I think if he was hedging his bets, he wouldn't be making a quote like "this is starting to become a tradition." It occurred to me after I wrote the parent post that perhaps Bruce is trying to come up with something just flagrant enough to bait the MPAA (or whoever) into hauling him into court so he can use whatever legal defense he's already planned out to shut down the DMCA. If so, I wish him much luck....
Bruce is a lawyer so I figure if he says he's violating the DMCA, he should know. Other than that....you might pay some attention to the fact that the MPAA seems to like to haul people into court who are only linking to information about "violating" the DMCA, let alone actually doing so, so that technical consideration doesn't matter anyway.
So now you guys in the US have someone in the government that is fighting windmills.
Scarcely news here in the US I'm afraid. Then again...I imagine politicians and their lackeys everywhere occaisionally tilt at windmills, so we're not likely alone in that category. I do wish people would consider the effect on their careers and reputations before going off the deep end spouting apocalyptic FUD.
I don't think we should be rosy about everything, but I do think some sanity should be present before carrying reports of doom far and wide.
I'd guess it would be 802.11 wireless, ya know? kinda tough to walk around the house with a cat5 hangin out your stomach...
I guess I can see where someone might think monitoring a pacemaker would be a good idea, but the way I figure, if I needed one I wouldn't want people to be able to monitor it...can you imagine?:
wife: Bob's pacemaker is on the fritz!
son: let's up the life insurance policy real quick and not report it
I guess I could argue against things point by point but this is pure and simple FUD. To quote a line from The Ten Commandments, "Let him rave on that men may know him mad."
I place less value on minimizing keystrokes than I do on being able to do something without having to figure out all the conversions necessary to get it done. Call it a weakness or whatever, but I find I like a weakly typed language like Perl for this reason.
Of course, it may very well be that using Perl is like going over to the dark side...I don't know. I do know that after a year and a half programming nothing but Perl that it was really tough to do C, let alone sit down with Java or Ada.
And it isn't so much a cry of "why can't ____ be more like Perl." As I said before, I understand the reason for many of the methods used in Ada programming, even if a little verbose. It certainly makes the code more readable, and I like the ability to create procedures within procedures. However, my two biggest gripes with Ada are its typecasting and its I/O routines because you can't mix types.
The argument one of my profs used about the I/O was that no language let you do multiple types in a print statement except for C, which he said was a special case. He said C++'s cout was really a series of different output streams depending on type. That's fine to say, but C, C++, and Perl all let you specify multiple types for output at least in the same command, even if they handle it behind the scenes for you.
Perhaps I'm settling for the 'Laziness' virtue here, but I wonder if it's unreasonable to expect that sort of ease of use in other languages.
that doesn't work so good if you are trying to divide 1 by 3, for example. Besides which, that's a hack anyway. The whole point is that Ada makes the doable stuff hard and the hard stuff impossible (rather the opposite of Perl). I guess my whole philosophy of programming boils down to "do it the easiest, and most easily documentable way." I don't do hacks, understand, but I see nothing wrong with
I wasn't thinking about proper software design when I made that statement. I was thinking about the relative ease of use with respect to different programming languages. Perl is like a surgeon's kit. You can do all sorts of neat and clever things with it, but if you mess up even a little bit, you got a big mess. Ada is more like a construction worker's toolbelt. You have lots of little safety devices attached to keep you from maiming yourself, but it also precludes you from doing create or clever work. When even simple typecasting is a chore, then a language qualifies as anal.
yeah, I heard a rumor that Ada83 sucked, but having only played with Ada95 I can't confirm or deny that rumor. Note, too that all of my experience was writing assignments for class, so we're talking about trivial things here (although there was the infamous bank system project that when completed had a good 30 files associated with it...'course I got so lost trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, let alone how to do it, all along with my other homework, that I failed the class). If I had that bad of an experience with contrived Ada programs....what's the real world like? *shudder* No wonder they pay mid-to-high 6 figure salaries to program Ada....
I had the (dis?)pleasure of learning Ada as the required language in 4 years at Auburn University's Computer Science department. While what you say is quite true (from my observation) my two biggest objections to it were verbosity and strong typing. It's really, really annoying to have to convert, say, and int to a float through a function call. I'm not even asking for a Perl-style eval{} here...I just want the ability to declare something as an int with value 3, divide it in half, and reassign the value back so it is now a float 1.5....I also want the ability to get a newline without having to type in 'Newline;' or 'Ada.Text_IO.Newline;'. For what it's worth.
Until that time...I write Perl code all day long in web apps (nobody dies if your web app goes kaput).
I'm not sure Ada is small and clean either, and I had 4 years of it at Auburn University since that was the required language for data structures and algorithms classes. They alleged that Ada was bullet proof as a language...that it never crashed, dumped core, etc., so made perfect sense for use in avionics. Mind, we were getting government contracts, so it's entirely possible that they were spouting the party line.
At any rate, my observations are as follow: First, the Ada syntax was based on the Pascal syntax (they state this in the textbooks). Second, it is almost as anal as Java. Third, you may write a program in Ada but if you use Gnat to generate your code, it's getting translated to C anyway, so theoretically your bullet proof code just developed some vulnerabilities.
I guess Ada has its uses, but I heard recently that even the DoD has stopped requiring its use.
*sigh* I hope you're trying to be funny. If not,... Well the F22 is the US' next-generation fighter. It's supposed to have all the stealth technology of the F119 and B2 and all of the maneuverability of the F16. Basically it's a very droolable, expensive toy for the government to spend $$$ on...
I find a certain appeal to the old boxy Volvos. The new ones that look like a Volvo-Ford hybrid I don't care for (especially the ones that look like a cross between a wagon and a mini SUV).
RIP Volvo. You made good cars until the '90s, then sold out to Fix or repair daily.
Yeah, but as you and I both know, Americans still seem not to know what that little stick on the left side of the steering wheel is for.
I hate it when I signal and start to merge into a lane and some idiot decides to merge without signalling. I particularly hate it when they're going slower and they're in front, or they're going faster and they're behind.
Then again....I grew up driving in Alabama where someone once jested that the double yellow lines are 'racing stripes.'
240 was the best series they ever built. I had a 91 240 sedan as a graduation gift...would still have it were it not for a bit of carelessness one Sunday morning that took me through a red light.
The parents still have a 760 wagon and a 240 sedan, and they recently bought another Volvo (don't know the model) for a younger brother. Good, solid, pre-Ford cars.
I did talk to one of the sales agents at Weaver Brothers Volvo in Raleigh who told me Ford was leaving Volvo autonomous when it came to design and that if anything Ford was using Volvo's designs. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but that's the word from the company.
The maintenance guy at my apartment shared me this story:
It seems his buddy and his buddy's girlfriend were driving down the road. The buddy was drinking and driving, but this being the south, that sort of thing is common. In his mirror he sees blue lights flashing, so he hands his bottle to his girlfriend and says "peel off the label." She says "you can't fool a cop by just peeling the label off!" He replies "just peel it off."
So he pulls over. As the cop walks up his girlfriend gives him the label. The cop leans in and sniffs in the car, then says "are you drinking?" Slapping the label on his shoulder, he says "No, I'm on the patch."
I have to stick up for us Volvo drivers. I've seen worse driving by folks in Japanese sportscars and clunker American boats than I have Volvo drivers. The folks in the sportscars fall into two classes: those who try to use raw speed on the interstate, and those who bought a sporty looking car that they're afraid to use. The folks in the beaters all seem to be driving 10 under in the fast lane.
Most of the Volvos I've seen are driving smoothly in traffic. They're usually soccer moms in V, 7, and 9 series wagons and sedans.
Of course, I concede you could have been driving behind me....I can milk my 740 wagon for all it's worth. But that's not because I feel safe and secure in a Volvo so that I can run people over. That's because I'm an aggressive driver who happens to like Volvos.
Then again, some people don't appreciate fine cars...I like my Volvo because I can get a little performance out of it, it is rock solid, and if there happens to be a problem, I do have a nice safety net. If I was into more performance, I'd be eyeing a BMW.....
Maybe you missed the fact that Volvo sold its light car division to Ford something like 4-5 years ago. I love my 740 wagon, and you could probably pursuade me to set foot in a C70 convertible, but I really worry about the safety of a Volvo made by Ford....
Somehow whenever I hear "Microsoft" and "getting involved with" something in the same sentence, I get real nervous. Maybe its the whole embrace and hijack^h^h^h^h^h^hextend thing, but it seriously bothers me.
The worst part of a scenario where they use IP they acquired to weasel more IP out of the project is that presently they own everything and block people who don't slave for them from using it.
I realize Microsoft is in business to make money, but I have a hard time with the way they seem to make it by throwing their weight around and extorting money from other people. It's the old 800lb gorilla analogy.
My primary point, if you will reread the post wasn't "Because of the Terrorists." It was "Because of Irresponsible People" of which both Arab and domestic terrorists are a subset. (The Murrah building was blown up by white paramilitary Americans, not Arab terrorists, remember?).
I merely pointed two glaring examples of a place where tracking the vehicle would have alerted the agency that its vehicle was somewhere other than agreed on.
I disagree with you. Municipalities (especially small, backwoods ones) have an incentive to keep ticketing because it brings in revenue from outsiders. How many tales have you heard about the corrupt local cop in a po-dunk town who pulls over folks doing 5 over and charges them with doing 15 over? And if they get to traffic court, the judge makes them pay anyway.
I'm not sure what the optimal solution is for speed limits. I think a lot of them are set arbitrarily and should be adjusted up or down based on saftey (e.g., flat out on the interstate, I see no problem with 90, but some neighborhood streets really shouldn't be 35).
Gee....maybe you should try opening a rental company and see what happens to *your* property. These guys aren't doing it to snoop on you (they'd install bugs and cameras if they really cared that much; chances are you only matter to them insofar as they get paid and the vehicle comes back intact and in contract). Speeding increases the chances of an accident, and is hard on the car. Leaving the agreed upon travel zone may cause insurance and registration problems. Enforcing the terms of a contract presented by the rental company and signed by the driver is well within their legal rights, and in my judgement constitutes the action of a "reasonable and prudent" individual. That is, if they have no idea where you took the car and you did something the boys in blue don't like, it's conceivable that the rental agency would share some blame for not making a reasonable effort to monitor your actions with their vehicle.
I don't think this is the least bit invasive, and in any case, we're not talking about a constitutional right to privacy here. That is designed to keep Uncle Sam (or Dubya, your choice) from spying on private citizens. It has nothing at all to do with enforcing contractual agreements unless, as mentioned before, they've bugged or covertly filmed you (which are covered by laws).
Get real about this. Or try running your own company and finding out why they use measures like this.
Slashdot Mirror
...so....if Paul Revere was alive today, would he send out mass email saying "Microsoft is coming! Microsoft is coming!" ?
I stand corrected.
:}
Since you're on the thread, I'm curious why you're staging this...
I think if he was hedging his bets, he wouldn't be making a quote like "this is starting to become a tradition." It occurred to me after I wrote the parent post that perhaps Bruce is trying to come up with something just flagrant enough to bait the MPAA (or whoever) into hauling him into court so he can use whatever legal defense he's already planned out to shut down the DMCA. If so, I wish him much luck....
Bruce is a lawyer so I figure if he says he's violating the DMCA, he should know. Other than that....you might pay some attention to the fact that the MPAA seems to like to haul people into court who are only linking to information about "violating" the DMCA, let alone actually doing so, so that technical consideration doesn't matter anyway.
So now you guys in the US have someone in the government that is fighting windmills.
Scarcely news here in the US I'm afraid. Then again...I imagine politicians and their lackeys everywhere occaisionally tilt at windmills, so we're not likely alone in that category. I do wish people would consider the effect on their careers and reputations before going off the deep end spouting apocalyptic FUD.
I don't think we should be rosy about everything, but I do think some sanity should be present before carrying reports of doom far and wide.
I guess I can see where someone might think monitoring a pacemaker would be a good idea, but the way I figure, if I needed one I wouldn't want people to be able to monitor it...can you imagine?:
son: let's up the life insurance policy real quick and not report it
I guess I could argue against things point by point but this is pure and simple FUD. To quote a line from The Ten Commandments, "Let him rave on that men may know him mad."
I guess that makes sense....
If I currently had a use for Ada I'd ask for some sample code...unless you can think of one for the average programmer who has lost the hacking bug...
I place less value on minimizing keystrokes than I do on being able to do something without having to figure out all the conversions necessary to get it done. Call it a weakness or whatever, but I find I like a weakly typed language like Perl for this reason.
Of course, it may very well be that using Perl is like going over to the dark side...I don't know. I do know that after a year and a half programming nothing but Perl that it was really tough to do C, let alone sit down with Java or Ada.
And it isn't so much a cry of "why can't ____ be more like Perl." As I said before, I understand the reason for many of the methods used in Ada programming, even if a little verbose. It certainly makes the code more readable, and I like the ability to create procedures within procedures. However, my two biggest gripes with Ada are its typecasting and its I/O routines because you can't mix types.
The argument one of my profs used about the I/O was that no language let you do multiple types in a print statement except for C, which he said was a special case. He said C++'s cout was really a series of different output streams depending on type. That's fine to say, but C, C++, and Perl all let you specify multiple types for output at least in the same command, even if they handle it behind the scenes for you.
Perhaps I'm settling for the 'Laziness' virtue here, but I wonder if it's unreasonable to expect that sort of ease of use in other languages.
that doesn't work so good if you are trying to divide 1 by 3, for example. Besides which, that's a hack anyway. The whole point is that Ada makes the doable stuff hard and the hard stuff impossible (rather the opposite of Perl). I guess my whole philosophy of programming boils down to "do it the easiest, and most easily documentable way." I don't do hacks, understand, but I see nothing wrong with
- print (defined $_ ? "True" : "False") foreach (qw { 1 0 1 0 });
if you get my drift...I wasn't thinking about proper software design when I made that statement. I was thinking about the relative ease of use with respect to different programming languages. Perl is like a surgeon's kit. You can do all sorts of neat and clever things with it, but if you mess up even a little bit, you got a big mess. Ada is more like a construction worker's toolbelt. You have lots of little safety devices attached to keep you from maiming yourself, but it also precludes you from doing create or clever work. When even simple typecasting is a chore, then a language qualifies as anal.
yeah, I heard a rumor that Ada83 sucked, but having only played with Ada95 I can't confirm or deny that rumor. Note, too that all of my experience was writing assignments for class, so we're talking about trivial things here (although there was the infamous bank system project that when completed had a good 30 files associated with it...'course I got so lost trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, let alone how to do it, all along with my other homework, that I failed the class). If I had that bad of an experience with contrived Ada programs....what's the real world like? *shudder* No wonder they pay mid-to-high 6 figure salaries to program Ada....
I'll stick with Perl, thanks...
I had the (dis?)pleasure of learning Ada as the required language in 4 years at Auburn University's Computer Science department. While what you say is quite true (from my observation) my two biggest objections to it were verbosity and strong typing. It's really, really annoying to have to convert, say, and int to a float through a function call. I'm not even asking for a Perl-style eval{} here...I just want the ability to declare something as an int with value 3, divide it in half, and reassign the value back so it is now a float 1.5....I also want the ability to get a newline without having to type in 'Newline;' or 'Ada.Text_IO.Newline;'. For what it's worth.
Until that time...I write Perl code all day long in web apps (nobody dies if your web app goes kaput).
I'm not sure Ada is small and clean either, and I had 4 years of it at Auburn University since that was the required language for data structures and algorithms classes. They alleged that Ada was bullet proof as a language...that it never crashed, dumped core, etc., so made perfect sense for use in avionics. Mind, we were getting government contracts, so it's entirely possible that they were spouting the party line.
At any rate, my observations are as follow: First, the Ada syntax was based on the Pascal syntax (they state this in the textbooks). Second, it is almost as anal as Java. Third, you may write a program in Ada but if you use Gnat to generate your code, it's getting translated to C anyway, so theoretically your bullet proof code just developed some vulnerabilities.
I guess Ada has its uses, but I heard recently that even the DoD has stopped requiring its use.
*sigh* I hope you're trying to be funny. If not,... Well the F22 is the US' next-generation fighter. It's supposed to have all the stealth technology of the F119 and B2 and all of the maneuverability of the F16. Basically it's a very droolable, expensive toy for the government to spend $$$ on...
I find a certain appeal to the old boxy Volvos. The new ones that look like a Volvo-Ford hybrid I don't care for (especially the ones that look like a cross between a wagon and a mini SUV).
RIP Volvo. You made good cars until the '90s, then sold out to Fix or repair daily.
Yeah, but as you and I both know, Americans still seem not to know what that little stick on the left side of the steering wheel is for.
I hate it when I signal and start to merge into a lane and some idiot decides to merge without signalling. I particularly hate it when they're going slower and they're in front, or they're going faster and they're behind.
Then again....I grew up driving in Alabama where someone once jested that the double yellow lines are 'racing stripes.'
240 was the best series they ever built. I had a 91 240 sedan as a graduation gift...would still have it were it not for a bit of carelessness one Sunday morning that took me through a red light.
The parents still have a 760 wagon and a 240 sedan, and they recently bought another Volvo (don't know the model) for a younger brother. Good, solid, pre-Ford cars.
I did talk to one of the sales agents at Weaver Brothers Volvo in Raleigh who told me Ford was leaving Volvo autonomous when it came to design and that if anything Ford was using Volvo's designs. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but that's the word from the company.
The maintenance guy at my apartment shared me this story:
It seems his buddy and his buddy's girlfriend were driving down the road. The buddy was drinking and driving, but this being the south, that sort of thing is common. In his mirror he sees blue lights flashing, so he hands his bottle to his girlfriend and says "peel off the label." She says "you can't fool a cop by just peeling the label off!" He replies "just peel it off."
So he pulls over. As the cop walks up his girlfriend gives him the label. The cop leans in and sniffs in the car, then says "are you drinking?" Slapping the label on his shoulder, he says "No, I'm on the patch."
I have to stick up for us Volvo drivers. I've seen worse driving by folks in Japanese sportscars and clunker American boats than I have Volvo drivers. The folks in the sportscars fall into two classes: those who try to use raw speed on the interstate, and those who bought a sporty looking car that they're afraid to use. The folks in the beaters all seem to be driving 10 under in the fast lane.
Most of the Volvos I've seen are driving smoothly in traffic. They're usually soccer moms in V, 7, and 9 series wagons and sedans.
Of course, I concede you could have been driving behind me....I can milk my 740 wagon for all it's worth. But that's not because I feel safe and secure in a Volvo so that I can run people over. That's because I'm an aggressive driver who happens to like Volvos.
Then again, some people don't appreciate fine cars...I like my Volvo because I can get a little performance out of it, it is rock solid, and if there happens to be a problem, I do have a nice safety net. If I was into more performance, I'd be eyeing a BMW.....
Maybe you missed the fact that Volvo sold its light car division to Ford something like 4-5 years ago. I love my 740 wagon, and you could probably pursuade me to set foot in a C70 convertible, but I really worry about the safety of a Volvo made by Ford....
Somehow whenever I hear "Microsoft" and "getting involved with" something in the same sentence, I get real nervous. Maybe its the whole embrace and hijack^h^h^h^h^h^hextend thing, but it seriously bothers me.
The worst part of a scenario where they use IP they acquired to weasel more IP out of the project is that presently they own everything and block people who don't slave for them from using it.
I realize Microsoft is in business to make money, but I have a hard time with the way they seem to make it by throwing their weight around and extorting money from other people. It's the old 800lb gorilla analogy.
My primary point, if you will reread the post wasn't "Because of the Terrorists." It was "Because of Irresponsible People" of which both Arab and domestic terrorists are a subset. (The Murrah building was blown up by white paramilitary Americans, not Arab terrorists, remember?).
I merely pointed two glaring examples of a place where tracking the vehicle would have alerted the agency that its vehicle was somewhere other than agreed on.
I disagree with you. Municipalities (especially small, backwoods ones) have an incentive to keep ticketing because it brings in revenue from outsiders. How many tales have you heard about the corrupt local cop in a po-dunk town who pulls over folks doing 5 over and charges them with doing 15 over? And if they get to traffic court, the judge makes them pay anyway.
I'm not sure what the optimal solution is for speed limits. I think a lot of them are set arbitrarily and should be adjusted up or down based on saftey (e.g., flat out on the interstate, I see no problem with 90, but some neighborhood streets really shouldn't be 35).
Gee....maybe you should try opening a rental company and see what happens to *your* property. These guys aren't doing it to snoop on you (they'd install bugs and cameras if they really cared that much; chances are you only matter to them insofar as they get paid and the vehicle comes back intact and in contract). Speeding increases the chances of an accident, and is hard on the car. Leaving the agreed upon travel zone may cause insurance and registration problems. Enforcing the terms of a contract presented by the rental company and signed by the driver is well within their legal rights, and in my judgement constitutes the action of a "reasonable and prudent" individual. That is, if they have no idea where you took the car and you did something the boys in blue don't like, it's conceivable that the rental agency would share some blame for not making a reasonable effort to monitor your actions with their vehicle.
I don't think this is the least bit invasive, and in any case, we're not talking about a constitutional right to privacy here. That is designed to keep Uncle Sam (or Dubya, your choice) from spying on private citizens. It has nothing at all to do with enforcing contractual agreements unless, as mentioned before, they've bugged or covertly filmed you (which are covered by laws).
Get real about this. Or try running your own company and finding out why they use measures like this.