There were and still are teachers who do the same thing, only they handed the students a library instead of the internet. It isn't about technology, it is about teaching.
I use virtual machines regularly, but I use them to compensate for bad software uninstallation process. And that some software requires manual changes at the system-level (IIS or database settings). Hopefully, VMs will be limited to very specialized cases (server software farms? QA testing?) in the future instead of desktop environments.
I always thought a better solution is some sort of option where a process got an set of directories. For example, it think it is writing files to c:\windows and registry entries to wherever -- but they would really go into a local registry and directory tree just for that application. The OS would merge the two at runtime, so I could just delete one directory and the application would be gone. Or I could have the application think that a system-level configuration was set to whatever way it liked.
Common sense says that making a photograph part of a database or even electronic montage is creating a new derivative work. I'm not sure that is always the case.
Suppose that photograph was already licensed for inclusion in a 5-page article about dogs. That article is published in National Dog-o-graphic magazine. Now, I want to publish that same issue of National Dog-o-graphic on a different type of paper. New license? Okay, how about if I publish that same issue onto CD? New license? how about if I publish it into a slideshow on DVD? What if I reformat the article for newspaper? How about a web site?
Your anthology example is interesting - if the photograph were published in a coffee table book, now that sounds like a case for re-licensing. But format shifting shouldn't require relicensing.
The point is that they don't judge what it the content is. The fact that people use The Pirate Bay to post child porn instead of blank panther stuff is a measure of how awful society has become, not a measure of TBP's intentions.
Just another reminder to geeks with bucks, please donate to The EFF who filed am amicus brief on this subject. This group does a great job of educating these judges, and without them the government would likely stomp all over the constitution without opposition.
It's looking like most web developers don't even know or care about XSS I think the summary was trolling, but even so they got it dead on.
I've worked on several web projects over the years, and I've never met a single developer who even knew or cared about XSS. In all of those projects none of them, other than myself, bothered to even escape strings when sending out to HTML. In some cases, they will go out of their way to _not_ escape them. Like in ASP.NET, using HTML literal controls (which don't escape HTML content) instead of using text controls (which do). The reasoning was that the.000001% optimization it provides is more important than the risk of a security problem.
I'm looking at the links you sent, and comparing them to the EFF page, on HR 811 and I think you are being misled.
The Brad Blog you link to has a porn ad at the top, a bunch of attempts to discredit people by assocation, and poorly photoshopped heads of various villains. Their article on the bill doesn't say anything bad about the bill itself: It just says that it isn't as good as the original bill that was proposed. That's not a reason to vote against the bill. In some cases it directly conflicts with the EFF's reading of the bill. Brad's blog says that HR 811 "prohibits" disclosure of the source - while the EFF's reading says it "allows" disclosure if the states choose to do so, which is no worse than what we have now. I believe the EFF reading is correct.
The Election Defense Alliance page makes a good use of red, white, and blue colors to look patriotic. But they seem to do nothing other than name calling using things like "The Patriot Act of Elections" which doesn't add any meaning to the discussion. I suspect that this page is a phony grassroots page. For example, in their Article on HR 811 under section 7 they explain how releasing the source code doesn't improve security. Any Slashdot reader can see through this logic. Several of the points in the article are listed under the "misconceptions and misrepresentations" section of the EFF article. That is another reason I suspect the Election Defense Alliance articles to be phony - they seem to be scaremongering.
Does anyone have any idea how efficient the solar panels are? According to the STS-117 Fact Sheet (1.8 Mb PDF) on the NASA Space Shuttle page the panels generate 60 kilowatts and are 240 feet long. But that doesn't tell us the width of the panels, only the length, so I can't figure out the kilowatts per unit area. Does anyone have more details?
I think this is a scenario in Game Theory. And the states played it wrong.
Scenario: Big guy tries to coerce the little guys into doing something they don't want to do by offering them a competitive advantage. This type of coercion cannot work if all the little guys agree not to acccept the advantage. They remain on equal footing. But if one of them does, they all must do so or be left at a competitive disadvantage. The mafia works the same way, and it only works because of human greed. The states were accepted the "federal funding" deals from the government. This happens on highways, schools, etc. Now they are stuck - they can't go back now, but they don't want to comply with the ever-increasing dirty deeds they must perform. It's exactly how the mafia works. If nobody paid the protection money in the first place, we would all be better off.
Environmentalism and Economies HATE each other. I am so sick of this argument. It's the Republican party line and it is very shortsighted. Environmentalism only hates economics if: 1) The environmentalism is environmental wacko ("Wind power? Those towers are ugly!") 2) Your competitors invest in technology but you don't
One of the problem the U.S. has is that we decided not to invest in battery/hybrid/flex fuel vehicles because it was considered too expensive. That would only have been a sound economic decision if everyone else made the same decision. But Japan did. So now, the only battery/hybrid/flex fuel vehicles are made outside the U.S. and U.S. auto-makers are scrambling to catch-up or they go out of business. This is a case where environmentalism and economies were 100% in line.
Same goes with power plants. You can't regulate power prices and refuse to build new power plants. That has nothing to do with environmentalism, it's just a stupid economic decision. And now that oil prices are on the rise, we see that building other forms of power plants is not only environmentally friend, but it is also becoming economical.
This isn't a case where California made the choice to be "green" -- it is a case where California, like much of the U.S. chose not to be green, and they are paying the price. But at least they don't have those ugly wind farms blocking the beautiful views.
Funny you post this - I find iTunes on Windows to be awful since it doesn't respect any of the operating-system preferences or standards. It's like when you run a badly ported X11 app on Windows. Keyboard shortcuts don't work, font and image sizes don't scale properly, font rendering is strange, and it is sluggish. I run it on my media PC but it is almost useless because it doesn't respect the DPI settings so some things in the app are huge while others are too small to read. It's very odd to use. It got worse with iTunes 7.
The problem is context. I could build a small scale model of my backyard, dig a hole in it, and pour some bleach into it. From the picture, you would think it is a puddle of water. You would base your decision on your decades of experience seeing how things work on this planet. The problem is that Mars doesn't have the same landscape, materials, temperatures, or pressures that earth does. So you can look at the picture and say it looks like water, but it is really bananna pudding, or bleach, or fine nano-particles of dust that ae so light they flow like water. There's a lot of crazy materials in this world, and you can't base a scientific conclusion on Mars from your Earth-based assumptions.
We finally discovered the tracks of the rovers sent from Venus! With the high carbon-dioxide content and lack of corrosive oxygen in the atmosphere, the Venusians thought it was the best possible planet in the solar system for life to exist.
Why do I keep seeing headlines about companies signing patent deals with a company who said that Linux infringes on exactly 225 of their patents, but doesn't know which ones? Why are companies signing patent deals with a company to protect them from patents without knowing what they are? This is sounding like SCO -vs- IBM 2.0, but even more bizarre. What the heck is going on?
I am about to release a small project "DS Dictionary" which is a dictionary app for the Nintendo DS, under the GPL. I was forced to do so because I used the GNU GCIDE dictionary and two other GPL libraries. I contacted the author of those libraries, and they are GPL because the author in turn used another GPL library. The GPL is working today, and spreading, exactly as it was intended to do. And there is a large and ever-growing base of GPL software.
In this case, I'm very glad. I wanted to base my application on another project which was very similar to my own. But that person chose not to release the source to their application, so I was forced to go this route. It doesn't matter - this was a free tool and a useful experiment in learning to code for a new device. And the GPL source made it take 1/10th as long. I'm actually frustrated at the people who write code and horde it, so in some ways, I'm glad the GPL is forcing things to open-up.
Of course, I'll change my tune next week when I have an app I want to write where one library is GPL and the rest is not, and I'll have to go rewriting things.
Having no hardware warranty is different from having no hardware support.
I would understand completely if Dell did not have staff trained to diagnose hardware failures on Linux. That is support. But if my keyboard doesn't work, and another keyboard does, Dell should accept an RMA on the keyboard. That's a warranty. I picked that example because it is easy, but it applies to anything. If I determine the hard drive is bad, or I take it to a store and they conclude that, then Dell should allow me to RMA the hardware.
My guess is that in some states, they have to do this, like it or not, but probably for only 30 days or so. (Warranties of merchantability and fitness, lemon laws, etc.)
Another poster pointed out the relevant EULA clause:
...You may not work around technical limitations in the software... This is also in Microsoft's other agreements. I would like to see this particular onerous line challenged in court. It is very vague, and probably impossible to judge or enforce. Lots of things have technical limitations, and people work around them all the time. I don't like EULAs in general, and this is a good place to start challenging them.
This should already have been illegal: it's copyright violation, right? Is this one of those redundant laws like it is illegal to sell illegal drugs to a minor, when selling illegal drugs is already illegal? Or it is illegal to commit a "hate" crime against someone of another race or ethnicity, but it is already illegal to commit a crime against anyone at all? More charges don't solve the problem.
When I get "out of area" calls to my home office, I have an.mp3 of that high-pitched noise modem/fax machines make. Auto-dialers seem to hang-up instantly. Humans hate the sound and hang-up quickly. And my guess is that they remove the # from their dialing list, because using this technique for 2 weeks reduced my "out of area" calls more than adding my name to the Do-Not-Call list did!
I hate DRM, but I love watermarking. All my life I've "watermarked" things I own so that I know if someone steals them. Leaving a small piece of lint on top of the door to see if mom comes in. Leaving a phony phone number in my wallet in case someone steals it. I had this idea where credit card companies could issue a credit card where the police are notified immediately upon use. Then you leave that one in the front of your wallet. If someone steals your wallet they will likely use that card and get arrested.
Watermarking can be used to defend the owner of something. It can also be used to defend the copyright holder of something. I like it.
"If you've done nothing wrong then you've nothing to fear!" This is not the same thing. That statement would apply if Apple sent your name + the name of the song you bought to the RIAA. Because then, the RIAA could now be looking over your shoulder. But the only person who has the information indicating that you bought the song and your name on it -- is YOU. That makes it very different. It's more like having your name on something you own.
You have one company maintain the physical telephone lines. Then that company leases access to those lines to any company that wants provide telephone or internet (or anything else) service. This is how electricity deregulation works: instead of one company providing both power and power lines, you split it up. You still have a monopoly controlling the lines, but they do one very specific much simpler thing. You can't have compeition on the lines, but you can have competition on the service providers at the ends of the lines.
I live in Maryland, and they actually almost did something like this for a while. The local telephone company, Verizon, was required to lease their lines at a fixed rate to any competitors who wanted access. So Verizon still was a telephone service provider + a telephone wire provider, but at least there was competition on one end. This caused at least one new ISP and telephone service company to crop-up. Then some money changed hands and the law switched back so nobody new has started up. The experiment proved that it worked. It was really great for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
There were and still are teachers who do the same thing, only they handed the students a library instead of the internet. It isn't about technology, it is about teaching.
I use virtual machines regularly, but I use them to compensate for bad software uninstallation process. And that some software requires manual changes at the system-level (IIS or database settings). Hopefully, VMs will be limited to very specialized cases (server software farms? QA testing?) in the future instead of desktop environments.
I always thought a better solution is some sort of option where a process got an set of directories. For example, it think it is writing files to c:\windows and registry entries to wherever -- but they would really go into a local registry and directory tree just for that application. The OS would merge the two at runtime, so I could just delete one directory and the application would be gone. Or I could have the application think that a system-level configuration was set to whatever way it liked.
Suppose that photograph was already licensed for inclusion in a 5-page article about dogs. That article is published in National Dog-o-graphic magazine. Now, I want to publish that same issue of National Dog-o-graphic on a different type of paper. New license? Okay, how about if I publish that same issue onto CD? New license? how about if I publish it into a slideshow on DVD? What if I reformat the article for newspaper? How about a web site?
Your anthology example is interesting - if the photograph were published in a coffee table book, now that sounds like a case for re-licensing. But format shifting shouldn't require relicensing.
The point is that they don't judge what it the content is. The fact that people use The Pirate Bay to post child porn instead of blank panther stuff is a measure of how awful society has become, not a measure of TBP's intentions.
We could use this as an infinite power source!
1. Grow plants using artificial light from light bulbs
2. Harvest the plants for energy
3. Use the energy to power the light bul.. oops!
Just another reminder to geeks with bucks, please donate to The EFF who filed am amicus brief on this subject. This group does a great job of educating these judges, and without them the government would likely stomp all over the constitution without opposition.
I've worked on several web projects over the years, and I've never met a single developer who even knew or cared about XSS. In all of those projects none of them, other than myself, bothered to even escape strings when sending out to HTML. In some cases, they will go out of their way to _not_ escape them. Like in ASP.NET, using HTML literal controls (which don't escape HTML content) instead of using text controls (which do). The reasoning was that the
I'm looking at the links you sent, and comparing them to the EFF page, on HR 811 and I think you are being misled.
The Brad Blog you link to has a porn ad at the top, a bunch of attempts to discredit people by assocation, and poorly photoshopped heads of various villains. Their article on the bill doesn't say anything bad about the bill itself: It just says that it isn't as good as the original bill that was proposed. That's not a reason to vote against the bill. In some cases it directly conflicts with the EFF's reading of the bill. Brad's blog says that HR 811 "prohibits" disclosure of the source - while the EFF's reading says it "allows" disclosure if the states choose to do so, which is no worse than what we have now. I believe the EFF reading is correct.
The Election Defense Alliance page makes a good use of red, white, and blue colors to look patriotic. But they seem to do nothing other than name calling using things like "The Patriot Act of Elections" which doesn't add any meaning to the discussion. I suspect that this page is a phony grassroots page. For example, in their Article on HR 811 under section 7 they explain how releasing the source code doesn't improve security. Any Slashdot reader can see through this logic. Several of the points in the article are listed under the "misconceptions and misrepresentations" section of the EFF article. That is another reason I suspect the Election Defense Alliance articles to be phony - they seem to be scaremongering.
Does anyone have any idea how efficient the solar panels are? According to the STS-117 Fact Sheet (1.8 Mb PDF) on the NASA Space Shuttle page the panels generate 60 kilowatts and are 240 feet long. But that doesn't tell us the width of the panels, only the length, so I can't figure out the kilowatts per unit area. Does anyone have more details?
If Nintendo would put a cell phone in my Nintendo DS and officially sanction the mod chips then it would be the killer platform I've been waiting for.
I think this is a scenario in Game Theory. And the states played it wrong.
Scenario: Big guy tries to coerce the little guys into doing something they don't want to do by offering them a competitive advantage. This type of coercion cannot work if all the little guys agree not to acccept the advantage. They remain on equal footing. But if one of them does, they all must do so or be left at a competitive disadvantage. The mafia works the same way, and it only works because of human greed. The states were accepted the "federal funding" deals from the government. This happens on highways, schools, etc. Now they are stuck - they can't go back now, but they don't want to comply with the ever-increasing dirty deeds they must perform. It's exactly how the mafia works. If nobody paid the protection money in the first place, we would all be better off.
1) The environmentalism is environmental wacko ("Wind power? Those towers are ugly!")
2) Your competitors invest in technology but you don't
One of the problem the U.S. has is that we decided not to invest in battery/hybrid/flex fuel vehicles because it was considered too expensive. That would only have been a sound economic decision if everyone else made the same decision. But Japan did. So now, the only battery/hybrid/flex fuel vehicles are made outside the U.S. and U.S. auto-makers are scrambling to catch-up or they go out of business. This is a case where environmentalism and economies were 100% in line.
Same goes with power plants. You can't regulate power prices and refuse to build new power plants. That has nothing to do with environmentalism, it's just a stupid economic decision. And now that oil prices are on the rise, we see that building other forms of power plants is not only environmentally friend, but it is also becoming economical.
This isn't a case where California made the choice to be "green" -- it is a case where California, like much of the U.S. chose not to be green, and they are paying the price. But at least they don't have those ugly wind farms blocking the beautiful views.
Funny you post this - I find iTunes on Windows to be awful since it doesn't respect any of the operating-system preferences or standards. It's like when you run a badly ported X11 app on Windows. Keyboard shortcuts don't work, font and image sizes don't scale properly, font rendering is strange, and it is sluggish. I run it on my media PC but it is almost useless because it doesn't respect the DPI settings so some things in the app are huge while others are too small to read. It's very odd to use. It got worse with iTunes 7.
The problem is context. I could build a small scale model of my backyard, dig a hole in it, and pour some bleach into it. From the picture, you would think it is a puddle of water. You would base your decision on your decades of experience seeing how things work on this planet. The problem is that Mars doesn't have the same landscape, materials, temperatures, or pressures that earth does. So you can look at the picture and say it looks like water, but it is really bananna pudding, or bleach, or fine nano-particles of dust that ae so light they flow like water. There's a lot of crazy materials in this world, and you can't base a scientific conclusion on Mars from your Earth-based assumptions.
We finally discovered the tracks of the rovers sent from Venus! With the high carbon-dioxide content and lack of corrosive oxygen in the atmosphere, the Venusians thought it was the best possible planet in the solar system for life to exist.
Why do I keep seeing headlines about companies signing patent deals with a company who said that Linux infringes on exactly 225 of their patents, but doesn't know which ones? Why are companies signing patent deals with a company to protect them from patents without knowing what they are? This is sounding like SCO -vs- IBM 2.0, but even more bizarre. What the heck is going on?
I am about to release a small project "DS Dictionary" which is a dictionary app for the Nintendo DS, under the GPL. I was forced to do so because I used the GNU GCIDE dictionary and two other GPL libraries. I contacted the author of those libraries, and they are GPL because the author in turn used another GPL library. The GPL is working today, and spreading, exactly as it was intended to do. And there is a large and ever-growing base of GPL software.
In this case, I'm very glad. I wanted to base my application on another project which was very similar to my own. But that person chose not to release the source to their application, so I was forced to go this route. It doesn't matter - this was a free tool and a useful experiment in learning to code for a new device. And the GPL source made it take 1/10th as long. I'm actually frustrated at the people who write code and horde it, so in some ways, I'm glad the GPL is forcing things to open-up.
Of course, I'll change my tune next week when I have an app I want to write where one library is GPL and the rest is not, and I'll have to go rewriting things.
Having no hardware warranty is different from having no hardware support.
I would understand completely if Dell did not have staff trained to diagnose hardware failures on Linux. That is support. But if my keyboard doesn't work, and another keyboard does, Dell should accept an RMA on the keyboard. That's a warranty. I picked that example because it is easy, but it applies to anything. If I determine the hard drive is bad, or I take it to a store and they conclude that, then Dell should allow me to RMA the hardware.
My guess is that in some states, they have to do this, like it or not, but probably for only 30 days or so. (Warranties of merchantability and fitness, lemon laws, etc.)
That's too easy to get around - a national company would just need to have an individual who resides in each state to make the donations for them.
...You may not work around technical limitations in the software... This is also in Microsoft's other agreements. I would like to see this particular onerous line challenged in court. It is very vague, and probably impossible to judge or enforce. Lots of things have technical limitations, and people work around them all the time. I don't like EULAs in general, and this is a good place to start challenging them.This should already have been illegal: it's copyright violation, right? Is this one of those redundant laws like it is illegal to sell illegal drugs to a minor, when selling illegal drugs is already illegal? Or it is illegal to commit a "hate" crime against someone of another race or ethnicity, but it is already illegal to commit a crime against anyone at all? More charges don't solve the problem.
When I get "out of area" calls to my home office, I have an .mp3 of that high-pitched noise modem/fax machines make. Auto-dialers seem to hang-up instantly. Humans hate the sound and hang-up quickly. And my guess is that they remove the # from their dialing list, because using this technique for 2 weeks reduced my "out of area" calls more than adding my name to the Do-Not-Call list did!
I hate DRM, but I love watermarking. All my life I've "watermarked" things I own so that I know if someone steals them. Leaving a small piece of lint on top of the door to see if mom comes in. Leaving a phony phone number in my wallet in case someone steals it. I had this idea where credit card companies could issue a credit card where the police are notified immediately upon use. Then you leave that one in the front of your wallet. If someone steals your wallet they will likely use that card and get arrested.
Watermarking can be used to defend the owner of something. It can also be used to defend the copyright holder of something. I like it.
You have one company maintain the physical telephone lines. Then that company leases access to those lines to any company that wants provide telephone or internet (or anything else) service. This is how electricity deregulation works: instead of one company providing both power and power lines, you split it up. You still have a monopoly controlling the lines, but they do one very specific much simpler thing. You can't have compeition on the lines, but you can have competition on the service providers at the ends of the lines.
I live in Maryland, and they actually almost did something like this for a while. The local telephone company, Verizon, was required to lease their lines at a fixed rate to any competitors who wanted access. So Verizon still was a telephone service provider + a telephone wire provider, but at least there was competition on one end. This caused at least one new ISP and telephone service company to crop-up. Then some money changed hands and the law switched back so nobody new has started up. The experiment proved that it worked. It was really great for a while.