No I don't. Its a woolly way of saying that scrambling data using an obscure algorithm is nowhere near as secure as properly encrypting it using a known algorithm with a secret key. Even within the context of computer security its an over-generalization. Applied to a messy, non-IT, problem in meatspace (as the original poster did) where most secrets are already out of the bag anyway and its meaningless.
In any case, there's still no hard line between "security" and "obscurity". In a real world computer security system (i.e. one that includes the humans in the model) keeping "secrets" secret is still a non-trivial problem. Plus, PKI systems morph into "security by obscurity" as soon as computing power catches up with the number of bits in the key...
While Apple is heavily involved in several Open Source projects like WebKit, CUPS etc. they do not use Linux in any way.
They may not use the Linux kernel, but OS X includes a metric shedload of GNU and other o/s code including, for example, samba, bash and gcc, which are also critical parts of many Linux-based OSs. (and how many suits make the distinction between the kernel and what you get in a full distro?)
The point is that, while IBM seem to have renounced their wicked ways and become born again FOSS evengelists, Apple are still notoriously secretive, litigious, and protective of their IP (and maybe not particularly liked by the FOSS movement) yet even they manage to at least provide source code.
Ok, so am I breaking the law when I tell you that a Obama lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, District of Columbia?
Now try again with an example that isn't a question on every trivia quiz in the Western hemisphere. Something that people might have to do a bit of research to find out. Maybe Obama's deputy security chief's PA's Mum's address should be better publicised? (Note to the Men in Black: this is a rhetorical point: I don't actually have that information. Thanks for evesdropping).
Y'see, life isn't boolean: information isn't "public knowledge" or "not public knowledge". There's a question of how prominent and accessible it is.
Put it another way: there's a difference between having your number in the phone book and having your number printed on the front page of a national newspaper. Both mean it is "publicly available information" but in one case, you risk a few nuisance calls, while in the other case your phone will be slashdotted by cranks, and the odds of attracting a dangerous one (who will pop round to see why you haven't picked up) become non-negligible.
We have the absolute right to monitor and comment on how the government does its job. If such scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
Hint: "Who watches the watchmen?" is meant to be a paradox: if you think "we do!" is an answer, then you're missing the point of the question.
"Security through obscurity" is no security at all.
Nice aphorism. Pity its such nonsense - especially when used in a context other than cryptography (where it almost makes sense).
"Security through obscurity" may be weak security, but it has an effect. If you leave my front door key hidden behind a loose brick, then its more secure than leaving it under a flower pot, which is in turn more secure than leaving it in plain view. Neither is a particularly good idea, but if you must leave a key for some reason then the more obscure the better.
Now, what if some joker posts on a popular internet site "Mr X leaves his key behind a loose brick by the front door of 29 West Wallaby Street. He leaves for work at 8am and doesn't come back until 6pm. There's a new looking satellite dish, so he might have a decent TV, and I saw him going into a posh jewelers the other week so I think he's loaded"? Now, Mr X was running a risk, since anybody could have found that out if they were determined, but bundling it up in a red ribbon and making it public hugely increases his exposure.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from responsibility.
What does the community get out of the fact that YouSee, Stofa, and Viasat use Linux?
It gets valuable proof that Linux is a serious industrial strength system, making it hard for critics to portray it as a homespun system for hobbyists. Even (especially?) if Joe public hates these firms, businessfolk will respect them.
Market share also means that component manufacturers will have an incentive to support Linux (I doubt these firms make their own chipsets).
The programmers working on these devices will get Linux experience, and put it on their CVs. "5 years Linux experience with major company" reads better (to a suit) than "hack with Linux a bit on my own time".
Perversely, even a well-spun lawsuit might help (it shows that Linux is valuable enough to be worth defending). Especially if the publicity points out how little it will cost the culprits to comply vs. how many millions they would have been liable for had they breached a license for proprietary software, and points to all the other big, ugly firms that comply without going bust (even 800lb gorillas like Apple and IBM manage not to cross the line).
Quite honestly, though, the community still gets the benefit of market share if some of the users fail to comply. Its one of those awkward questions - do you want "four freedoms" and an OS that nobody uses, or "three-and-a-half freedoms" plus a fighting chance of being a major player in a field where the competition offers "minus six freedoms"?
Practical upshot seems to be that, yes, the spec could always be wrong, but once you've proven the code meets the specification, you can reliably "test" for bugs by further analysis of the spec*. Its worth scanning this part of TFA
where they discuss the limitations of what they have done. Key quote:
The C code of the seL4 microkernel correctly implements the behaviour described in its abstract specification and nothing more.
This sort of technique sounds ideally suited to microkernels which, by their nature (a) are tightly specified, and are supposed to eschew feeping creaturism (b) serve a technical audience (they're inmteracting almost exclusively with other software, so the "users" are really programmers) and (c) make minimal assumptions about any hardware other than the CPU.
That's valuable, but I think it will be a while yet before we see a formally proven web browser, or any other software with a direct meatspace interface...
This is the core contention behind the justification of software patents. It incorrectly treats all of the specific coding of any algorithm implementation as irrelevant to the patentable subject-matter, because the algorithm could theoretically be made to run on any Turing architecture.
I just hope that the "software shouldn't be patentable because software is math" brigade eventually come to understand this, and don't throw the pro-patent lobby into the briar patch.
There was a long discussion on Groklaw a while back (following a statement by Knuth along these lines) and the argument seems very seductive to some people.
The problem is, this argument is "not even wrong" (try and disprove it and you're arguing math with Knuth and Turing - good luck with that!) However, to use this as an argument as to why software should not be patented, you also need to prove the converse: that everything that should be patentable is not math. I.e. most engines, generators etc. can be represented mathematically as a thermodynamic cycle, which can be used to predict their theoretical limits.
Heck, thermodynamics and information theory are joined at the hip, so a specially trained stunt physicist could probably prove that a Turing machine is equivalent to a Carnot cycle.
Or, speaking of Knuth, if TeX, with all the practical typesetting knowhow it embodies) is "math" then what isn't?
Going down that route just gives the patent industry an incentive to come up with creative ways to patent math or slide a cigarette paper between the "math" and "invention" in software. The copious empirical evidence that software patents just hinder innovation seems a much stronger argument.
Are you actually asking "can I circumvent the GPL on someone else's library using a wrapper"? or was the question "Why should I bother licensing my own library under the GPL, when others could circumvent it using a wrapper"?
The first of these has been pretty much answered elsewhere.
The answer to the second is to relax. If Big Evil Software Corp abuses your work this way then they're heading for a lot of bad publicity, even if you don't have (or can't afford) a legal case.
If someone gets away with this, shame on them, but what have you actually lost? Would Big Evil Software Corp have paid you (or even have heard of you) if you'd kept the code closed?
Licenses will have loopholes, and the more loopholes you try to close the more you introduce, and the more work you make for lawyers. How do you legally define the difference between a wrapper and a server so that a jury in Utah can tell the difference?
The free softwar community shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking like the RIAA and confusing "intellectual property" with real property. Violating the GPL isn't big, isn't clever but is no more "theft" than copying a movie, and the damages caused are intangible and hypothetical.
What the Southern Metropolis Daily reported was a case in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in contrast to the other case in the Guangxi province, where the death happened. See the difference here?
Thanks. I was too busy trying to work out how reports of kids trying to throw "help me" notes over the wall was "directly in conflict" with the camp being "unlicensed" (were the notes scrawled on the back of official license certificates, perhaps?) to spot this.
Explosive decompression isn't explosive and a couple of bullet holes aren't going to cause a dangerous drop in cabin pressure.
OK, so explosive decompression, fat people being sucked out of tiny portholes, planes going into crash dives because of one bullet hole etc. is thoroughly mythbusted. However, it kinda missess the point.
Even on land, at sea level, 200' away from the nearest flammable substance, firing a gun inside a metal tube into which a hundred or so soft, squishy, potentially panicky people have been packed like sardines, with no way of getting out, in is a pretty stupid thing to do.
On a related note, I always wonder when I see security guards walking around crowded airports packing semi-autos, what would happen if they actually let rip with one? I'd rather not find out. Even if a ricochet didn't get you, the human stampede that would inevitably follow would be pretty messy. Of course, they could shout "duck" before firing - but practical upshot of that would be that the actual terrorist would hit the deck (or press the red button) while everybody else looked round to see what idiot was shouting about waterfowl...
Perhaps they're loaded with A-Team bullets (you know, the sort that cause every window, bottle or other fragile object in the vicinity to explode while no human gets so much as a scratch from flying glass, let alone a bullet hole).
I feel that the same goes for air travel -- it is the only viable means of real long distance travel, and the government has made it so that we cannot utilize this wonderful tool without bending over and giving up every last one of our civil liberties.
Fine, but I'd be more inclined to protest about the genuinely stupid and inconvenient things, like being forced to take off shoes and belts, being prevented from taking a bottle of water etc. that have been introduced as part of the post-9/11 security theatre. Trying to carry something that actually looks like a weapon on a plane is the sort of thing that anybody with an ounce of common sense ought to avoid without being told.
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice?
One of the USPs of OpenOffice, compared to other Office alternatives, is that anybody used to pre-2007 Office is going to find OO very, very familiar. Yes, there are differences, especially in the more advanced features, but the steering wheel is on the same side and the pedals are in the same place.
That's fine at the moment, and great when people are griping about the changes in Office 2007, but in a year or so's time most people will be used to Office 2007, the old menus will be long forgotten and Joe User moving from Word to OO will find himself faced with a strange and scary interface with funny drop-down menu things. If OO wants to promote itself as a drop-in replacement for companies looking wistfully at their annual MS licence fee, then it has to do something about that.
If OO.o don't make the new interface an option, though, then they are all kinds of stupid.
No. There are tens of millions of iPods out there. Lots of people must drop them. If they were expected to explode when dropped, the streets would be littered with singed and blood-spattered white earbuds, and Apple would have had their asses sued off ages ago. However there is a possibility that anything with a lithium battery could explode violently if dropped, faulty or not.
If so are there warnings?
I'm sure that buried in amongst all the warnings about not playing music too loud, not crossing the road while listening to music, not inserting iPods in various bodily orifices, not eating iPods, not garrotting people with the headphone cord, not touching the live wires if the charger breaks, not hacking people to death with a machette (while listening to an iPod) there is something on the lines of "if iPod starts making a hissing noise and smoking, do not hold it up to your ear" - although the victim in this case seems to have worked that one out for himself.
That's kinda the problem with the zero-risk society.
If not, perhaps it was a defect?
Perhaps. Perhaps that was why Apple offered to give the guy a refund? The real question is, was it a systematic defect affecting all iPods - or is it just that Apple is a more tempting target for journalists and ambulance-chasers, and whenever some cheap no-brand kit goes kaboom it doesn't make the Times?
Doesn't America have anything like the Consumer Guarantees Act [consumeraffairs.govt.nz]?
(A) as other posters have pointed out this is the UK.
(B) Yes, the UK has similar laws for defective products - in which case the retailer (not Apple) should have refunded or replaced it
(C)Such laws do not apply to accidental damage - and according to TFA, the iPod exploded after being "dropped". So nobody was obliged to refund anybody.
(D) The UK is also cursed with a moronic popular press. They could have used this to warn the public that any rechargeable electrinic device contains a metric shedload of chemical energy and, if damaged, should be treated with extreme caution. However, it is so much more fun to sensationalize the fact that Apple's offer letter contained the sort of anti-diclosure terms that would be found in virtually any out-of-court settlement.
Of course, a free press is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, there's more to "free" than simply not being run by El Presidente.
Then you have Apple that bans programs that duplicate their programs (iphone, not sure about the mac).
Maybe, one day, in some fantasy future, whenever you walk into a high street phone shop you will find every single shelf laden with iPhones, and only iPhones, except maybe for one dusty cabinet in the corner containing last-year's model Android phone. When you ask the assistant about the Android he'll say "Er, sorry, the only one here who knows about Android is Steve and he's on maternity leave. Anyway, there really aren't any iPhone compatible fart applications for Android - are you sure you don't want an iPhone?"
On that day, it will be sensible to ask why Apple isn't subject to the same amount of regulatory interference as Microsoft.
...and no, there isn't the same restriction on Macs - you can install and run whatever the hell software you like. Apple even throw in a nice, friendly, point-and-drool tool that lets you set up a dual-boot with Windows. The difference being that Macs, like PCs are intended for use as general-purpose computers whereas iPhones and iPods are appliances for making phone calls and playing music, and are ostensibly locked down to prevent third party software interfering with those functions.
But why wouldn't you do both? Build those habitats in solar orbit. Some people will still long to explore the great unknown.
Sure - why not. But the Fermi calculation really relies on civilizations "going exponential" with a colonization drive, not a few derring-doers setting off on a 500 year mission to seek out and explore strange new worlds.
Thing is, its called the Fermi paradox because it can't be right: either there are no ETs and we are the one-in-a-billion chance, or the Fermi model is wrong. Now, one of these can only be disproved if ET turns up, but logically weak, the other merely means there may be something we don't know about interstellar colonization. I know which one I find more likely.
Unless ET is swine flu: If you want to perpetuate your genome across the galaxy, save fuel and just send DNA in a neat nanotech delivery system...
I think the quote comes from Diaspora by Greg Egan: when a post-human is told the main axiom of the Fermi paradox: exponential colonizatiom, their reaction is bemusement because "that's what bacteria with spaceships would do". The only reason their civilization had survived the point where interstellar travel was practical (albeit as uploads running on computers in tiny spaceships) was because they had outgrown the animal urge to "go exponential".
I suspect that the Fermi paradox only works if the magic Star Trek warp drive is not only possible, but within the reach of circa-20th century technology (or a near-c drive, which just replaces the theoretical problem of FTL with a whole raft of practical implausibilities).
Otherwise, you're talking about long-haul generation ships - and if you can build nice sustainable places to live in space then (a) you can park an awful lot of them around your home system or near neighbors where there is plenty of solar energy and raw materials and you're not totally alone and fracked if the last widget breaks (wasn't this the true "Dyson Sphere" idea - a swarm of habitats?) and (b) you need to know an awful lot about sustainable, closed systems - both on a technical level and in terms of maintaining a society that doesn't rely on unbounded growth (its no good if your colonists arrive wearing animal skins and worshipping the engine).
So, the ability to mount interstellar colonization missions may be incompatible with the inclination to do so. It doesn't have to be an absolute rule: just a big enough effect to mess up Fermi's pyramid scheme.
If you read the comments, there is a hot but pointless discussion on whether this device is actually a 'computer'.
Only because some people have unilaterally declared that "computer" always means "universal Turing machine" rather than "something or someone that computes".
Humptey-dumptey syndrome ("words mean precisely what I intend them to mean") and the pathological inability to accept that words can have multiple similar but different meanings seems to be an industrial disease amongst nerds.
Guys: if you want a new word to always mean something highly specific and techical then iether make one up or use something from Latin/Greek/Klingon/Elvish, don't overload an existing English word!
Re:Decent text editor still not included right?
on
Emacs Hits Version 23
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· Score: 2, Funny
Tell me more about an "Eliza style bot" that acts like a Rogerian therapist, that's why.
I don't even want to know what ix86 emulation on ARM is like...
Well, it was ok for light use in 1988 (NB: PDF file, parent page is here). That was back in the day when ARM was pitched as a high-performance workstation chip rather than a low-power option.
Seriously, though, the windows back-catalogue might not run on ARM, but the.NET framework is MS's preferred platform for new apps, and that is VM-based and supposed to be CPU independent, is it not?
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that you misunderstand the aphorism.
No I don't. Its a woolly way of saying that scrambling data using an obscure algorithm is nowhere near as secure as properly encrypting it using a known algorithm with a secret key. Even within the context of computer security its an over-generalization. Applied to a messy, non-IT, problem in meatspace (as the original poster did) where most secrets are already out of the bag anyway and its meaningless.
In any case, there's still no hard line between "security" and "obscurity". In a real world computer security system (i.e. one that includes the humans in the model) keeping "secrets" secret is still a non-trivial problem. Plus, PKI systems morph into "security by obscurity" as soon as computing power catches up with the number of bits in the key...
While Apple is heavily involved in several Open Source projects like WebKit, CUPS etc. they do not use Linux in any way.
They may not use the Linux kernel, but OS X includes a metric shedload of GNU and other o/s code including, for example, samba, bash and gcc, which are also critical parts of many Linux-based OSs. (and how many suits make the distinction between the kernel and what you get in a full distro?)
The point is that, while IBM seem to have renounced their wicked ways and become born again FOSS evengelists, Apple are still notoriously secretive, litigious, and protective of their IP (and maybe not particularly liked by the FOSS movement) yet even they manage to at least provide source code.
Ok, so am I breaking the law when I tell you that a Obama lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, District of Columbia?
Now try again with an example that isn't a question on every trivia quiz in the Western hemisphere. Something that people might have to do a bit of research to find out. Maybe Obama's deputy security chief's PA's Mum's address should be better publicised? (Note to the Men in Black: this is a rhetorical point: I don't actually have that information. Thanks for evesdropping).
Y'see, life isn't boolean: information isn't "public knowledge" or "not public knowledge". There's a question of how prominent and accessible it is.
Put it another way: there's a difference between having your number in the phone book and having your number printed on the front page of a national newspaper. Both mean it is "publicly available information" but in one case, you risk a few nuisance calls, while in the other case your phone will be slashdotted by cranks, and the odds of attracting a dangerous one (who will pop round to see why you haven't picked up) become non-negligible.
We have the absolute right to monitor and comment on how the government does its job. If such scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
Hint: "Who watches the watchmen?" is meant to be a paradox: if you think "we do!" is an answer, then you're missing the point of the question.
"Security through obscurity" is no security at all.
Nice aphorism. Pity its such nonsense - especially when used in a context other than cryptography (where it almost makes sense).
"Security through obscurity" may be weak security, but it has an effect. If you leave my front door key hidden behind a loose brick, then its more secure than leaving it under a flower pot, which is in turn more secure than leaving it in plain view. Neither is a particularly good idea, but if you must leave a key for some reason then the more obscure the better.
Now, what if some joker posts on a popular internet site "Mr X leaves his key behind a loose brick by the front door of 29 West Wallaby Street. He leaves for work at 8am and doesn't come back until 6pm. There's a new looking satellite dish, so he might have a decent TV, and I saw him going into a posh jewelers the other week so I think he's loaded"? Now, Mr X was running a risk, since anybody could have found that out if they were determined, but bundling it up in a red ribbon and making it public hugely increases his exposure.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from responsibility.
What does the community get out of the fact that YouSee, Stofa, and Viasat use Linux?
It gets valuable proof that Linux is a serious industrial strength system, making it hard for critics to portray it as a homespun system for hobbyists. Even (especially?) if Joe public hates these firms, businessfolk will respect them.
Market share also means that component manufacturers will have an incentive to support Linux (I doubt these firms make their own chipsets).
The programmers working on these devices will get Linux experience, and put it on their CVs. "5 years Linux experience with major company" reads better (to a suit) than "hack with Linux a bit on my own time".
Perversely, even a well-spun lawsuit might help (it shows that Linux is valuable enough to be worth defending). Especially if the publicity points out how little it will cost the culprits to comply vs. how many millions they would have been liable for had they breached a license for proprietary software, and points to all the other big, ugly firms that comply without going bust (even 800lb gorillas like Apple and IBM manage not to cross the line).
Quite honestly, though, the community still gets the benefit of market share if some of the users fail to comply. Its one of those awkward questions - do you want "four freedoms" and an OS that nobody uses, or "three-and-a-half freedoms" plus a fighting chance of being a major player in a field where the competition offers "minus six freedoms"?
DS9... was that the Star Trek about the Gas Station on the interstate?
No, it was Ron Moore's big-budget "re-imagining" of the campy Sci Fi classic "Babylon 5".
(ducks)
grats for spoiling the ending
You can't spoil the ending: the writers already did that.
but is the spec useable ? bugfree ?
Practical upshot seems to be that, yes, the spec could always be wrong, but once you've proven the code meets the specification, you can reliably "test" for bugs by further analysis of the spec*. Its worth scanning this part of TFA
where they discuss the limitations of what they have done. Key quote:
The C code of the seL4 microkernel correctly implements the behaviour described in its abstract specification and nothing more.
This sort of technique sounds ideally suited to microkernels which, by their nature (a) are tightly specified, and are supposed to eschew feeping creaturism (b) serve a technical audience (they're inmteracting almost exclusively with other software, so the "users" are really programmers) and (c) make minimal assumptions about any hardware other than the CPU.
That's valuable, but I think it will be a while yet before we see a formally proven web browser, or any other software with a direct meatspace interface...
This is the core contention behind the justification of software patents. It incorrectly treats all of the specific coding of any algorithm implementation as irrelevant to the patentable subject-matter, because the algorithm could theoretically be made to run on any Turing architecture.
I just hope that the "software shouldn't be patentable because software is math" brigade eventually come to understand this, and don't throw the pro-patent lobby into the briar patch.
There was a long discussion on Groklaw a while back (following a statement by Knuth along these lines) and the argument seems very seductive to some people.
The problem is, this argument is "not even wrong" (try and disprove it and you're arguing math with Knuth and Turing - good luck with that!) However, to use this as an argument as to why software should not be patented, you also need to prove the converse: that everything that should be patentable is not math. I.e. most engines, generators etc. can be represented mathematically as a thermodynamic cycle, which can be used to predict their theoretical limits.
Heck, thermodynamics and information theory are joined at the hip, so a specially trained stunt physicist could probably prove that a Turing machine is equivalent to a Carnot cycle.
Or, speaking of Knuth, if TeX, with all the practical typesetting knowhow it embodies) is "math" then what isn't?
Going down that route just gives the patent industry an incentive to come up with creative ways to patent math or slide a cigarette paper between the "math" and "invention" in software. The copious empirical evidence that software patents just hinder innovation seems a much stronger argument.
Are you actually asking "can I circumvent the GPL on someone else's library using a wrapper"? or was the question "Why should I bother licensing my own library under the GPL, when others could circumvent it using a wrapper"?
The first of these has been pretty much answered elsewhere.
The answer to the second is to relax. If Big Evil Software Corp abuses your work this way then they're heading for a lot of bad publicity, even if you don't have (or can't afford) a legal case.
If someone gets away with this, shame on them, but what have you actually lost? Would Big Evil Software Corp have paid you (or even have heard of you) if you'd kept the code closed?
Licenses will have loopholes, and the more loopholes you try to close the more you introduce, and the more work you make for lawyers. How do you legally define the difference between a wrapper and a server so that a jury in Utah can tell the difference?
The free softwar community shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking like the RIAA and confusing "intellectual property" with real property. Violating the GPL isn't big, isn't clever but is no more "theft" than copying a movie, and the damages caused are intangible and hypothetical.
What the Southern Metropolis Daily reported was a case in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in contrast to the other case in the Guangxi province, where the death happened. See the difference here?
Thanks. I was too busy trying to work out how reports of kids trying to throw "help me" notes over the wall was "directly in conflict" with the camp being "unlicensed" (were the notes scrawled on the back of official license certificates, perhaps?) to spot this.
Explosive decompression isn't explosive and a couple of bullet holes aren't going to cause a dangerous drop in cabin pressure.
OK, so explosive decompression, fat people being sucked out of tiny portholes, planes going into crash dives because of one bullet hole etc. is thoroughly mythbusted. However, it kinda missess the point.
Even on land, at sea level, 200' away from the nearest flammable substance, firing a gun inside a metal tube into which a hundred or so soft, squishy, potentially panicky people have been packed like sardines, with no way of getting out, in is a pretty stupid thing to do.
On a related note, I always wonder when I see security guards walking around crowded airports packing semi-autos, what would happen if they actually let rip with one? I'd rather not find out. Even if a ricochet didn't get you, the human stampede that would inevitably follow would be pretty messy. Of course, they could shout "duck" before firing - but practical upshot of that would be that the actual terrorist would hit the deck (or press the red button) while everybody else looked round to see what idiot was shouting about waterfowl...
Perhaps they're loaded with A-Team bullets (you know, the sort that cause every window, bottle or other fragile object in the vicinity to explode while no human gets so much as a scratch from flying glass, let alone a bullet hole).
I feel that the same goes for air travel -- it is the only viable means of real long distance travel, and the government has made it so that we cannot utilize this wonderful tool without bending over and giving up every last one of our civil liberties.
Fine, but I'd be more inclined to protest about the genuinely stupid and inconvenient things, like being forced to take off shoes and belts, being prevented from taking a bottle of water etc. that have been introduced as part of the post-9/11 security theatre. Trying to carry something that actually looks like a weapon on a plane is the sort of thing that anybody with an ounce of common sense ought to avoid without being told.
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice?
One of the USPs of OpenOffice, compared to other Office alternatives, is that anybody used to pre-2007 Office is going to find OO very, very familiar. Yes, there are differences, especially in the more advanced features, but the steering wheel is on the same side and the pedals are in the same place.
That's fine at the moment, and great when people are griping about the changes in Office 2007, but in a year or so's time most people will be used to Office 2007, the old menus will be long forgotten and Joe User moving from Word to OO will find himself faced with a strange and scary interface with funny drop-down menu things. If OO wants to promote itself as a drop-in replacement for companies looking wistfully at their annual MS licence fee, then it has to do something about that.
If OO.o don't make the new interface an option, though, then they are all kinds of stupid.
Is it expected to explode violently when dropped?
No. There are tens of millions of iPods out there. Lots of people must drop them. If they were expected to explode when dropped, the streets would be littered with singed and blood-spattered white earbuds, and Apple would have had their asses sued off ages ago. However there is a possibility that anything with a lithium battery could explode violently if dropped, faulty or not.
If so are there warnings?
I'm sure that buried in amongst all the warnings about not playing music too loud, not crossing the road while listening to music, not inserting iPods in various bodily orifices, not eating iPods, not garrotting people with the headphone cord, not touching the live wires if the charger breaks, not hacking people to death with a machette (while listening to an iPod) there is something on the lines of "if iPod starts making a hissing noise and smoking, do not hold it up to your ear" - although the victim in this case seems to have worked that one out for himself.
That's kinda the problem with the zero-risk society.
If not, perhaps it was a defect?
Perhaps. Perhaps that was why Apple offered to give the guy a refund? The real question is, was it a systematic defect affecting all iPods - or is it just that Apple is a more tempting target for journalists and ambulance-chasers, and whenever some cheap no-brand kit goes kaboom it doesn't make the Times?
Doesn't America have anything like the Consumer Guarantees Act [consumeraffairs.govt.nz]?
(A) as other posters have pointed out this is the UK.
(B) Yes, the UK has similar laws for defective products - in which case the retailer (not Apple) should have refunded or replaced it
(C)Such laws do not apply to accidental damage - and according to TFA, the iPod exploded after being "dropped". So nobody was obliged to refund anybody.
(D) The UK is also cursed with a moronic popular press. They could have used this to warn the public that any rechargeable electrinic device contains a metric shedload of chemical energy and, if damaged, should be treated with extreme caution. However, it is so much more fun to sensationalize the fact that Apple's offer letter contained the sort of anti-diclosure terms that would be found in virtually any out-of-court settlement.
Of course, a free press is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, there's more to "free" than simply not being run by El Presidente.
Then you have Apple that bans programs that duplicate their programs (iphone, not sure about the mac).
Maybe, one day, in some fantasy future, whenever you walk into a high street phone shop you will find every single shelf laden with iPhones, and only iPhones, except maybe for one dusty cabinet in the corner containing last-year's model Android phone. When you ask the assistant about the Android he'll say "Er, sorry, the only one here who knows about Android is Steve and he's on maternity leave. Anyway, there really aren't any iPhone compatible fart applications for Android - are you sure you don't want an iPhone?"
On that day, it will be sensible to ask why Apple isn't subject to the same amount of regulatory interference as Microsoft.
...and no, there isn't the same restriction on Macs - you can install and run whatever the hell software you like. Apple even throw in a nice, friendly, point-and-drool tool that lets you set up a dual-boot with Windows. The difference being that Macs, like PCs are intended for use as general-purpose computers whereas iPhones and iPods are appliances for making phone calls and playing music, and are ostensibly locked down to prevent third party software interfering with those functions.
what, you wanted Gordon Freeman to be a black, 6 year old girl?
At least he's got a black (and inexplicably bulletproof) girlfriend, though...
Taking Portal into account, I think Valve are probably ahead of the game.
But why wouldn't you do both? Build those habitats in solar orbit. Some people will still long to explore the great unknown.
Sure - why not. But the Fermi calculation really relies on civilizations "going exponential" with a colonization drive, not a few derring-doers setting off on a 500 year mission to seek out and explore strange new worlds.
Thing is, its called the Fermi paradox because it can't be right: either there are no ETs and we are the one-in-a-billion chance, or the Fermi model is wrong. Now, one of these can only be disproved if ET turns up, but logically weak, the other merely means there may be something we don't know about interstellar colonization. I know which one I find more likely.
Unless ET is swine flu: If you want to perpetuate your genome across the galaxy, save fuel and just send DNA in a neat nanotech delivery system...
I think the quote comes from Diaspora by Greg Egan: when a post-human is told the main axiom of the Fermi paradox: exponential colonizatiom, their reaction is bemusement because "that's what bacteria with spaceships would do". The only reason their civilization had survived the point where interstellar travel was practical (albeit as uploads running on computers in tiny spaceships) was because they had outgrown the animal urge to "go exponential".
I suspect that the Fermi paradox only works if the magic Star Trek warp drive is not only possible, but within the reach of circa-20th century technology (or a near-c drive, which just replaces the theoretical problem of FTL with a whole raft of practical implausibilities).
Otherwise, you're talking about long-haul generation ships - and if you can build nice sustainable places to live in space then (a) you can park an awful lot of them around your home system or near neighbors where there is plenty of solar energy and raw materials and you're not totally alone and fracked if the last widget breaks (wasn't this the true "Dyson Sphere" idea - a swarm of habitats?) and (b) you need to know an awful lot about sustainable, closed systems - both on a technical level and in terms of maintaining a society that doesn't rely on unbounded growth (its no good if your colonists arrive wearing animal skins and worshipping the engine).
So, the ability to mount interstellar colonization missions may be incompatible with the inclination to do so. It doesn't have to be an absolute rule: just a big enough effect to mess up Fermi's pyramid scheme.
If you read the comments, there is a hot but pointless discussion on whether this device is actually a 'computer'.
Only because some people have unilaterally declared that "computer" always means "universal Turing machine" rather than "something or someone that computes".
Humptey-dumptey syndrome ("words mean precisely what I intend them to mean") and the pathological inability to accept that words can have multiple similar but different meanings seems to be an industrial disease amongst nerds.
Guys: if you want a new word to always mean something highly specific and techical then iether make one up or use something from Latin/Greek/Klingon/Elvish, don't overload an existing English word!
Tell me more about an "Eliza style bot" that acts like a Rogerian therapist, that's why.
I don't even want to know what ix86 emulation on ARM is like...
Well, it was ok for light use in 1988 (NB: PDF file, parent page is here). That was back in the day when ARM was pitched as a high-performance workstation chip rather than a low-power option.
Seriously, though, the windows back-catalogue might not run on ARM, but the .NET framework is MS's preferred platform for new apps, and that is VM-based and supposed to be CPU independent, is it not?
I ran gnu emacs on a PDP-11, and it ran just fine.
So? I run Eclipse on a pair of dual-core Xeons and it runs fine. How much did you pay for your PDP-11?
"emacs is bloated" is a meme that was established before we had memes. Don't fight it and spoil the fun :-)