Yeah. It seems he's confusing rank with notation scale. Like if the skills of both the first and the last didn't change.
No, no, no. He makes a very valid point that absolut rank (top10) is less significant than percentual rank (in the top 1%).
Independant of any fluctuation due to change in skill, with more contestants, absolut rank on average will decrease, while percentual rank will not. (10 contestant -> average absolut rank = 5.5, 100 contestants -> average absolut rank = 50.5, average percentual rank = 50% in both cases)
So, the professor did get it right.
A question he doesnt rise is if the increase in participation is only by non-us teams or if there is a similar increase in us teams too. In the later case, there shouldn't be a significant decrease in absolut rank. However, it may be that most us schools already participated 8 years ago, so that the new participants are almost exclusivly non-us.
Why would they want that? If they are just going to be hiring visa'd employees, why would they want to increase the number of capable usa workers?
Very easy : economics 101 : The more offer, the lower the price.
So they try to increase the offer as much as possible, by increasing "imports" (H1B) and local "production" (education). So that they can lower IT salaries even more.
Even if the H1B works cheaper, he has heigher administration costs than the usa worker. So increasing the number of usa workers might get them usa worker willing to accept the same salary as an H1B, without the overhead administration cost.
Seriously, when I still lived in Germany (where we do have a national ID card since as long as I live), I tried to open a bank account, but my ID was expired. The bank's employee seriously told me that because of that, I did not exist for the bank. (To create the account, I had to get my birth certificate, which I think is pretty stupid, as it only proves that someone with my name was born, not that I am this person...)
The most probably culprit I can think of are file locks.
In Windows, it is impossible to replace a file in use, so when an update touches a dll that is used by whatever else process, Windows has to reboot to get rid of the lock, replace the file on reboot, and continue.
Unix, however, lets you replace any file. The old version stays still on disk as long as an application has it open, so all running applications will continue to work just fine. They will use the new file as soon as they are restarted. This way, I can replace every library in the system without having to reboot.
The Windows approach has advantages too. I could do a security upgrade on my ssl-library, and if I dont restart sshd, sshd will still use the old, insecure library, and this, till it is restarted.
Personally, I prefere the Unix way. After all, other tools can restart applications after library updates, so this shouldn't be enforced by the OS.
Given the number of 787 orders (Over 230) vs. A380 (150), it seems that there are more companies that agree with Boeing's vision of Point-to-Point vs. big hub systems.
Well, of course you need less big planes as small ones.
As the 787 carries 217, 257 or 289 passengers and the A380 typically 555, the numbers become : over 66470 (230*289) seats ordered for the Boeing 787 and 83250 for the A380. Seen this way, Airbus has the edge;)
Personally, I think that it isnt yet decided which company did the right bet. Probably both the 787 and the A380 will both be popular. However, IMHO, the 747 is dead.
> One of the reasons BK kept their stuff closed was so they could take accountability if anything went wrong and now exactly how every client was accessing it.
Yeah, I know and I think it is bullshit. Nobody should rely on the client to be nice.
A while ago, any computer running ICQ could simply be shot down by a wrongly formatted package that ICQ would parse and break on it and (in the days of Windows 9x) take the OS with it.
From what I read, BitKeeper has the same problem : a client can completly trash the repository if it doesnt respect the protocol. Which I call slopy design. I client shouldnt be able to make more damage than the user has rights and HEY! it's a f*cking version control system. I DEMAND that any change done by any client can be reversed easly (after all, this is what I use a VCS for).
For me, it looks like BitKeeper has a HUGE reliability problem in that it relies far too much on clients respecting the protocol and that they cry out that loud to avoid people from looking closer at this design problem.
Well, some people do want the newest features because they think they need them. Of course, this also gives plenty of trouble.
Once, I worked on a company that had a customer that complained about our application not working on Oracle Application Server. After I looked at it and found out that they used the beta version, management told me to get back to work and told the customer that we do not support our product on other companies betas. And I fully understood the choice of the customer, as the OAS beta version had much more interesting features, features that our product did use. But I agree with management. We cannot support our product on other people's betas.
So, when you use beta software, be prepared to loose support not only for the beta application, but for all applications used with it.
"Spyware is a catchall term used to describe programs that stealthily install themselves on computers."
What legitimate use has software that doesn't inform about it presence -- let alone hides it?
Well, video codex come to my mind, they are stealthily downloaded and installed by the media player.
And most spyware doesnt install so stealthily, at one point the user has to click yes on a dialog (a very obscure dialog it is). So a lawyer could always argue that the installation wasnt stealthy and that the product therefor isnt spyware.
Dispite taking screenshots as "Just Some Guy" noticed, there are tools out there that simply take security out of an PDF.
It is not that difficult, I could even do it myself, it is, however, copyright infriction (and possible DMCA too) as Adobe license states that a tool that uses the PDF specification must obey the security wishes of the document. But these are just wishes : Gentle decoding program, please do not let the user print me. But it's up to the decoding program to respect these or not.
And as Perky Goth noted, as there are open source viewers, breaking your "security" is as simple as altering a few lines in the sourcecode. (like is_printable = read_is_printable(file); to is_printable = true; )
I dont know XMP, but I'm pretty sure that it is easy to alter it too.
So your "security" comes down to crippling the image by adding a watermark and lowering the quality (PDFs have a limited quality for images).
Also, you might catch the casual user that would have liked to print your image but then doesnt know that there is a way to ignore the files wishes or for whom the efford to find a way to ignore them is too much.
That being said, the feature is nice, it is a forceful reminder to the user that they are transgressing the authors wishes, and breaking the licence included in the document if they circumvent it.
But NEVER rely on it and be aware that it can be very easly ignored.
The parent is completly right, code is almost never published in CS, so it cannot be verified.
And unfortunally, as I discover the more and more, the code done in most research papers is VERY bad.
Usually, a paper come to be: - I have this great idea that we could guess the background color based the user. - Can this be done on a computer? - If (user == "me") bg = red; else bg = gray; - Yes, it can! - Write a long paper explaining all the benefits of personlized background color - Write cool statistics : in 75% of all cases our algorithm correctly guesses the preferred bg (two of my friends like gray, a third doesnt, I like red, so 3/4 = 75%, but I wont publish such unimportent details as the number of subjects) - Publish
Unfortunally, this is much closer to reality than fiction:( Code done for an article is rarely more than a proof-of-concept and almost never reusable. Even if the article is about a real application, the code is written for this application, ignoring all rules of good design (I have right before my eyes a class with 95(!) fields) There was a paper about a "framework", but when I got the code, it didnt even compile as it was so closely interweaved with the applications code that it wont run without it.
Oh and if I publish the name of the guys, I will get in big trubble as I'm just a crazy master student without any publication and the authors of the papers describing the system a well-established professor with lots of published articles and good connections.
So, IMNSHO CS research is in BIG trubble, politics have become more important than scientific merrit, and the number (not the content) of published articles is the most important benchmark. For myself, I'll get out of it as soon as I finish my master and get a job to do some real work.
From his introduction, he seams uninformed. Off course, I'm only an amateur, so perhaps I'm missing something.
He says : "The fundamental reason for the tension between quantum mechanics and GR is the lack of a universal time in GR."
However, according to wikipedia, the standard model is "consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity." and "Special relativity holds that events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference need not be simultaneous in another frame of reference."
So, the standard model is a (well accepted) way to make quantum theory work without an universal time and therefor I think that this guy doesnt really know what he's writing about.
If I understand the article correctly, he says that quantum mechanics wont work in a black hole (which is true) and that if quantum mechanics are always true, there must be something else. He then constructs his model of dark matter stars.
The main problem that I see with this is that, while it is well-known that general relativity and quantum mechanics dont work toghether, he chooses to use only quantum mechanics to explain a black hole. However, quantum mechanics work badly with gravity and even worse with high gravity, so I think his article is pointless.
I now get 5 spam messages a day (and increasingly more) on an account that was strictly "Friends only". I do have this account for over 7 years now, so 5 messages a day is not that bad, but still, and whats really worrying me it that's slowly increasing. (Up from 2 messages/day a year ago.)
Reason : Some non-geek friends that fall for some social network scam (sms.ac, hi5.com, etc) and people who forward every stupid chainmail of the net.
So I guess, whatever I do, eventually the adress will fall into spammers hands.
Having said that, my university's account is still spam-free since 6 years, but I think that they run a spam-filter, so I dont know if it's really spam-free or not. (AND I use my university's account only for university related friends, most of whom are in CS.)
When you press a mouse button, a "Mouse-Buttom-Down" event is send to the current application. What the application does with it is up to it, but SOMETHING DOES happen, even if you dont see any visual effect.
However, pressing a mouse button even DOES something visual. Pressing the left buttom puts the mouse in "mark-mode", as soon as you move your mouse, you will see that text gets selected. And IIRC, pressing (not releasing) the right mouse buttom opens the context menu, even on MS Windows.
On my WM (pekwm), pressing (yes only pressing) a mouse button while the pointer is over the desktop opens a menu.
If your biometric is compromised (i.e. somebody gets your fingerprint and makes a copy of it on a special material that is read by fingerprint readers), it is impossible to change the biometric.
Also, your biometric is the same for all systems you use it in.
Biometrics add only medium level security to a system. But as they are hassle-free (if correctly implemented), they make a nice addition anyway. NEVER USE BIOMETRICS ALONE, unless medium security is suffisant.
You say that a disclaimer may make it impossible for people to claim "I didnt know" in court.
But the main problem with these disclaimers is that they try to add restrictions on the way you may use the email. And they cannot do this. And when the disclaimer is essentially b*llsh*t, people CAN claim in court : "Well, there where these 41 unenforcable claims, how could I know that the 42th was enforcable?"
You may be right over point a), but this applies only to rights you already have over your email and the ONLY right you have over an (unsolicited) email is copyright (and then again, not necessarly in all countries), so the only disclaimer you can add is: "Copyright 2004 by M.E., reproduction in whole or in part (including forwarding or quoting) of this message without permission is prohibited, unless the copyright laws of your country explicitly allow it."
Of course, if the email isnt unsolicited, stronger rights may exist (trade secrets, NDA,...) but these result from real, signed contracts, NOT from some email-disclaimers.
IANAL; and you'll be foolish to use my disclaimer, it's just an illustration.
> The stuff that's there is classified. We don't have any viable reason to snoop around there.
RTFA, the guys were NOT IN the base, they were outside of it on PUBLIC land. (nothing classified there)
There is no law that prohibits you from walking close to a base on PUBLIC land. If there would have been a sign : "governement property, keep out", then these guys would have been in trouble. But they were on PUBLIC land and found these sensors lying there. And you have the right to snoop around on PUBLIC land.
If the governement was so concerned about secrecy, they could just build the fence somes miles larger. But instead, they choose to track everybody that comes close to the base.
I agree that opening a device marked : "governement property" is probably a little bit off, but then again, this wasnt enough to get them convicted, they had to charge them with the disappearence of one of the devices. (That they probably removed themself as they didnt find the device in this guys house)
> just how much more productive is somebody working on Open Source
Well, this is impossible to mesure. As programming is mainly a creative activity, you cannot mesure productivity per hour. A programmer doesnt only work while typing in a text editor, but also in the bus/his car, while thinking about how to resolve a bug. And this "off-the-keyboard" activity is impossible to track accurately. Especially as a motivated programmer will probably have more "off-the-keyboard" activity then a payed drone who doesnt identify with his programm. So to compare productivity, the best you can do is compare people who work full-time and compare productivity per day. As people who work full-time on an open source project are most likely paid to do so, a true comparision between the occasional volunteer and a payed employee is impossible.
However, a comparision between employeea who choose their project freely and normal employees who were ordered to do one would be interesting.
> a business which allows its employees to work on whichever projects they choose.
Google allows (and encourages) it's employees to work part of their time (10% IIRC) on whatever they want. Almost everything Google offers (beside standard search) actually started as such a "pet project".
Instead we will use mind-altering drugs/implanted computer chips to "reprogram" you.
BTW, your vision of the future is disturbing and unacceptable. I'm shure it makes you feel bad too. I garantuee you that this wont happen. Trust us. Just take this blue pill and everything will be fine...
Anyway, today a worm completly took over my universities network. We are the CS-Departement, we know what were doing (well, we still dont use Linux, I'm trying to convince them but...) and we keep our machines up-to-date.
It spreads by a file called ascdl.exe through a remotely exploitable vulnerability. Nobody knows about this Virus (neither Symmantec, nor Google) and it spreads fast. When we delete the file, it is back a few minutes later. So I guess it may use one of these new exploits.
BTW, the internet is slow today and I guess it is this baby. It will probably infect the better part of vulnerable machines before it even has a name. I just hope it doesnt do anything nasty.
Hopefully by tomorrow AV Vendors will have analysed it and issued an update, but I predict it to become REALLY BIG (potentially bigger than Blaster).
Oh, and it changes the WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts - file, so that you can no longer contact sites of AV Vendors and Nortons LiveUpdate is blocked too. So once you catch it, you cannot get rid of it because you cannot download the new signature file. You have to remove it manually (or it least edit the hosts-file, but who knows about it?). So the bigger part of the population will continue to have it and their computers will no longer update the definition list.
Again, I dont know if it uses one of the new vulnerabilities, but by the speed this baby spreads and by blocking LiveUpdate this is gonna be HUGE.
So if a process called ascdl.exe suddenly uses 50% of your CPU, KILL IT!
More seriously, I worked at a place where we had to test a new rack for our server farm. It was one (1) Dell rack and running in our office for two weeks or so... While it was somewhat cool to have a rack in your office;-), it was VERY noisy, we had problems to communicate. Whenever we switched it off, it was a huge relief. These things are build to run in a separated room, 24/7 under maximum load. So cooling is the first priority, while noise reduction is a non-issue.
You definitly DONT want to be with multiple racks in the same room for long if you can avoid it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. It seems he's confusing rank with notation scale. Like if the skills of both the first and the last didn't change.
No, no, no. He makes a very valid point that absolut rank (top10) is less significant than percentual rank (in the top 1%).
Independant of any fluctuation due to change in skill, with more contestants, absolut rank on average will decrease, while percentual rank will not. (10 contestant -> average absolut rank = 5.5, 100 contestants -> average absolut rank = 50.5, average percentual rank = 50% in both cases)
So, the professor did get it right.
A question he doesnt rise is if the increase in participation is only by non-us teams or if there is a similar increase in us teams too. In the later case, there shouldn't be a significant decrease in absolut rank. However, it may be that most us schools already participated 8 years ago, so that the new participants are almost exclusivly non-us.
Why would they want that? If they are just going to be hiring visa'd employees, why would they want to increase the number of capable usa workers?
Very easy : economics 101 : The more offer, the lower the price.
So they try to increase the offer as much as possible, by increasing "imports" (H1B) and local "production" (education). So that they can lower IT salaries even more.
Even if the H1B works cheaper, he has heigher administration costs than the usa worker. So increasing the number of usa workers might get them usa worker willing to accept the same salary as an H1B, without the overhead administration cost.
Why else would they name their new OS after a super-villain?
Yes, you don't exist.
...)
Seriously, when I still lived in Germany (where we do have a national ID card since as long as I live), I tried to open a bank account, but my ID was expired. The bank's employee seriously told me that because of that, I did not exist for the bank.
(To create the account, I had to get my birth certificate, which I think is pretty stupid, as it only proves that someone with my name was born, not that I am this person
The most probably culprit I can think of are file locks.
In Windows, it is impossible to replace a file in use, so when an update touches a dll that is used by whatever else process, Windows has to reboot to get rid of the lock, replace the file on reboot, and continue.
Unix, however, lets you replace any file. The old version stays still on disk as long as an application has it open, so all running applications will continue to work just fine. They will use the new file as soon as they are restarted. This way, I can replace every library in the system without having to reboot.
The Windows approach has advantages too. I could do a security upgrade on my ssl-library, and if I dont restart sshd, sshd will still use the old, insecure library, and this, till it is restarted.
Personally, I prefere the Unix way. After all, other tools can restart applications after library updates, so this shouldn't be enforced by the OS.
Well, I should no longer expect news from Slashdot but :
:a spx?tr_id=735
this is almost the same content as his SIGMOD 2004 speech,
which is available since April 2004
http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.
How is the refurbishing of an one year old article news?
(And, BTW, I find the keynote speech better structured then the refurbishment)
Well, of course you need less big planes as small ones.
As the 787 carries 217, 257 or 289 passengers and the A380 typically 555, the numbers become : over 66470 (230*289) seats ordered for the Boeing 787 and 83250 for the A380. Seen this way, Airbus has the edge ;)
Personally, I think that it isnt yet decided which company did the right bet. Probably both the 787 and the A380 will both be popular. However, IMHO, the 747 is dead.
> One of the reasons BK kept their stuff closed was so they could take accountability if anything went wrong and now exactly how every client was accessing it.
Yeah, I know and I think it is bullshit.
Nobody should rely on the client to be nice.
A while ago, any computer running ICQ could simply be shot down by a wrongly formatted package that ICQ would parse and break on it and (in the days of Windows 9x) take the OS with it.
From what I read, BitKeeper has the same problem : a client can completly trash the repository if it doesnt respect the protocol. Which I call slopy design.
I client shouldnt be able to make more damage than the user has rights and HEY! it's a f*cking version control system. I DEMAND that any change done by any client can be reversed easly (after all, this is what I use a VCS for).
For me, it looks like BitKeeper has a HUGE reliability problem in that it relies far too much on clients respecting the protocol and that they cry out that loud to avoid people from looking closer at this design problem.
Well, some people do want the newest features because they think they need them.
Of course, this also gives plenty of trouble.
Once, I worked on a company that had a customer that complained about our application not working on Oracle Application Server. After I looked at it and found out that they used the beta version, management told me to get back to work and told the customer that we do not support our product on other companies betas.
And I fully understood the choice of the customer, as the OAS beta version had much more interesting features, features that our product did use. But I agree with management. We cannot support our product on other people's betas.
So, when you use beta software, be prepared to loose support not only for the beta application, but for all applications used with it.
Well, video codex come to my mind, they are stealthily downloaded and installed by the media player.
And most spyware doesnt install so stealthily, at one point the user has to click yes on a dialog (a very obscure dialog it is). So a lawyer could always argue that the installation wasnt stealthy and that the product therefor isnt spyware.
Dispite taking screenshots as "Just Some Guy" noticed, there are tools out there that simply take security out of an PDF.
It is not that difficult, I could even do it myself, it is, however, copyright infriction (and possible DMCA too) as Adobe license states that a tool that uses the PDF specification must obey the security wishes of the document.
But these are just wishes : Gentle decoding program, please do not let the user print me.
But it's up to the decoding program to respect these or not.
And as Perky Goth noted, as there are open source viewers, breaking your "security" is as simple as altering a few lines in the sourcecode.
(like is_printable = read_is_printable(file); to is_printable = true; )
I dont know XMP, but I'm pretty sure that it is easy to alter it too.
So your "security" comes down to crippling the image by adding a watermark and lowering the quality (PDFs have a limited quality for images).
Also, you might catch the casual user that would have liked to print your image but then doesnt know that there is a way to ignore the files wishes or for whom the efford to find a way to ignore them is too much.
That being said, the feature is nice, it is a forceful reminder to the user that they are transgressing the authors wishes, and breaking the licence included in the document if they circumvent it.
But NEVER rely on it and be aware that it can be very easly ignored.
The parent is completly right, code is almost never published in CS, so it cannot be verified.
:
:(
And unfortunally, as I discover the more and more, the code done in most research papers is VERY bad.
Usually, a paper come to be
- I have this great idea that we could guess the background color based the user.
- Can this be done on a computer?
- If (user == "me") bg = red; else bg = gray;
- Yes, it can!
- Write a long paper explaining all the benefits of personlized background color
- Write cool statistics : in 75% of all cases our algorithm correctly guesses the preferred bg (two of my friends like gray, a third doesnt, I like red, so 3/4 = 75%, but I wont publish such unimportent details as the number of subjects)
- Publish
Unfortunally, this is much closer to reality than fiction
Code done for an article is rarely more than a proof-of-concept and almost never reusable. Even if the article is about a real application, the code is written for this application, ignoring all rules of good design (I have right before my eyes a class with 95(!) fields)
There was a paper about a "framework", but when I got the code, it didnt even compile as it was so closely interweaved with the applications code that it wont run without it.
Oh and if I publish the name of the guys, I will get in big trubble as I'm just a crazy master student without any publication and the authors of the papers describing the system a well-established professor with lots of published articles and good connections.
So, IMNSHO CS research is in BIG trubble, politics have become more important than scientific merrit, and the number (not the content) of published articles is the most important benchmark.
For myself, I'll get out of it as soon as I finish my master and get a job to do some real work.
Thanks for the link to the submission.
From his introduction, he seams uninformed. Off course, I'm only an amateur, so perhaps I'm missing something.
He says : "The fundamental reason for the tension between quantum mechanics and GR is the lack of a universal time in GR."
However, according to wikipedia, the standard model is "consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity." and "Special relativity holds that events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference need not be simultaneous in another frame of reference."
So, the standard model is a (well accepted) way to make quantum theory work without an universal time and therefor I think that this guy doesnt really know what he's writing about.
If I understand the article correctly, he says that quantum mechanics wont work in a black hole (which is true) and that if quantum mechanics are always true, there must be something else. He then constructs his model of dark matter stars.
The main problem that I see with this is that, while it is well-known that general relativity and quantum mechanics dont work toghether, he chooses to use only quantum mechanics to explain a black hole. However, quantum mechanics work badly with gravity and even worse with high gravity, so I think his article is pointless.
I did this and :
While it helps alot, it doesnt work.
I now get 5 spam messages a day (and increasingly more) on an account that was strictly "Friends only". I do have this account for over 7 years now, so 5 messages a day is not that bad, but still, and whats really worrying me it that's slowly increasing. (Up from 2 messages/day a year ago.)
Reason : Some non-geek friends that fall for some social network scam (sms.ac, hi5.com, etc) and people who forward every stupid chainmail of the net.
So I guess, whatever I do, eventually the adress will fall into spammers hands.
Having said that, my university's account is still spam-free since 6 years, but I think that they run a spam-filter, so I dont know if it's really spam-free or not. (AND I use my university's account only for university related friends, most of whom are in CS.)
When you press a mouse button, a "Mouse-Buttom-Down" event is send to the current application. What the application does with it is up to it, but SOMETHING DOES happen, even if you dont see any visual effect.
However, pressing a mouse button even DOES something visual.
Pressing the left buttom puts the mouse in "mark-mode", as soon as you move your mouse, you will see that text gets selected.
And IIRC, pressing (not releasing) the right mouse buttom opens the context menu, even on MS Windows.
On my WM (pekwm), pressing (yes only pressing) a mouse button while the pointer is over the desktop opens a menu.
So this behavior DOES exist.
Well, the principle is old,
doing it on a static (metronome on a bar counter) or a predictible (like a bikes wheel) device is easy.
(BTW, the metronome version is available at ThinkGeek if you want it now)
What's new it that it mesures your (irregular) arm movements and adapts to them. Then again, we'll have to see how well it'll do in real.
If your biometric is compromised (i.e. somebody gets your fingerprint and makes a copy of it on a special material that is read by fingerprint readers), it is impossible to change the biometric.
Also, your biometric is the same for all systems you use it in.
Biometrics add only medium level security to a system. But as they are hassle-free (if correctly implemented), they make a nice addition anyway.
NEVER USE BIOMETRICS ALONE, unless medium security is suffisant.
You say that a disclaimer may make it impossible for people to claim "I didnt know" in court.
:
...) but these result from real, signed contracts, NOT from some email-disclaimers.
But the main problem with these disclaimers is that they try to add restrictions on the way you may use the email.
And they cannot do this.
And when the disclaimer is essentially b*llsh*t, people CAN claim in court : "Well, there where these 41 unenforcable claims, how could I know that the 42th was enforcable?"
You may be right over point a), but this applies only to rights you already have over your email and the ONLY right you have over an (unsolicited) email is copyright (and then again, not necessarly in all countries), so the only disclaimer you can add is
"Copyright 2004 by M.E., reproduction in whole or in part (including forwarding or quoting) of this message without permission is prohibited, unless the copyright laws of your country explicitly allow it."
Of course, if the email isnt unsolicited, stronger rights may exist (trade secrets, NDA,
IANAL; and you'll be foolish to use my disclaimer, it's just an illustration.
The author of the article forwarded the disclaimer to his lawyer and asked him for legal advice.
His LAWYER said it had no legal meaning.
So this really IS legal advise and not only common sense.
> The stuff that's there is classified. We don't have any viable reason to snoop around there.
RTFA, the guys were NOT IN the base, they were outside of it on PUBLIC land. (nothing classified there)
There is no law that prohibits you from walking close to a base on PUBLIC land. If there would have been a sign : "governement property, keep out", then these guys would have been in trouble. But they were on PUBLIC land and found these sensors lying there. And you have the right to snoop around on PUBLIC land.
If the governement was so concerned about secrecy, they could just build the fence somes miles larger. But instead, they choose to track everybody that comes close to the base.
I agree that opening a device marked : "governement property" is probably a little bit off, but then again, this wasnt enough to get them convicted, they had to charge them with the disappearence of one of the devices. (That they probably removed themself as they didnt find the device in this guys house)
> just how much more productive is somebody working on Open Source
Well, this is impossible to mesure. As programming is mainly a creative activity, you cannot mesure productivity per hour.
A programmer doesnt only work while typing in a text editor, but also in the bus/his car, while thinking about how to resolve a bug. And this "off-the-keyboard" activity is impossible to track accurately. Especially as a motivated programmer will probably have more "off-the-keyboard" activity then a payed drone who doesnt identify with his programm.
So to compare productivity, the best you can do is compare people who work full-time and compare productivity per day. As people who work full-time on an open source project are most likely paid to do so, a true comparision between the occasional volunteer and a payed employee is impossible.
However, a comparision between employeea who choose their project freely and normal employees who were ordered to do one would be interesting.
> a business which allows its employees to work on whichever projects they choose.
Google allows (and encourages) it's employees to work part of their time (10% IIRC) on whatever they want.
Almost everything Google offers (beside standard search) actually started as such a "pet project".
There will be no jail in the future.
...
Instead we will use mind-altering drugs/implanted computer chips to "reprogram" you.
BTW, your vision of the future is disturbing and unacceptable. I'm shure it makes you feel bad too. I garantuee you that this wont happen. Trust us. Just take this blue pill and everything will be fine
Digital content lasts for 5 years or forever, whatever comes first.
Well, maybe.
...) and we keep our machines up-to-date.
Anyway, today a worm completly took over my universities network.
We are the CS-Departement, we know what were doing (well, we still dont use Linux, I'm trying to convince them but
It spreads by a file called ascdl.exe through a remotely exploitable vulnerability. Nobody knows about this Virus (neither Symmantec, nor Google) and it spreads fast. When we delete the file, it is back a few minutes later. So I guess it may use one of these new exploits.
BTW, the internet is slow today and I guess it is this baby. It will probably infect the better part of vulnerable machines before it even has a name. I just hope it doesnt do anything nasty.
Hopefully by tomorrow AV Vendors will have analysed it and issued an update, but I predict it to become REALLY BIG (potentially bigger than Blaster).
Oh, and it changes the WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts - file, so that you can no longer contact sites of AV Vendors and Nortons LiveUpdate is blocked too. So once you catch it, you cannot get rid of it because you cannot download the new signature file. You have to remove it manually (or it least edit the hosts-file, but who knows about it?). So the bigger part of the population will continue to have it and their computers will no longer update the definition list.
Again, I dont know if it uses one of the new vulnerabilities, but by the speed this baby spreads and by blocking LiveUpdate this is gonna be HUGE.
So if a process called ascdl.exe suddenly uses 50% of your CPU, KILL IT!
Mod parent ... oh, he is already at 5.
... ;-), it was VERY noisy, we had problems to communicate. Whenever we switched it off, it was a huge relief.
More seriously, I worked at a place where we had to test a new rack for our server farm.
It was one (1) Dell rack and running in our office for two weeks or so
While it was somewhat cool to have a rack in your office
These things are build to run in a separated room, 24/7 under maximum load. So cooling is the first priority, while noise reduction is a non-issue.
You definitly DONT want to be with multiple racks in the same room for long if you can avoid it.