Um, we _are_ there, it _is_ interesting, and it certainly _was_ a challenge (for "we" read humanity, and for "challenge", remember all those attempts).
I do not see the point of having a human with a chin cleft deep enough to hide cookies planted on the planet when we can have a dozen semi-autonomous vehicles spread out all over the planet working independently.
That said, the "humanity stuck on one planet" argument certainly has merits. But we are very much still on the "crawl-before-you-walk" stage here, and anything we can put up on the moon or on mars for the next fifty years will not be self-sustaining no matter how. Better to walk slow and get to that self-sustaining part as fast as possible, even if it means less spectacular manned stuf now.
Has there been an explosion of mass market DeCSS-based region-free DVD players? Nope. Has DeCSS done _anything_ measurable to reduce the ability of the DVD Copy Control Association (and its supporting industries) to write global trade laws (re: region coding) into firmware? Not that I can discern.
The situation is very different in different parts of the world, of course, but at least in Sweden, it is actually not easy to find a DVD player that does have CSS coding active. Even for audio/video chain stores selling a mainstream player, they will either announce that the players are unlocked, or (if they are cheap bastards) quote a second, slightly higher price to include the unlocking service.
The new copyright legislation proposed in the beginning of 2003 explicitly states that a distributor, importer or producer of any kind of media or content product can not be forced to include copy control systems into their products. It also explicitly grants permission to bypass such systems for the purpose of using the media. The proposed law explicitly mentions CSS as an example.
I've posted several times about the technical superiority of KDE, and NOBODY has been able to refute my points.
Probably because most people are just too sick and tired of fanboy exhortations like yours to bother to refute anything. I mean, why even try? You will not listen in any case - you are firmly (if foolishly) rooted in one 'tribe' and are just looking for excuses to bait and flame the other one. You are like cranks that publish their manifesto about anitgravity, aliens or whatever, and then interprets the silence from 'the establishment' as proof scienctists can't refute his arguments.
It went both ways, actually. The 486SX was a DX with disabled/nonfunctional math coprocessor. The standalone math coprocessor you could buy for the SX, on the other hand, was a DX with disabled/nonfunctional CPU. Not a bad idea really.
Well, no distribution uses the 2.6 kernel yet (it is only a month old, after all). All of them are still using the 2.4 kernel - and while some of them do backport stuff from development kernels (like Redhat moving the new threading lib to their distro), none would likely move something so disruptive as a new IDE subsystem to 2.4.
That said, the next redhat distro (Fedora Core 2) will use the 2.6 kernel and will be out in April or thereabouts. So, you will not need to wait for too long to get good support for your hardware.
Bandwidth is not my problem. Not choking inboxes and mail clients with unwanted "herbal viagra" come-ons is. This will help solve that.
And, as others already mentioned, there will be a pretty powerful dicincentive to try to send any spam through enabled servers. If I at some point simply do not allow connections from unenabled servers (and yes, caching this info is not a bad idea - adding a IP filter rule upon a hit from a non-enabled SMTP server is even better), then bandwidth will be saved as well.
Yes, they can. And all I need to do is to let the domain be one feature to do adaptive filtering on. Two mails on penile enlargement, and no non-spam email from one domain, and that domain will be a pretty clear signal to throw stuff away. Time for the spammer to get a new domain.
Many will not implement this!
Well, whether everybody implements it or not, it does give me another factor to filter on. If the mail comes from a domain that does not implement it, that's grounds enough for a big, fat -5 spamassassin rule right there.
Oh, and as more and more people implement this, those who do not can be more and more severely punished by spam filters (as the exceptions for any one person becomes few enough to whitelist and so on).
But if you blacklist any domain without it, some people won't be able to send stuff to you anymore!
Problem is, faking a fingerprint - even when checking for pulse and body heat - is not all that difficult. Bad Guys(tm) will do so if needed. And they will of course preferentially use someone else's print (which again is quite doable to obtain). Then what do you do? Passwords, PIN codes and social security numbers can be changed if you've lost them or is a victim of identity theft. But how do you change your fingerprint?
The basic thing I have against the idea is that I would have no control over where that fingerprint data ends up. It is taken in airports, but do you seriously think US authorities are not going to use the data in every way they can - especially considering that the policy at this time seems to be that non-US citizens are not entitled to the same protections that US citizens are (and that they have at home).
Easy to say to export stuff, not jobs. But what will those export markets do when they find that they are welcome to buy american stuff, but are heavily taxed, or even forbidden, when trying to export stuff into the US?
Don't forget that for many of the very largest companies, their home market - no matter which country they reside in - is not their largest. If push comes to shove, IBM would likely rather lose US contracts than all non-US ones.
Oh, and workers rights? What will the US do when Europe insists that it should include comprehensive health care, paid vcation time and guaranteed pensions for all, employed or not? Like many ideas, this one sounds very good from 30.000ft, but becomes very messy (and more or less unworkable) once you're on the ground.
Have you perhaps heard of "free time"? Or "hobby", perhaps? Most people do not work 60h+ workweeks, you know; they prefer to have a life outside work as well.
As others have pointed out (and as I thought I did in my post), very few "software companies" actually have software as their chocolate, as it were. Almost all software production happens in companies whose business is not software at all; the software is a box, a helper of sorts for the real business. A large bank is a pretty large software producer, for instance, but they are emphatically not in the software business.
He writes about the chocolatier specifying the box design, then 'outsourcing' manufacture of the box elsewhere. Well, most software-producing companies do not have that software as their 'real' business either. They want to do whatever it is they do (retail operations, selling hardware, whatever), and the software is a sideline - important, but not what they are _doing_, just like those boxes the article mentions. In fact, the overwhelming majority of all software produced is of this kind, rather than the high-profile stuff we tend to think of first, where the software itself _is_ the product.
So, just like with that chocolate box, there really is nothing at all wrong with doing the design and specifications, and working with an external producer to do the actual manufacture.
Common mistake to mix up Norwegian and Swedish. That said, a Swedish speaker could translate it with little trouble; the Nordic languages are close enough that a native speaker of Swedish, Norwegian or Danish can understand written text of the others with some difficulty. Icelandic is a lot tougher, at least for Swdish speakers.
Turbos? Yes, they're around, and quite common too. Difference is, they're not pushed as some kind of macho add-on anymore; instead, the technology is mainly used to improve efficiency (by, among other things, improving accelleration so you can use a smaller, more efficient engine and retain the performance you want). And among small diesels (common in Europe), I'd say turbo diesels are a lot more common than the non-turbocharged variety.
Sure, you can defeat spam filters by being obscure enough. Do random punctuation, embed your message in a mass of unrelated words and so on. But from my experience, spam is already approaching the "vanishing point" when it ceases to be comprehensible even to the humans that are supposed to react to the things. I have had spam that has been so obscure it's taken me several minutes do decipher what they are trying to sell (and they still get caught by Spamassassin).
What you or I _think_ he means is quite immaterial, though. It is so sloppily and fuzzily worded that any even tangentially relevant happening can be seized upon by Cringeley to support his "prediction". It is essentially formulated in a way that makes it very difficult for him to be wrong, no matter what actually happens.
The problem with a prediction like that is that it's largely content-free. Changing organizational structure of Linux, how, exactly? When he says "Linux", does he mean kernel development or the whole OSS community? What, exactly, is wrong, and how (and why) does it need to be changed?
As fluffy as that prediction is, we can have Andrew Morton take over maintainership of 2.6 from Linus Torvalds this year and Cringeley can claim another success at the end of 2004.
For many people X _is_ as important for their Linux boxes as the GNU toolchain. Or do you suggest we change the name of the OS depending on exactly what use we put it to? And how difficult is it to replace the GNU tools with their BSD equivalents?
No, either we acknowledge all the different sources for the OS, or we quit being childish and immature about this and just call the whole conglomeration "Linux", no matter what pieces happen to reside on each particular instance.
Slashdot Mirror
we are looking for a person ready to give up their whole life, move to an almost 100% barren place where he/she will soon die utterly alone!
Hmmm. You get free internet access with that?
Um, we _are_ there, it _is_ interesting, and it certainly _was_ a challenge (for "we" read humanity, and for "challenge", remember all those attempts).
I do not see the point of having a human with a chin cleft deep enough to hide cookies planted on the planet when we can have a dozen semi-autonomous vehicles spread out all over the planet working independently.
That said, the "humanity stuck on one planet" argument certainly has merits. But we are very much still on the "crawl-before-you-walk" stage here, and anything we can put up on the moon or on mars for the next fifty years will not be self-sustaining no matter how. Better to walk slow and get to that self-sustaining part as fast as possible, even if it means less spectacular manned stuf now.
Has there been an explosion of mass market DeCSS-based region-free DVD players? Nope. Has DeCSS done _anything_ measurable to reduce the ability of the DVD Copy Control Association (and its supporting industries) to write global trade laws (re: region coding) into firmware? Not that I can discern.
The situation is very different in different parts of the world, of course, but at least in Sweden, it is actually not easy to find a DVD player that does have CSS coding active. Even for audio/video chain stores selling a mainstream player, they will either announce that the players are unlocked, or (if they are cheap bastards) quote a second, slightly higher price to include the unlocking service.
The new copyright legislation proposed in the beginning of 2003 explicitly states that a distributor, importer or producer of any kind of media or content product can not be forced to include copy control systems into their products. It also explicitly grants permission to bypass such systems for the purpose of using the media. The proposed law explicitly mentions CSS as an example.
Well, not having to confront Debian's sad excuse of an installer sounds like a good point right there.
Oh, I'll take the fact that you couldn't refute any of my points as proof of your acquiescence.
And once again you prove my point exactly.
Just like I said - just looking for any excuse to spout fanboy verbiage.
I've posted several times about the technical superiority of KDE, and NOBODY has been able to refute my points.
Probably because most people are just too sick and tired of fanboy exhortations like yours to bother to refute anything. I mean, why even try? You will not listen in any case - you are firmly (if foolishly) rooted in one 'tribe' and are just looking for excuses to bait and flame the other one. You are like cranks that publish their manifesto about anitgravity, aliens or whatever, and then interprets the silence from 'the establishment' as proof scienctists can't refute his arguments.
Grow up.
It went both ways, actually. The 486SX was a DX with disabled/nonfunctional math coprocessor. The standalone math coprocessor you could buy for the SX, on the other hand, was a DX with disabled/nonfunctional CPU. Not a bad idea really.
Well, no distribution uses the 2.6 kernel yet (it is only a month old, after all). All of them are still using the 2.4 kernel - and while some of them do backport stuff from development kernels (like Redhat moving the new threading lib to their distro), none would likely move something so disruptive as a new IDE subsystem to 2.4.
That said, the next redhat distro (Fedora Core 2) will use the 2.6 kernel and will be out in April or thereabouts. So, you will not need to wait for too long to get good support for your hardware.
Bandwidth is not my problem. Not choking inboxes and mail clients with unwanted "herbal viagra" come-ons is. This will help solve that.
And, as others already mentioned, there will be a pretty powerful dicincentive to try to send any spam through enabled servers. If I at some point simply do not allow connections from unenabled servers (and yes, caching this info is not a bad idea - adding a IP filter rule upon a hit from a non-enabled SMTP server is even better), then bandwidth will be saved as well.
Spammers can just use their own domain
Yes, they can. And all I need to do is to let the domain be one feature to do adaptive filtering on. Two mails on penile enlargement, and no non-spam email from one domain, and that domain will be a pretty clear signal to throw stuff away. Time for the spammer to get a new domain.
Many will not implement this!
Well, whether everybody implements it or not, it does give me another factor to filter on. If the mail comes from a domain that does not implement it, that's grounds enough for a big, fat -5 spamassassin rule right there.
Oh, and as more and more people implement this, those who do not can be more and more severely punished by spam filters (as the exceptions for any one person becomes few enough to whitelist and so on).
But if you blacklist any domain without it, some people won't be able to send stuff to you anymore!
Cry me a river.
Except this one is a little different:
"Alert: a real $20 note is two steps darker than your attempt. Also, your serial number will not validate. Would you like me to apply corrections?"
Problem is, faking a fingerprint - even when checking for pulse and body heat - is not all that difficult. Bad Guys(tm) will do so if needed. And they will of course preferentially use someone else's print (which again is quite doable to obtain). Then what do you do? Passwords, PIN codes and social security numbers can be changed if you've lost them or is a victim of identity theft. But how do you change your fingerprint?
The basic thing I have against the idea is that I would have no control over where that fingerprint data ends up. It is taken in airports, but do you seriously think US authorities are not going to use the data in every way they can - especially considering that the policy at this time seems to be that non-US citizens are not entitled to the same protections that US citizens are (and that they have at home).
Easy to say to export stuff, not jobs. But what will those export markets do when they find that they are welcome to buy american stuff, but are heavily taxed, or even forbidden, when trying to export stuff into the US?
Don't forget that for many of the very largest companies, their home market - no matter which country they reside in - is not their largest. If push comes to shove, IBM would likely rather lose US contracts than all non-US ones.
Oh, and workers rights? What will the US do when Europe insists that it should include comprehensive health care, paid vcation time and guaranteed pensions for all, employed or not? Like many ideas, this one sounds very good from 30.000ft, but becomes very messy (and more or less unworkable) once you're on the ground.
Have you perhaps heard of "free time"? Or "hobby", perhaps? Most people do not work 60h+ workweeks, you know; they prefer to have a life outside work as well.
As others have pointed out (and as I thought I did in my post), very few "software companies" actually have software as their chocolate, as it were. Almost all software production happens in companies whose business is not software at all; the software is a box, a helper of sorts for the real business. A large bank is a pretty large software producer, for instance, but they are emphatically not in the software business.
He writes about the chocolatier specifying the box design, then 'outsourcing' manufacture of the box elsewhere. Well, most software-producing companies do not have that software as their 'real' business either. They want to do whatever it is they do (retail operations, selling hardware, whatever), and the software is a sideline - important, but not what they are _doing_, just like those boxes the article mentions. In fact, the overwhelming majority of all software produced is of this kind, rather than the high-profile stuff we tend to think of first, where the software itself _is_ the product.
So, just like with that chocolate box, there really is nothing at all wrong with doing the design and specifications, and working with an external producer to do the actual manufacture.
Common mistake to mix up Norwegian and Swedish. That said, a Swedish speaker could translate it with little trouble; the Nordic languages are close enough that a native speaker of Swedish, Norwegian or Danish can understand written text of the others with some difficulty. Icelandic is a lot tougher, at least for Swdish speakers.
Turbos? Yes, they're around, and quite common too. Difference is, they're not pushed as some kind of macho add-on anymore; instead, the technology is mainly used to improve efficiency (by, among other things, improving accelleration so you can use a smaller, more efficient engine and retain the performance you want). And among small diesels (common in Europe), I'd say turbo diesels are a lot more common than the non-turbocharged variety.
Sure, you can defeat spam filters by being obscure enough. Do random punctuation, embed your message in a mass of unrelated words and so on. But from my experience, spam is already approaching the "vanishing point" when it ceases to be comprehensible even to the humans that are supposed to react to the things. I have had spam that has been so obscure it's taken me several minutes do decipher what they are trying to sell (and they still get caught by Spamassassin).
"Indeed, the famous brand names also make their DVD players in China, often on the same contract assembly lines as the no-names."
What you or I _think_ he means is quite immaterial, though. It is so sloppily and fuzzily worded that any even tangentially relevant happening can be seized upon by Cringeley to support his "prediction". It is essentially formulated in a way that makes it very difficult for him to be wrong, no matter what actually happens.
The problem with a prediction like that is that it's largely content-free. Changing organizational structure of Linux, how, exactly? When he says "Linux", does he mean kernel development or the whole OSS community? What, exactly, is wrong, and how (and why) does it need to be changed?
As fluffy as that prediction is, we can have Andrew Morton take over maintainership of 2.6 from Linus Torvalds this year and Cringeley can claim another success at the end of 2004.
For many people X _is_ as important for their Linux boxes as the GNU toolchain. Or do you suggest we change the name of the OS depending on exactly what use we put it to? And how difficult is it to replace the GNU tools with their BSD equivalents?
No, either we acknowledge all the different sources for the OS, or we quit being childish and immature about this and just call the whole conglomeration "Linux", no matter what pieces happen to reside on each particular instance.