for another product that's on the shelf now. That's far from a MS-centric feature (the term FUD came about to describe IBM). Like has been stated many times, MS has one hell of a marketing department.
>*puts on tinfoil helmet covering forehead* Now they can print a copy of the RFID on both sides of the tinfoil.
Like I said, you talk to your peers, your superiors, and your students. You don't go to them whining about being picked on. If you aren't what is depicted in the review and you convey that to the people who are important, then the review will be ignored. Not only that, but people other than you (like your past students) will post positive reviews about you. If after reading both reviews, students are unwilling to actually talk to you, then it's their loss. You can't force people to believe anything. The best you can do is try to be open and talk with them.
As for your last comment, Universities are in a business. Students don't want to go to Universities which will release their marks openly. They might even dislike Professors criticising students, which encourages Universities to fire such people. So long as students are in this position, there's likely little that will change. There's nothing, however, preventing a professor from making a "StudentReview" site which allows anonymous posting. Would that likely cause a student to not be accepted into a University or not be hired for a job afterwards? That's questionable. However, making a big deal out of it before knowing is likely to be more of a problem. I think the professor involved should have thought of that before threatening to sue.
Being different is an insult. Being average makes you boring, which is an insult. You're screwed either way.
The same can be said about *any* opinions expressed about anyone from anyone. The fact is, you just like most other people care what people say about you because you fear others will believe it's true. While I can sympathize with you, I think the best thing to say is to just deal with it.
Students badger other students. Professors have been known to badget other professors. And how many stories are there of professors who badger students? It's not surprising that there are students who do the same to professors. I'm not saying of the above is warranted or real (ie, it might just be paranoia). Of course, your case seems to prove that it's at least real.
The fact is, freedom of speech has been known to do a lot worse than ruin careers. Just think of the number of minorities or woman who have been physically assaulted or worse because of unfounded allegations. The simple fact is, there's very little that can be done about the speech itself because even removing this one site won't stop the word of mouth or a newsletter someone writes or the next blog someone starts. The only people you should really worry about is those in power to ruin your career or those around you who can do personal damage. The way of resolving that is to talk to them. While you're at it, maybe you can try a little harder to gain the respect of your students. You can't force people to think one way about you, but you can try your best to personally impress upon those people you think matter what you're really like so that you can alleviate your fears. There's no way elsewise to begin to solve the problem.
> On the other hand a true deomcracy tends to collapse under its own weight after a few hundred people are a part of it, simply because large groups have problems with coming up with definite decisions. Explain again to me how the US Congress tends to pass laws so readily? Oh, that's right. People form parties. And then a small group in a party makes up a bill while the rest of the party just goes along with it unless it's too utterly blatantly against the party. With Democrats and Republicans both being nearly identical in most issues and avoiding most of the "hot button" issues that differentiate the two, it's not surprising things like the DMCA can pass off through the right kind of smoozing of a few members of each party. It seems to me that a true democracy hypothetically could do a better job. A simpler approach, I think, is having parties which would create more hot button issues and might make more people in parties to stop and read laws and deeply consider their effects on the *voters*.
Yes and no. The sequence number at the very start of a knock may be completely unpredictable, but it's not unreasonable to make sure each sequence numbers in the series of knocks is increasing. The actual server machine, then, would be reasonably expected to collect about 5 secs worth of port knocking and make an assessment of whether the group of knocks, when sorted (assuming it starts the range of numbers, figuring out the lowest seq number of the span is 32K or smaller away from the highest), is a valid knock sequence. Because of this, trying to flood a connection to find a proper knock sequence would invariably not work (though DoS is always available). Heck, with this implementation, one could intentional disorder the knocks in transport but order them properly in sequence number, and the numbers themselves would just be increasingly less random the longer the knock sequence.
> You perceive this problem from an all-technology point of view, while he's also considering something nifty called "ethics". No, I consider it a technological/consumer problem which the person/consumer can fix directly (using a different technology) or can wait for the market to fix for him (isps doing caching). > Your solution is to not want to think of any implications of your doings: Hey, if he doesn't use BitTorent, it's his own freakin' problem and as a good capitalist I do whatever I want. That's more the free market, then capitalism. > If you require someone to use Bittorent/Kazaa/whatever you're also raising the barrier to accessing this website. You start to lock out users. Very uncapitalistic thing: You want to have every consumer you can get. No, the capitalistic thing is to charge people money to get in or differentiate one consumer from another. If locking in users gets you more money, you'll follow that route over doing some standard. Hosting free content for everyone to read isn't at all a capitalistic ideal. It's very charitable. But, charities have to watch their spending too, if they want to continue to exist. The "ethical" thing for users might be to sponser the web site or give the owner money. Others, like me, realize that part of the problem is not chosing a web service provider that would regulate connections. > Traffic Shaping and Proxying are nice things but won't just magically make the /.-effect disappear (hint: Traffic Shaping doesn't make traffic disappear and i doubt if it is possible to create a list with all ISPs in the world and their respective proxy settings, which you would need to do)
I said *policing*, not proxying. Policing limits the influx of traffic by dumping packets when they go over a certain rate. Because of TCP's design, this causes a cutback in the flow rate to stay very close to the target bandwidth. Shaping, on the other hand, prevents serving out data at too fast of a rate (and my understanding is that most host providers charge the servers, not the clients, so shaping is likely the solution). Fixing the rate of output and dropping connections while under heavy load are the right things to do to prevent a complete denial of service. Now, if someone was sending udp or tcp packets enmass without regard to success replies, negating traffic policing (but not traffic shaping) and causing a DoS, I could very much see how ethics starts to play into the picture.
That's quite simple. For TCP there's something called a sequence number. For something like a 5 second window, you'll use x numbers in a sequence, which leaves at least 16K possible "knocks" to form a successful knock sequence (technically, a seq number is 16-bit leaving 64K, but you might have to factor in all the other packets coming out of the machine, which might be using one seq counter throughout the tcp/ip stack).
Sorry, but you're wrong. There's two major problems with what everyone has stated up to this point (include you). For starters, the web uses a protocol that's inherently master/slave based. Because of this, anyone who hosts a website has an inherent ability to offer traffic policing to customers to prevent costing exhorbants amount of money. Offering/not-offering this feature is a part of the free market system upon which capitalism is likely to gain customers. Even those companies who don't offer such a feature might begin offering a p2p solution to http (a mix of http and bittorrent, possibly). The second point is that you, yourself, use an isp of some kind. When you can't access a web site because of of a /.ing or a "google-ing", you're not getting everything out of the internet. Not only that, but the 20 or 40 requests an ISP gets to get a website is 20-40x more bandwidth than if the isp cached requests. So, in effect, there's an obvious market for isps who provide caching, not only because of the direct bandwidth savings for themselves but also through the marketing about being able to see /.ed sites (though I'm sure marketers can create a better buzz phrase). There's also traffic shaping/policing to encourage the use of their squid or other web proxy.
So, in effect, there is an economic solution to the problem at hand. There's also the fault of the people who put up web pages that get /.ed, as they bitch and moan instead of trying to find a technological solution to the problem.
A web server can be made into a p2p distribution system to handle the load instead of crapping out when it runs out of connections. And ISPs can benefit by marketing their caching technology (fact is, HD space + CPU power are still growing massively faster than bandwidth rates, so caching conceivably is to be the fastest for some time to come).
>>The value of an OS is letting you do what you want to do. That may or may not involve running specific software
>Unless what you want to do is heating the room, or such, it does involve running software. Even if all you do with your computer is compiling the kernel and running a proxy for your home network, you're already depending on some very specific software: gcc, make, squid, etc.
You misread what the parent was trying to say. His point was that users really want to get something done. Using gimp is only a means to that end. For that, any good substitute for what one does with gimp works. So, the claim that users want/need to use *specific* Windows software is often misplaced.
The larger truth is most people are willing to put up with the insecurity, the crashes (win 9x users as well as people stuck with crappy drivers), and the whole package of paying more into the system because either the cost to do such is less than it is to find and relearn what they want (and possibly replace that winmodem with a hardware modem) or they don't realize the cost to do all the above is less than switching to another system (a Mac, or Linux, or FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, or John's Custom OS). At least currently, not everything is doable in Linux that is doable in Windows (the basic definition of Windows having more software). The process of this happening was years of people writing custom Windows software.
Making Linux able to do anything Windows software can is a matter of either rewriting or porting existing software or switching to a new solution.
For businesses, this might just never be done (businesses still use COBOL because it works well enough, so why rewrite the whole thing?).
For desktop users, it's really only a question of having commercial software companies and do-dad (sp?) houses producing software. The former is needed for the trust factor, and that latter is needed for the home user who likes little toys. Given how things are, maybe the commercial Linux companies will be the commercial software companies and things like karamba will be the little toys.
But, I digress. I think more people would be better off switching to Linux than realize it. The biggest problem, to me, is not being an arogant marketer who pushes people into Linux. So, the next time you think of pushing Linux, do it for the person, not for yourself.
You're confusing open source with free software. Free software is the philosophical push to use free software and only free software with all other software was amoral (either because it is itself restrictive or allows for others to make it restrictive). Open source is a much more pragmatic approach to the idea of free software willing to use propretiary software if necessary.
But, as Linux has stated (and I rather agree), there's at least three good reasons not to freeze the kernel apis or try to encourage binary release drivers.
The first is because freezing the kernel api any more than necessary causes a lot of headache tried to maintain backwards compatibility no matter how backwards it is.
The second part is by allowing in binary drivers, hardware makers aren't helping to improve Linux. You might believe that people using Linux is an improvement, but it isn't. Linux improves because the community improves it. Encouraging outsiders to join in without being part of the community only helps consumers, not people, the software, or the community.
The third part is binary drivers can't be debugged or tweaked to fit the new api. Instead, binary drivers are a black box where no one can be sure what went wrong (as if that weren't bad enough with hardware). And when a new kernel release is to come out, everyone has to wait and pray that a manufacturer updates to the new release. Or the only other recourse is to leave in backwards things as a hack stop-gap. That just makes more unmanageable code and helps no one.
For companies like Nvidia who can't release their source because they don't have rights to all the patents/code involved, maybe for the next card they'll use patents they hold so they can make an open source driver. And then everyone advantages from the patent instead of being encased by it. Just because we use the nvidia binary driver now doesn't mean we in open source shouldn't try our hardest to push for more open source programs. We can encourage and promote manufacturers to make their drivers open.
If OS/2 is at all a good example, it shows how a stop gap solution isn't the approach to go to motivative people to use their OS. Why would Linux behave any differently from a consumer standpoint?
No, I wasn't meaning the Apple record label. I was just generically stating that a word could be reused (not that MikeRoweSoft == Microsoft) validly anyways. Btw, I doubt that a company named Apple would be allowed to make pies trademarked "Apple(TM) pies", mostly because there would be the issue of having "Such and Such's(TM) Apple pie" vs "Apple(TM) pie". It'd just be too confusing. Now, "Grandma Thornbury's(TM) Apple pie" vs "Grandpa Thornberry's(TM) Apple Pie" would probably cause some issue, but even there I doubt any sane judge would disallow one. Trademarks are designed to protect *products*, so I don't see how ICANN (I believe they're the one responsible for management of domain names) can claim something like microsoft.com is a trademark. microsoft-word.com, sure. And someone other than Microsoft owning microsoft.com and trying to selling that's related to Microsoft's field of sale, sure. But the name itself? That's crazy.
You and others keep bugging with the idea that it was a trademark violation. Guess what? It was neither. Trademark corresponds to a very limited set of things, almost always a company name associated with a product if a field. That's why there can be two companies named Apple, one who makes pies and the other computers.
Now, MikeRoweSoft is a company name, but not even a copy of the Microsoft name. Nor is it associated with any products. The fact is, at best MikeRoweSoft could be claimed to be a derivative work of the name Microsoft (same pronunciation, different spelling). Of course, it's ludicrous to believe one can copyright a single word. Why do you and others think it's any less ludicrious to trademark a single word? Or do we never see knock-off G-ello on the store shelves?
That's what Platonic Chain basically is, a huge database of data and people using tools to grep through it to do interesting things (like building profiles based on security camera data, then weeding down candidates). Platonic Chain is a really light hearted view of what would happen if just about all publicly viewable information was accessible. It's also fun. You might want to check out an episode.
Since we're on the subject of ringtones, it seems fitting to make a reference to Platonic Chain. There's a funny scene in it about a girl, in an attempt to pick up guys, has Platonic Chain setup so that whenever a guy that meets her profile gets within ear reach, her phone goes off with his ring tone. The reason being that it makes the guy stop to answer his phone, and when he notices it's her phone ringing, it's a conversation starter they both have the same ringtone. So, at least in anime, that cacophony of sound has some use.