The people who would care about them being audited are NOT their customers. Their customers don't care how secure your data is, they like things just the way they are.
"On the issue of "throwing your vote away" - that's what you do when you don't vote for what you really believe. If you don't vote your conscience, who's really losing out? I won't sacrifice that just to have the lesser of two evils in office for a couple years. Stand behind your ideals."
I see it as voting against the worst of the two. The way I saw 2004: There are two candidates that had a chance of winning and there were four third party candidates that didn't have a chance (also known as "spoiler" or "none of the above" candidates). I voted against the candidate that I feel is pure evil. I voted for the candidate that I didn't think is evil and had a chance of winning .
There have been elections where the two candidates were a crap toss-up, in those cases I voted for a none of the above candidate. I was one of those who voted for Perot.
I would love to see a viable third party that has a chance in hell of winning. Two reasons I didn't vote for a third party candidate in 2004: 1. I did not want to "throw away my vote" by voting for somebody who didn't have a chance in hell to win. This has been a critical factor lately because the US is split about 50/50 between the top two parties. 2. I stongly disliked one of the top two candidates.
In theory it might be interesting to have a Libertarian president. One of the major nagging problems that I have with the Libertarian Party is that they do not have any sort of track record in national politics. I also wonder if a Libertarian president would give corporations all of the liberties that they need to turn vast numbers of the US population into semi-impoverished slaves working with no health insurance and without health or safety protection. I am also concerned about bigotry and discrimination becoming even more prevelant under a Libertarian administration than they are now.
The vote wasn't for a third party. One Minnesota electoral vote was cast for John Edwards for President. None of the MN delgates has identified themselves as voting for John Edwards for President.
Many people consider the Libertarian Party to be dead, at least at the state and national level. The Libertarian Party came in fourth in popular votes in the 2004 presidential election. Three candidates received electoral votes in 2004, the Libertarian candidate was not one of them. Of the Libertarians holding public office, not one was elected at either the State or National level.
"If we're willing to trust air-traffic control and nuclear ballistic missile command-and-control to computers, I'm not quite sure why voting is such an intrinsically scary proposition."
I have reasonable trust in the computers that control air traffic and nuclear missles, and I can even trust the computers in voting machines. I do not trust voting machines that are black boxes whose output files can only be read by the computer manufacturer. How can I trust a voting machine whose manufacturer promised that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."?
Re:US Patent System is more important than Crackbe
on
Supreme Court spurns RIM
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In my case, I really hate these sorts of patents, this is why I would really love to see this case made into an example of the evil in the current system. In order to make this RIM-NTP situation into an example, RIM is going to have to be forced to shut down and cause pain to a number of people. If enough pain is caused to the right people somebody in power just might realize that there is a problem.
"To all the people pooh-poohing Sony on here- have any of you ever owned a (cassette) walkman or a (cd) discman? How about a Viao laptop, or a portable minidisc player? Whatever your opinions are about their non-portable equipment; their politics or their policies, Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment."
I totally agree that Sony's portable equipment is durable and dependable. The problem is that Sony DRM's the hell out of everything on their newer equipment. I have owned Sony (cassette) Walkmans and a Sony Minidisk player. The Walkman's were great for their time and there was no DRM on audio cassettes. The Minidisk is a rugged device, it is the DRM that makes it a pain in the ass. Sony's Minidisk software does a check-in/check-out DRM thing to EVERYTHING that you record onto a Minidisk; also the Minidisk recording software ONLY works with Windows.
TFA was talking about Sarbanes-Oxley problems that could occur when a company distributes software in violation of the GPL. TFA wasn't talking about companies that use or distribute GPL'ed software in compliance with the license.
It will be a GOOD indication when malware writers start attempting to target Apple or *NIX. It will either mean that MS produsts no longer the dominate player or it will mean that MS products are no longer a major security problem.
Sun is ending support for INTERACTIVE UNIX System, V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.1.1 on July 23, 2006. This OS was listed as a legacy OS in a 1995 Sun press release for Solaris. Sun is still providing patches for an OS that predates MS Windows 95 and NT 4.0.
All Sun Solaris versions are UNIX System V Release 4. SunOS (pre-Solaris 2.5) was BSD derived. Solaris 2.5.1 was introduced in 1996 and Sun still provides patch clusters for it. I believe that Solaris 2.6 is still fully supported - and it was introduced in 1997.
I worked on pdp-11's in the late '70's. I also had a Timex Sinclair in 1983 with the membrane keyboard (and the memory extension that plugged into the back), it was interesting. The one computer that I regretted buying was the TI99-44.
"But I don't think it's reasonable to expect a vendor to provide patches for operating systems that are well over 5 years old. Looking at Apple, Red Hat, Sun, etc. I don't see this happening either."
Sun routinely supports their OS software for over five years, Sun currently supports a version of Solaris that is over 8 years old. Sun enterprise servers typically never have their OS upgraded; they are just patched, even though later versions of Solaris can supposedly be easily upgraded. Sun enterprise servers (with their orginal OS) are normally retired when they are no longer required or when the hardware is no longer supported. The reason for this is that nobody want to break an enterprise server that is working fine.
"Windows 95 is 11 years old. Windows 98 is 8 years old. Windows ME is 6 years old. And Windows NT4 is 9 years old. How many other operating systems offer patches and support product versions for software that is that old?"
I know of at least two. Both Sun and HP still provide support or patches for versions of UNIX System V that are older than Windows 98.
South Korea enforces intellectual property laws as well as any other nation does. In any event, US and Euro laws prohibit the importation of pirated items, this is one of the reasons why you do not see very many copies of XP or "Munich" that were pirated in China on sale in the US and Europe.
Just having laws is not enough, the laws must also be enforced and the laws are NOT being enforced against violators of the GPL. Microsoft, Apple, movie studios, and record companies are getting the laws strictly enforced to protect their intellectual property. Work needs to be done to educate commercial users of Open Source licensed property and to get the laws enforced to protect Open Source licensed intellectual property.
If the file name were presented as "pictures.gif.pif" instead of "pictures.gif", the file name no longer ends in "gif" which many people assocociate with picture files. I don't know how many users would notice the difference, but at least the file name doesn't end in an extension that most users know as indicating a picture file. Aunt Martha and Joe Sixpack don't know the difference between program files and picture files; the distinction of clicking on "run" instead of "yes" or "OK" is totally lost on them. Users just want to see the picture named "picture.gif" and they have been conditioned to click on "run", "yes" "OK", or whatever it takes to get rid of that annoying box that is standing between them and the picture. The human factors regarding popup boxes is a known problem by many people. I agree that it is hard to protect novice users without inconviencing experts; MS Windows goes beyond that, it does things that puts novices in danger AND can also inconvience experts. Not hiding complete file names will go a ways toward protecting novice users and it shouldn't inconvience experts who have probably already disabled "hide extensions for known file types". One reason that many experts have disabled "hide extensions for known file types" is so that they can see if the OS is hiding an extension that indicates that the file is an executable.
I would agree with you if MS always displayed the full file name including the real extension and never truncated the extension1``. Most users have NO clue what the dialog box means, they just know that a file ending in ".gif" means that that the file is a picture and that they are being asked if they really want to see the picture. Why should they care that the picture came from an untrusted and unsigned source?
I realize that people are going for bigger screens, but how many people do you think are going to 50+ inch screens in the near future? I believe that most people do not have the room for anything larger than 42". In order to have a useful comparison for HD-DVD/BluRay, you need to compare HD-DVD/BluRay with DVD, not the Rose Bowl game with the local news.
"I'm sure the same thing was said about DVDs, too. I know at least I looked at DVDs when they first came out out and went, "Meh."
I'm not so sure that many people had the same reaction as you did. People were already used to CDs and liked the advantages that CDs have over phonograph records. The convenience and familiarity of CDs presold people on DVDs and people saw similar advantages in replacing prerecorded VHS tapes with DVDs. The price of DVD players dropped very quickly and DVDs replaced VHS tapes in video stores as soon as the player prices dropped. I suspect that most people won't be aware of the crippling DRM on HD-DVD and BluRay. I also suspect (and hope) that most people won't find a compelling reason to buy the new technology because there won't be a perceived advantage in the new technology over DVD. The new technology is simply replacing one silver disk with another silver disk, it is not as big a deal as it was when silver disks replaced phonograph records and video tapes.
No phone should not be considered a secure way to communicate. Depending upon the security requirements of what is discussed, certain levels of insecurity are usually tolerated (or ignored) when using a telephone. One thing that many people are totally clueless about is that telephone calls placed using analog cell phones and many cordless phones are very easily intercepted with simple radio receivers (even though it is illegal to sell those receivers in the US). Digital cell phone conversations requires more elaborate equipment and are more difficult to intercept and decrypt. Then again, how do you know that your wired phone line isn't being recorded? Somebody used to sell cassette recorders that started recording when the phone when taken off the hook and stored something like six hours of conversation on one cassette. I wonder if somebody makes a digital version of those telephone line recorders that allows audio files to be downloaded via an ethernet connection.
A very early form of diversification for MS was in keyboards, mice, and game controllers. Microsoft always seemed to make very good mice. MS keyboards and game controllers never seemed to catch on, but for some reason MS mice have always been popular.
Slashdot Mirror
The people who would care about them being audited are NOT their customers. Their customers don't care how secure your data is, they like things just the way they are.
"On the issue of "throwing your vote away" - that's what you do when you don't vote for what you really believe. If you don't vote your conscience, who's really losing out? I won't sacrifice that just to have the lesser of two evils in office for a couple years. Stand behind your ideals."
I see it as voting against the worst of the two. The way I saw 2004: There are two candidates that had a chance of winning and there were four third party candidates that didn't have a chance (also known as "spoiler" or "none of the above" candidates). I voted against the candidate that I feel is pure evil. I voted for the candidate that I didn't think is evil and had a chance of winning .
There have been elections where the two candidates were a crap toss-up, in those cases I voted for a none of the above candidate. I was one of those who voted for Perot.
For Stanford, try it and find out.
MIT OpenCourseWare is open to anyone, anywhere. Some of the MIT courses have been translated into Español, Portugues, and Simplified Chinese.
I would love to see a viable third party that has a chance in hell of winning. Two reasons I didn't vote for a third party candidate in 2004: 1. I did not want to "throw away my vote" by voting for somebody who didn't have a chance in hell to win. This has been a critical factor lately because the US is split about 50/50 between the top two parties. 2. I stongly disliked one of the top two candidates.
In theory it might be interesting to have a Libertarian president. One of the major nagging problems that I have with the Libertarian Party is that they do not have any sort of track record in national politics. I also wonder if a Libertarian president would give corporations all of the liberties that they need to turn vast numbers of the US population into semi-impoverished slaves working with no health insurance and without health or safety protection. I am also concerned about bigotry and discrimination becoming even more prevelant under a Libertarian administration than they are now.
Why coffee? Coffee can only hurt you if the coffee is VERY hot and you are stupid enough to spill it in your lap - while driving.
The vote wasn't for a third party. One Minnesota electoral vote was cast for John Edwards for President. None of the MN delgates has identified themselves as voting for John Edwards for President.
Many people consider the Libertarian Party to be dead, at least at the state and national level. The Libertarian Party came in fourth in popular votes in the 2004 presidential election. Three candidates received electoral votes in 2004, the Libertarian candidate was not one of them. Of the Libertarians holding public office, not one was elected at either the State or National level.
"If we're willing to trust air-traffic control and nuclear ballistic missile command-and-control to computers, I'm not quite sure why voting is such an intrinsically scary proposition."
I have reasonable trust in the computers that control air traffic and nuclear missles, and I can even trust the computers in voting machines. I do not trust voting machines that are black boxes whose output files can only be read by the computer manufacturer. How can I trust a voting machine whose manufacturer promised that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."?
In my case, I really hate these sorts of patents, this is why I would really love to see this case made into an example of the evil in the current system. In order to make this RIM-NTP situation into an example, RIM is going to have to be forced to shut down and cause pain to a number of people. If enough pain is caused to the right people somebody in power just might realize that there is a problem.
"To all the people pooh-poohing Sony on here- have any of you ever owned a (cassette) walkman or a (cd) discman? How about a Viao laptop, or a portable minidisc player? Whatever your opinions are about their non-portable equipment; their politics or their policies, Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment."
I totally agree that Sony's portable equipment is durable and dependable. The problem is that Sony DRM's the hell out of everything on their newer equipment. I have owned Sony (cassette) Walkmans and a Sony Minidisk player. The Walkman's were great for their time and there was no DRM on audio cassettes. The Minidisk is a rugged device, it is the DRM that makes it a pain in the ass. Sony's Minidisk software does a check-in/check-out DRM thing to EVERYTHING that you record onto a Minidisk; also the Minidisk recording software ONLY works with Windows.
TFA was talking about Sarbanes-Oxley problems that could occur when a company distributes software in violation of the GPL. TFA wasn't talking about companies that use or distribute GPL'ed software in compliance with the license.
Oh dear, it sounds like an addiction. The first ones are always free ...
"You can get the daily show for free on Comedy Central already?"
The same Daily Show is ran several times a day - and TiVO doesn't recognise the duplicate showings as being reruns.
"Now if they can figure out how to quiet the occupants then they would really have something."
Perhaps equipping elevators with aerosol Fentanyl dispensers?
It will be a GOOD indication when malware writers start attempting to target Apple or *NIX. It will either mean that MS produsts no longer the dominate player or it will mean that MS products are no longer a major security problem.
Sun is ending support for INTERACTIVE UNIX System, V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.1.1 on July 23, 2006. This OS was listed as a legacy OS in a 1995 Sun press release for Solaris. Sun is still providing patches for an OS that predates MS Windows 95 and NT 4.0.
All Sun Solaris versions are UNIX System V Release 4. SunOS (pre-Solaris 2.5) was BSD derived. Solaris 2.5.1 was introduced in 1996 and Sun still provides patch clusters for it. I believe that Solaris 2.6 is still fully supported - and it was introduced in 1997.
I worked on pdp-11's in the late '70's. I also had a Timex Sinclair in 1983 with the membrane keyboard (and the memory extension that plugged into the back), it was interesting. The one computer that I regretted buying was the TI99-44.
"But I don't think it's reasonable to expect a vendor to provide patches for operating systems that are well over 5 years old. Looking at Apple, Red Hat, Sun, etc. I don't see this happening either."
Sun routinely supports their OS software for over five years, Sun currently supports a version of Solaris that is over 8 years old. Sun enterprise servers typically never have their OS upgraded; they are just patched, even though later versions of Solaris can supposedly be easily upgraded. Sun enterprise servers (with their orginal OS) are normally retired when they are no longer required or when the hardware is no longer supported. The reason for this is that nobody want to break an enterprise server that is working fine.
"Windows 95 is 11 years old. Windows 98 is 8 years old. Windows ME is 6 years old. And Windows NT4 is 9 years old. How many other operating systems offer patches and support product versions for software that is that old?"
I know of at least two. Both Sun and HP still provide support or patches for versions of UNIX System V that are older than Windows 98.
South Korea enforces intellectual property laws as well as any other nation does. In any event, US and Euro laws prohibit the importation of pirated items, this is one of the reasons why you do not see very many copies of XP or "Munich" that were pirated in China on sale in the US and Europe.
Just having laws is not enough, the laws must also be enforced and the laws are NOT being enforced against violators of the GPL. Microsoft, Apple, movie studios, and record companies are getting the laws strictly enforced to protect their intellectual property. Work needs to be done to educate commercial users of Open Source licensed property and to get the laws enforced to protect Open Source licensed intellectual property.
If the file name were presented as "pictures.gif.pif" instead of "pictures.gif", the file name no longer ends in "gif" which many people assocociate with picture files. I don't know how many users would notice the difference, but at least the file name doesn't end in an extension that most users know as indicating a picture file. Aunt Martha and Joe Sixpack don't know the difference between program files and picture files; the distinction of clicking on "run" instead of "yes" or "OK" is totally lost on them. Users just want to see the picture named "picture.gif" and they have been conditioned to click on "run", "yes" "OK", or whatever it takes to get rid of that annoying box that is standing between them and the picture. The human factors regarding popup boxes is a known problem by many people. I agree that it is hard to protect novice users without inconviencing experts; MS Windows goes beyond that, it does things that puts novices in danger AND can also inconvience experts. Not hiding complete file names will go a ways toward protecting novice users and it shouldn't inconvience experts who have probably already disabled "hide extensions for known file types". One reason that many experts have disabled "hide extensions for known file types" is so that they can see if the OS is hiding an extension that indicates that the file is an executable.
I would agree with you if MS always displayed the full file name including the real extension and never truncated the extension1``. Most users have NO clue what the dialog box means, they just know that a file ending in ".gif" means that that the file is a picture and that they are being asked if they really want to see the picture. Why should they care that the picture came from an untrusted and unsigned source?
I realize that people are going for bigger screens, but how many people do you think are going to 50+ inch screens in the near future? I believe that most people do not have the room for anything larger than 42". In order to have a useful comparison for HD-DVD/BluRay, you need to compare HD-DVD/BluRay with DVD, not the Rose Bowl game with the local news.
"I'm sure the same thing was said about DVDs, too. I know at least I looked at DVDs when they first came out out and went, "Meh."
I'm not so sure that many people had the same reaction as you did. People were already used to CDs and liked the advantages that CDs have over phonograph records. The convenience and familiarity of CDs presold people on DVDs and people saw similar advantages in replacing prerecorded VHS tapes with DVDs. The price of DVD players dropped very quickly and DVDs replaced VHS tapes in video stores as soon as the player prices dropped. I suspect that most people won't be aware of the crippling DRM on HD-DVD and BluRay. I also suspect (and hope) that most people won't find a compelling reason to buy the new technology because there won't be a perceived advantage in the new technology over DVD. The new technology is simply replacing one silver disk with another silver disk, it is not as big a deal as it was when silver disks replaced phonograph records and video tapes.
No phone should not be considered a secure way to communicate. Depending upon the security requirements of what is discussed, certain levels of insecurity are usually tolerated (or ignored) when using a telephone. One thing that many people are totally clueless about is that telephone calls placed using analog cell phones and many cordless phones are very easily intercepted with simple radio receivers (even though it is illegal to sell those receivers in the US). Digital cell phone conversations requires more elaborate equipment and are more difficult to intercept and decrypt. Then again, how do you know that your wired phone line isn't being recorded? Somebody used to sell cassette recorders that started recording when the phone when taken off the hook and stored something like six hours of conversation on one cassette. I wonder if somebody makes a digital version of those telephone line recorders that allows audio files to be downloaded via an ethernet connection.
A very early form of diversification for MS was in keyboards, mice, and game controllers. Microsoft always seemed to make very good mice. MS keyboards and game controllers never seemed to catch on, but for some reason MS mice have always been popular.